Updated: 2 days ago
History for Peace and the Department of Liberal Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at MAHE-Bengaluru successfully completed the first Peace Ambassadors programme with three final year students of History – Aditya Sunil, Avishi Agarwal, and Yash Bhattacharjee. The essays here trace their individual journeys through different historiographical traditions and the ways in which these encounters transformed their understanding of history—from grand narratives centred on rulers and nations to histories attentive to ordinary people, marginalised voices, memory and identity. The complete report of the programme can be read here.
Introduction
As children we grew up with a specific picture of history – a grand spectacle of kings riding into battle, empires rising and falling and great leaders shaping the destiny of nations. It was the kind of history we found in textbooks and documentaries, where the past felt like an epic story written by and about the powerful. But when we entered our undergraduate studies we were introduced to ways of thinking about the past that changed the nature of that canvas upside down. Among these, different historiographical traditions challenged our understanding of the past in unexpected ways. They didn’t simply introduce us to new historical subjects; rather, they challenged our assumptions through which history is written and remembered. It pushed us to stop and ask: whose voice is actually being heard here? Who is missing in the narrative? And what might the stories of ordinary people – those living on the margins, far from thrones and battlefields – tell us about the world they lived in and the one we inhabit today? This was not just an academic exercise for us. It changed how we questioned familiar narratives, and how we understood the silences in the histories we had grown up with. Slowly, we came to realize that history is not a fixed record of events, but is alive, shaped by memory, identity and the quiet persistence of stories passed through generations. That is a realization that stays with you long after you leave the classroom.
Although the reflections collected from here emerge from that shared transformation, they do not seek to arrive at a single point in the past. Instead, they represent individual encounters with different historiographical traditions each shaped by our own experiences, interests, and questions. Together they explore how historical thinking extends beyond the classroom – reshaping the way we approach the sources, interrogate the established narratives and reflect on the relationship between memory, identity and representation. While different themes are discussed in these essays they are united by one common conviction: that history is not something we merely inherit, but something we continually reinterpret through the questions we ask.
REPETITION, GLORIFICATION & EPIPHANIES
Avishi Agarwal
The NCERT textbooks on History for both lower and higher secondary levels are designed for the purpose of generating interest and providing a broad narrative framework rather than training students for deep historical critique. The bulky volumes, each focusing on ancient, medieval and modern periods, prioritize giving an overview of history to young learners and do not necessarily deal with debates and complexities. This then discourages students, like me, from moving beyond these stories who inevitably consider these chronological tales to be what we will continue to study for our higher degrees. That is true for all other fields as well. When in school who knew that economics was not just about solving the minor challenges of Palampur, that Chemistry was not just about knowing the meaning of solid, liquid and gas and that studying the Harappan civilization or the Mughal empire was not the end of the road to master History. I was a little late in understanding that history encompassed a breadth of many specializations. A little too late to even realize that maybe I liked knowing facts more than memorizing the characteristics of various historical schools; going beyond the well-polished narratives and analyzing the given information with a pinch of salt; maybe even emptying the whole bottle and listing the ingredients myself.
History was fun for me to read and watch. Yes, watching documentaries developed by the Epic Channel or National Geographic History was intriguing for me, especially the way they portrayed royal histories. Grandeur and glorification were necessarily functional; otherwise, how would a ruler claim their superiority over rival empires and demand obedience from their subjects? All of which could seem to be fulfilled by a single elixir: power. It was only during my undergraduate studies that I understood the cognitive functioning of a historian, to ask questions like why, how, and who writes a fact? It is the power of a writer that decides what kind of information we, as readers of history, consume.
It was definitely difficult for me to accept and practice the academic rigour and hard work it takes to decode historical accounts or facts that are largely construed as obvious and hence remain unchallenged. This was a lesson that I have been learning over the past three years. I am also learning that most of the time, as it has also become an unfavorable trend, the history that we come across is a way of simplifying events and circumstances. They speak half-truths and narrate history in ways that easily feed on the minds of people and dictate along the lines of certain ideologies.
Hence, we are left with a sheet of glorious tales on one hand and an empty sheet on the other. Left to discover the less glorious or ignored truths of the past ourselves.
In the late 1970s historians argued that most histories of India were written by the elite in which the chief protagonists were the elite themselves[1]. This led to the development of a new school of thought called the ‘Subaltern Studies Collective,’ which was pioneered by the Indian scholar Ranajit Guha. In a concerted effort to write 'history from below' the Collective produced some of South Asian history’s most eminent names[2]
Ranajit Guha argued that both the colonialist and bourgeoise-nationalist historians ignored the crucial role of 'subalterns' (common people) in India’s nationalist movement. By not focusing on the 'autonomous' political domain of the 'people', popular mobilization was reduced to either a 'law and order problem' or responses to elite charisma. Guha also argued that both elitist and subaltern politics coexisted but were never fully integrated, due to which neither the bourgeoise nor the working class could alone lead a decisive anti-colonial revolution[3].
Guha advocated diverse methodologies that would challenge elitist historiography and acknowledge the political agency of both elite and subaltern groups. Such histories included the voices of women, Adivasis/tribals, and those oppressed due to their caste, class and religious identities[4]. In a similar way, studying Sociology taught me to understand things from a “bottom-up” lens, especially in analyses of administrative policies which often are constructed through a top-down approach.
This field of study revolutionized historiography and became an inclusive area that had been previously ignored by more influential schools of thought, like colonial and nationalist historiographies.
I will briefly conclude with an essay written from a Post-structuralist Subaltern Studies perspective, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, a former member of the Collective. The piece interrogates the general objectives of subaltern studies i.e. what do ‘voices from below’ mean for the underrepresented communities themselves?[5]. She asks whether such voices can ever be heard in a world of powerful Western elites, as they have been silenced over time by dominant intellectuals. She notes that western scholarships have imposed ‘epistemic violence’[6] over non-western subaltern communities by romanticizing their experiences and defining their lives and decisions through Western frameworks.
Spivak substantiates her arguments through a careful study of the colonial debate on sati coining her now famous phrase that “white men are saving brown women from brown men.”[7] This yields an important conclusion regarding the position of the subaltern (here, the immolated widow) who is silenced by dual systems of colonial imperialism and indigenous (Brahmanical) patriarchy. I have discussed only the Subaltern Studies school in this essay. But I believe it is one of many perspectives through which we gain knowledge not just about the past, but also about injustices in contemporary times.
References
Guha, Ranajit. “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India.” In Subaltern Studies I: Writings on South Asian History and Society, edited by Ranajit Guha, 1-8. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Chakravorty Spivak, Gayatri. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, 271-313. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988.
Tenguriya, Deepak. “Sumit Sarkar (1939-2026): Historian, constant rebel who’s work reshapes the future.” The Indian Express. August 25, 2026. https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/sumit-sarkar-1939-2026-historian-constant-rebel-whose-work-reshapes-the-future-10845489/.
Thompson, E.P. “History from Below.” The Times Literary Supplement, 279-280. April 7, 1966.
PARICHAY: VOICES THAT OUTLIVE GENERATIONS
Yash Bhattacharjee
From story to history
“Chaolang Siu Ka Phai Xwargar pora Xunor Jokholare Nami Ahisil”
(“Siu-Ka-Pha came down from the heavens through a golden ladder.”)
My beloved late grandmother once began her story time by saying this when I asked her where Siu-Ka-Pha, the first Ahom King, came from. I remember tilting my head in confusion but nevertheless let her continue to tell me the story of the king and his men establishing his reign and performing heroic deeds. From learning about the torture of Princess Joymoti at the hands of one of the Ahom kingdom’s 'tyrants' Sulikphaa, also known as the Loraa Roja (The Boy King) to the heroic deeds of the Ahom generals and warriors, like Lachit Barphukan (a general who led the Ahom soldiers during the battle of Saraighat), Mula Gabharu (a warrior who is said to have organized women warriors against Turbak Khan after her husband, Frasengmung, had fallen in the battle) and many more, history was a source of fascination for me when I was growing up.
Looking back, I realized that my grandmother was doing far more than just merely narrating bedtime stories. Without intending to she introduced me to a shared past – a past which quietly played a role in shaping my understanding of belonging, community, and identity. It was only years later, after starting to pursue history during my undergraduate years, that I began to understand that this was not unique to my childhood. Every society tells stories about itself to the younger generations and every society has its own story to share.
Stories before archives
Oral histories enable historians to document historical experiences often missing from conventional archival sources. These histories should be seen as democratizing history by recording the lived experiences of those whose lives saw an interaction with major historical events. This offers a historical perspective through the lens of people whose stories are often overshadowed by official narratives.
Archive-based histories often focused on “showing what actually happened” through documentary evidence.[8] This approach viewed history and memory as opposites. History was seen as a critical and unbiased way to understand the past, replacing the traditional ways people often remembered, i.e through legends and myths. As a result, oral traditions were often considered less valuable and mostly dismissed as fiction or unreliable accounts.[9]
The preference for archival documentary sources had a significant social cost, since it effectively erased the memories of the oppressed.[10] Through the exile of morality, establishment historiography ended up excluding large sections of society, mostly marginalized groups.
Jan Vansina, a Belgian anthropologist, argued that oral traditions should not be seen merely as “raw sources”, but hypotheses to be critically tested. Their value lies not only in what such testimonies recount about the past, but also in the lens they offer to understand the ways individuals and communities remember the experience.[11]
Ultimately, the practice of history is an evolving dialogue between archive and memory, rather than a conflict of 'archive versus memory.'[12] Modern historians admit that it is no longer possible to construct the past just through archives. Instead, history is viewed as a joint product and a skillful empathetic exchange between historians and their subjects.[13]
Rather than viewing tradition as an 'understudy' which only appears when there is a failure of written records, oral traditions have begun to be seen as indispensable sources for reconstructions of the past which can correct or refine perspectives found in archival documents.[14] Oral histories should thus become a permanent search for meaning, where the spoken accounts and archived texts inform each other to produce a complete record of the human experience.[15]
Midnight stories as Historical Sources
Returning to my grandmother’s narration of Siu-Ka-Pha, it is interesting to observe the way she transformed her story from a simple childhood fable into a vital historiographical site. Jan Vansina’s argument encourages me to reconsider my grandmother’s stories, not as factual accounts to be verified objectively, but as evidence of how one strand of Assamese collective memory preserves and reconstructs the region’s past.[16]
When my grandmother recounted the life of Siu-Ka-Pha she didn’t just describe the migration of Tai-Ahom people; she began by stating that he “came down from the heavens through a golden ladder”. In the logic of collective memory, this origin myth establishes a divine foundation for the region and thus bypasses the complexities of human mobility.[17] Her choice to remember the torture of the Princess Joymoti at the hands of the 'Boy King' and Lachit Barphukan’s heroic deeds at the Battle of Saraighat highlights a narrative focused on lessons of individual moral sacrifice and regional defence against invaders. These figures thus provide a sense of self-identification for the community, where memory is edited to give importance to pride over chronological facts.
Equally interesting are the things my grandmother left out. She never spoke about revenue administration, land grants and court politics. These omissions are not to be treated as significant acts of omission but instead they reveal something important. Oral histories are rarely concerned with preserving administrative history. They preserves people and events through the way a community may understand themselves.
My grandmother’s stories were not simply family memories. They were unmistakably Assamese forming a part of a broader regional imagination which defined the way she saw her place in the world.[18]. Through her narrations of the Ahom Kingdoms and warriors she was unconsciously taking part in the construction of regional history which claimed unique and proud ancestry.[19]
These narratives serve as a site of collective memory where the past was used to express the sense of identity which assigned primacy to her region, Assam. Her stories never existed in a vacuum but in a complex intersection between national and regional narratives. In the context of India regionalism is often viewed as a political construction through which provincial elites and ordinary citizens struggle for internal self-determination. Instead of a rejection of a broader national identity my grandmother’s stories insisted on the uniqueness of the Assamese experience and identity. They often emphasized regional pride as a way to negotiate her community’s standing within a larger pan-Indian identity.[20]
My grandmother told these stories in Assamese, a detail which I consider historically significant. The language did more than conveying information; it situated the stories within a shared cultural world, which allows the transmission of historical memory and regional identity simultaneously. Viewed through this lens these stories thus demonstrate the way language plays a crucial role not only as means of communication but also as a medium through which communities preserve and reproduce a sense of belonging across generations.
Resilience of Historical Narratives
“I love studying about the Medieval Period…because of Akbar.”
This was the response of a fellow history student during my archival internship at the Directorate of Archives in Guwahati. After lunch, we were chatting with each other about our interests in history over a steaming cup of red tea. Curious about her interests, I asked her which historical period she most enjoyed studying. I had intentionally asked about the historical period expecting a discussion of its political structures, social transformations, or historiographical significance. Instead, the period was defined through admiration for a single emperor.
As she continued to speak about Akbar with unmistakable enthusiasm, I found myself reflecting less on her answer and more on my own reaction to it. Prior to this discussion I carried an unconscious assumption that historical training naturally distances one from personal attachment to historical figures. I expected historians to engage primarily with historical processes, evidence and interpretation.
The conversation reinforced my belief in the importance of approaching historical personalities critically. Yet it made me question an assumption I made: perhaps, the stories which we encountered in the past are not simply erased by historical training and instead equip us to interrogate them more carefully.
Looking back I now find myself asking similar questions about my grandmother’s stories. I no longer view them merely as narratives which must be put under trial to decide whether to accept them as historical fact or dismiss them as fiction. Instead, it is essential to ask why these stories have endured, why certain figures continued to remain central while others faded into silence and what those choices reveal about memory, identity and belonging.
If there is one question which remained with me throughout this reflection it is why these stories continue to endure. Whether narrated by my grandmother or observed in the enthusiasm of fellow students, historical narratives reveal as much as about the present as they do about the past. Perhaps, that’s why oral history continues to occupy an important place within the discipline despite the resistance of some professional historians. It is not because they offer certainty but because they encourage us to examine how history happened as well as how it is remembered.
References
Borah, Partha Prathim and Ankur Jyoti Bhuyan. “‘Regionalism’ and its contestations: changing political discourse in contemporary Assam.” India Review 23, no. 3 (2024): 197-222. https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2024.2341571.
Chowdhury, Indira. “Speaking of the Past: Perspectives on Oral History.” Economic and Political Weekly 49, no. 30 (2014): 39-42. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24479737.
Deshpande, Anirudh. “Past, Present, and Oral History.” Economic and Political Weekly 52, no. 29 (2017): 38-43. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26695691?seq=1.
Deshpande, Prachi. Creative Pasts: Historical Memory and Identity in Western India, 1700-1960. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Devika, J. “Rethinking ‘Region’: Reflections on history-writing in Kerala.” Contemporary Perspectives 2, no. 2 (2008): 246-264. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/223080750800200203.
Koskimaki, Leah and Carol Upadhya. “Introduction: Reconsidering the Region in India: Mobilities, Actors and Development Politics.” Journal of South Asian Development 12, no. 2 (2017): 89-111. https://doi.org/10.1177/0973174117712826.
Giving Voice to the Margins: A Reflection on Subaltern Historiography
Aditya Sunil
Initially, like most other school-going children, I had a very limited view of history. I viewed it as primarily concerned with kings, wars, empires and major political events. The vast majority of historical events appeared to me to be a result of the decisions of a small number of people who dictated how society would evolve and operate. However, I have been exposed to multiple new perspectives on historiography in my undergraduate history education and that has changed my approach to studying history. Subaltern Historiography has had the greatest impact on me and has completely changed the types of questions that I ask about the past in terms of who I consider to be important individuals in the writing of history.
The Subaltern School of History focuses on understanding the role of non-elite (hence, subaltern) groups in societies and their experience of historical periods. Members of the Subaltern Studies group, a collective developed by Ranajit Guha, argue that both successful nationalists' and colonizers' historical accounts ignore or exclude most ordinary people's experiences and focus on the actions of powerful leaders and major events.[21]
In the past, when looking at the Indian independence movement, I focused primarily on the actions of major figures (like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru) to learn about India's fight for independence. While I do not deny that they played major roles in the fight, Subaltern Historiography made me think about others who fought against oppression through other means. For example, Birsa Munda led a tribal uprising against British colonial rule; however, he does not get as much attention, in my opinion, as he should.[22] It is individuals such as Munda and others who are marginalized by historiography that the Subaltern Studies school foregrounds. The Subaltern School of History rejects the view that historically workers, farmers and tribals have passively witnessed technological and social advances. Rather, the Collective’s main argument is that workers, farmers and tribesmen have played a key role in defining society and culture in the creation of a historical context.[23] My perspective on how to interpret history has changed significantly because of what I have learned about the philosophy and methodologies of the Subaltern School of History.
Without a Subaltern approach I would have only viewed the Indian independence struggle from the perspective of national leaders and significant organized political parties. However, I have understood that Indian independence consisted of many more acts of resistance such as participation in local movements, revolts led by farmers and other acts of disobedience.[24]
When I began to examine the social history of my home state, Kerala, I started to appreciate this perspective in a new light. I grew up learning about Kerala’s achievements in literacy, social progress and political change. Most of these successes were attributed to famous leaders, reformers and political parties. When looking at these past successes through the Subaltern lens, it has also led me to consider the people who were part of creating these changes through their efforts and ingenuity, but received less recognition.
K.N. Ganesh's work (1990) has helped me to understand the historical transformation that Kerala has undergone from the Marxist standpoint. Through reading his examination of agrarian relations and social formations in Travancore my focus shifted from understanding history purely in terms of the actions of rulers and administrators to examining the economic structure and class relations that govern daily life. Through his studies of the socioeconomic relations between peasants, tenants and agricultural workers, Ganesh shows that we can only comprehend historical change through the intersection of material conditions, social processes and the experiences of normal people, and not through the deeds of a few important people.[25] Ganesh's work has also made me realize how historians like himself and D.D. Kosambi apply Marxist lenses to go beyond the traditional 'great man' theory of history to address class, labour, and structural history.
Subaltern historiography brings a fresh perspective to this view by focusing on groups omitted in mainstream history. This is evident in the work done by Kerala scholars Sanal Mohan and J. Devika. Mohan's research concerning caste and slavery in the colonial period reveals how oppressed people managed to resist those who tried to dominate them throughout history.[26] Likewise, Devika strives to reconstruct the history of women, reformers and other marginalized groups by reconstructing their voices which have been traditionally absent from the history of Kerala.[27]
By combining these two forms of scholarship I have been able to see how Marxist and subaltern historians both challenge the notion of an elite-centric narrative while acknowledging their different methodologies. While Marxist scholars focus on class relations and socioeconomic components that lead to historical events and issues, subaltern writers emphasize the stories and experiences of excluded communities whose voices have generally been ignored in major historical narratives.
The Subaltern perspective has also helped me to better understand Kerala's social reform movements. While I'm aware of Ayyankali and Sree Narayana Guru, both of whom are significant in fighting against caste-based discrimination and advocating for social equity, I have also begun to understand the communities engaged in reform movements. In my research on Pulaya workers' struggle for a way to access education and public roads and in turn their fight for social dignity, I have learnt how these struggles are not just marginal events but are also an integral part of the changes in Kerala society.[28] The Subaltern perspective allowed me to look beyond individual leaders to observe how collective action contributed to social reform.
My relationship with historical sources has changed a lot since my initial engagement with subaltern historiography's approach to writing. Initially, I learned about research methodology, or how to research and gather information through historical source work. But paying attention to the fact that many historical sources are produced by the state or representatives of the powerful in society, as the subaltern school does, makes it challenging to find information about daily life regarding ordinary individuals. After reading Ranajit Guha’s essay On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India in which he discusses how to examine history with a critical eye and locate the evidence provided by marginalised groups in history, I’ve begun to view historical sources differently.[29] For example, rather than ask myself, “What does this document prove?”, I now ask myself, “Whose perspective does this document represent?” and “Are there any additional perspectives that this document does not represent?” In other words, I have learnt to question who is being omitted from any given piece of historical research, rather than simply analyzing one particular piece of evidence to prove or disprove an argument.
More importantly, I have learned how to deemphasize 'great' historical figures and instead view common individuals as participants in their own history, not solely as bystanders to the events taking place around them. My studies in Kerala have helped marry the academic debates about history with the social histories that I encounter daily. Subaltern historiography has changed my perception of history from being the total of many events that 'happened' at different intervals of time to becoming the product of all individuals who participated in those particular events including their struggles as well as their efforts to contribute towards societal change.
Many of the stories I had previously thought of as non-heroic (e.g., labour actions in Kerala's coir industry; the struggle of tenants to claim their land in the Malabar region; the plight of fishing families along the coast) now lead me to an awareness that numerous historical actors are missing from the dominant historical narrative of these events. Their considerable contributions may not always be documented in history textbooks, but they were nevertheless instrumental in shaping society as it exists today.
References
Chatterjee, Partha. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? London: Zed Books, 1986.
Devika, J. “A Tribute to Our Foremothers.” Swatantryavaadini. March 11, 2018. https://swatantryavaadini.in/.
Ganesh, K. N. The Process of State Formation in Travancore. New Delhi: Manohar, 1990.
Guha, Ranajit. “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India.” In Subaltern Studies I: Writings on South Asian History and Society, edited by Ranajit Guha, 1–8. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Guha, Ranajit. Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983.
Prakash, Gyan. “Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism.” The American Historical Review 99, no. 5 (1994): 1475–1490. https://doi.org/10.2307/2168385.
Tharakan, P. K. Michael. “Historical Hurdles in the Course of the People’s Planning Campaign in Kerala.” In Politicising Democracy: the New Local Politics of Democratisation, edited by John Harriss, Kristian Stokke and Olle Törnquist, 107-126. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Footnotes.
[1] Deepak Tenguriya, "Sumit Sarkar (1939–2026): Historian, Constant Rebel Whose Work Reshapes the Future," Indian Express, August 2, 2026,
[2] E. P. Thompson, "History from Below," Times Literary Supplement, April 7, 1966, 279–80.
[3] Ranajit Guha, "On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India," in Subaltern Studies I: Writings on South Asian History and Society, ed. Ranajit Guha (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 1–8.
[4] Ranajit Guha, "On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India," in Subaltern Studies I: Writings on South Asian History and Society, ed. Ranajit Guha (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 1–8.
[5] Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 66–111.
[6] Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?," in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 76-77.
[7] Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?," in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 92-93.
[8] Anirudh Deshpande, "Past, Present, and Oral History," Economic and Political Weekly 52, no. 29 (2017): 38-43, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26695691.
[9] Indira Chowdhury, "Speaking of the Past: Perspectives on Oral History," Economic and Political Weekly 49, no. 30 (2014): 39-42, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24479737.
[10] Anirudh Deshpande, "Past, Present, and Oral History," Economic and Political Weekly 52, no. 29 (2017): 38-43, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26695691.
[11] Anirudh Deshpande, "Past, Present, and Oral History," Economic and Political Weekly 52, no. 29 (2017): 38-43, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26695691.
[12] Prachi Deshpande, "Introduction," in Creative Pasts: Historical Memory and Identity in Western India, 1700–1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 1-18.
[13] Anirudh Deshpande, "Past, Present, and Oral History," Economic and Political Weekly 52, no. 29 (2017): 38-43, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26695691.
[14] Anirudh Deshpande, "Past, Present, and Oral History," Economic and Political Weekly 52, no. 29 (2017): 38-43, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26695691.
[15] Indira Chowdhury, "Speaking of the Past: Perspectives on Oral History," Economic and Political Weekly 49, no. 30 (2014): 39-42, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24479737.
[16] Anirudh Deshpande, "Past, Present, and Oral History," Economic and Political Weekly 52, no. 29 (2017): 38-43, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26695691.
[17] Partha Pratim Borah and Ankur Jyoti Bhuyan, "‘Regionalism’ and Its Contestations: Changing Political Discourse in Contemporary Assam," India Review 23, no. 3 (2024): 197-222, https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2024.2341571.
[18] Leah Koskimaki and Carol Upadhya, "Introduction: Reconsidering the Region in India: Mobilities, Actors and Development Politics," Journal of South Asian Development 12, no. 2 (2017): 89-111, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0973174117712826.
[19] J Devika. “Rethinking ‘Region’: Reflections on history-writing in Kerala.” Contemporary Perspectives 2, no. 2 (2008): 246-264.
[20] Partha Pratim Borah and Ankur Jyoti Bhuyan, "‘Regionalism’ and Its Contestations: Changing Political Discourse in Contemporary Assam," India Review 23, no. 3 (2024): 197-222, https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2024.2341571.
[21] Ranajit Guha, “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India,” in Subaltern Studies I: Writings on South Asian History and Society, ed. Ranajit Guha (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 1–8.
[22] Guha, “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India,” 1–8.
[23] K. N. Ganesh, “The Process of State Formation in Travancore,” Studies in History 6, no. 1 (1990): 15–33.
[24] P. Sanal Mohan, Modernity of Slavery: Struggles against Caste Inequality in Colonial Kerala (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015).
[25] K. N. Ganesh, “The Process of State Formation in Travancore,” Studies in History 6, no. 1 (1990): 15–33.
[26] P. Sanal Mohan, Modernity of Slavery: Struggles against Caste Inequality in Colonial Kerala (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015).
[27] J. Devika, En-Gendering Individuals: The Language of Re-forming in Early Twentieth Century Keralam (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2007).
[28] Mohan, Modernity of Slavery, 152–213.
[29] Guha, “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India,” 1–8.
With editorial inputs from Ishaan Rajiv Rajabali.
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