AN ASSIGNMENT ON
CONTRIBUTIONS OF DAVID HARDIMAN
PAPER- SOC.C.522
SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY:
Dr. Saswat Ch. Pujari Suman Agrawal
[Link] Roll no.18S19SO20
Dept. of Sociology PG 4th semester
Sambalpur University
PG DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY
SAMBALPUR UNIVERSITY
CONTENT
INTRODUCTION
BIOGRAPHY OF DAVID HARDIMAN
MAJOR WORKS OF DAVID HARDIMAN
HARDIMAN’S PERSPECTIVE ON SUBALTERN
FRAMEWORK OF THE SUBALTERN PERSPECTIVE
THE DEVI MOVEMENT IN SOUTH GUJARAT
FEEDING THE BANIYA
BIOGRAPHY OF DAVID HARDIMAN:
David Hardiman was born in Rawalpindi (Pakistan) in October 1947. He has
taught at the University of Leicester, the School of Oriental and African Studies in
London, the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and the University of Oxford.
Presently he is attached to the University of Warwick, UK. In 1980, he was a
fellow of the Centre for Social Studies in Surat.
In 1981, he was also visiting fellow of the Centre for Studies in Social
Sciences, Calcutta. Hardiman is one of the many prolific writers who participated
in the creation of the subaltern perspective. He is a founding member of the
Subaltern Studies group. Noteworthy is the fact that since 1982 at least all his
articles and books were illustrative of the practice of subaltern studies.
Hardiman is a sociologically-sensitive historian, who participated in the
creation of the subaltern perspective. As a historian, he specialises in the history of
Modern India. Since the late 1960s, he has studied and written on South Asian
History and during this period he has spent over a decade in all actually working in
India.
The main focus of his work has been on the colonial period in South Asian
history, concentrating in particular on the effects of colonial rule on rural society,
relationships of power at various levels, the Indian independence movement with a
specific focus on the popular bases to Indian nationalism, and environmental and
medical history.
In the late 1970s he became involved with a group of historians studying the
social history of subordinate groups in South Asia. The Gramscian term ‘subaltern’
– meaning ‘subordinate group’ – was chosen to emphasise the centrality of
relationships of domination and subordination in a society in which class divides
had not developed as in the industrialized world.
He has carried out a detailed examination of the Indian nationalist movement
at the local level in Gujarat – Gandhi’s home region – bringing out the disjuncture
between the aims and agendas of the Gandhian leadership and local peasant
activists. He has examined the power-structures of rural society, carrying out for
example a detailed study of the hegemonic controls exercised by usurers and the
limits to that hegemony, as seen in particular in revolts.
He has also studied a movement of assertion by adivasis (tribal people)
against liquor dealers who had been granted a monopoly right of supply by the
British and who had enriched themselves at the expense of the adivasis.
David Hardiman has also written a book on Gandhi and his legacy in India
and the world. In this, he brings to the topic a deep knowledge of Gandhi’s
particular social milieu. His engagement with contemporary social issues while
living in India has also been of crucial importance in assessing Gandhi’s legacy in
India.
From 1983 to 1989 he worked as a Research Fellow at the Centre for Social
Studies, Surat in Gujarat, India. There was a strong emphasis there on the
evaluation of government and NGO development projects, and, besides carrying
on his historical research and writing, he became involved in a wide range of
development-linked research projects.
MAJOR WORKS OF DAVID HARDIMAN:
The Quit India Movement in Gujarat (1980)
Peasant Nationalists of Gujarat: Kheda District, 1917-1934 (1981)
The Coming of Devi: Adivasi Assertion in Western India (1987)
Peasant Resistance in India: 1858-1914 (1992)
Subaltern Studies VIII: Essays in Honour of Ranajit Guha (1994)
Feeding the Baniya: Peasants and Usurers in Western India (1996)
Gandhi in his Time and Ours (2003)
Histories for the Subordinated (2006)
Missionaries and their Medicine: A Christian Modernity for Tribal India
(2008)
HARDIMAN’S PERSPECTIVE ON SUBALTERN:
Hardiman’s interest in such a topic was stimulated by his participation in the
subaltern studies project, which, under the inspiration of Ranajit Guha, has had as
one of its chief objectives the study of relationships of domination and
subordination in India. He was inspired also by the work of western Marxist
historians, notably E.P Thompson on systems of moral economy, and Eugene
Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese on the blend of ruthless exploitation with
paternalism in the slave system of the American south.
These influences, coupled with insights gained from the writings of Karl
Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu and, in the context
of western India D.D. Kosambi, Jairus Banaji and Frank Perlin, have provided
some of the main foundations for his work.
FRAMEWORK OF THE SUBALTERN PERSPECTIVE:
The study of Indian society has been done by sociologists through various
perspectives. Subaltern perspective is one of these perspectives. One of the
exponents of this perspective is David Hardiman who has used it in his study The
Coming of Devi. This is basically a movement among adivasis of western India to
change their established way of life. Such movements, although, have been
reported from almost all adivasi tracts of India over the past century, they have
until now been relegated to the margin of modern Indian history.
One of the enduring secrets of the subaltern perspective is that it existed only
as a broad framework. A detailed enquiry, such as undertaken by some of its
critics, usually pointed out serious continuities with other kinds of coeval research
and that the discontinuities, such as could be noticed, were rather minor and
sometimes merely idiosyncratic as when Ranajit Guha insisted in his seminal book
on peasant insurgency that one of the ways into the minds of the subaltern was to
read the inverse meaning into the routine reports coming from the elite.
Three kinds of problems were pointed out: One is that the term ‘subaltern’
was not adequately defined/ identified. Two, the subaltern perspective had already
been in use for a very long time. Three, the idea of subaltern was a relative
concept; subaltern was always relative to something, or someone else. It referred to
something that was ‘below’. “Below what?” “Below that which was above?” Such
distinctions, even though they were not very strict, acquired meaning through the
practice of subaltern studies. In this regard, one could take the studies done by
Hardiman to be illustrative.
There was also a problem that the distinction between the subaltern and the
elite was considerably a context dependent distinction. A little change, as
Hardiman noticed in his study of the Devi movement in Gujarat, could place a
tribal leader in the role of an exploiter rather than the one who is being exploited.
THE DEVI MOVEMENT IN SOUTH GUJARAT:
Hardiman tried to look at subaltern perspective from his study of the Devi
movement in south Gujarat (Western Maharashtra region). He observes the mass
movement in south Gujarat in early 20th century by the native masses and it was
termed as ‘Devi movement’. It was peaceful, led by tribals themselves, spread over
a large region, involved a considerable number of people and focused on bringing
social reform among the tribals.
He noticed that this movement among the adivasis was virtually ignored by
the contemporary government, the newspapers, the nationalists and subsequently
the historians. There is no full-length monograph on such movements, he
remarked, nor were they documented adequately.
Insofar as the activities of the tribals were noticed by the nationalists, it was
to remark that they were done under the auspices and influence of outsiders, e.g.,
Gandhi, in the case of Devi movement, or some social worker of tribal origins who
would be presumed to have worked for the so-called uplift of the tribals.
Even, the socialists, who claimed to be more at one with the common people
completely denied any role for the tribals other than as mere followers who could
take any decision by themselves and had to be completely directed by the socialists
who had come from outside. Hardiman notices that in this way the existing
observers of the tribal life had completely denied the tribals any initiative, any
decision-making capacity or any ability to decide what is good for them. Such
denial of existence to the tribals (or, as a general case, to other subaltern groups) is
what Hardiman and others following the subaltern perspective criticized.
Genesis of Resistance:
There were many individual and group efforts to warm the adivasis to take
liquor. It included rural elite and Bhajan – Mandal groups of the village, but the
remarkable change in the consciousness of the adivasis came with Devi movement.
The Coming of Devi by Hardiman is a work on the assertion of the adivasis
in western India against the Shaukars (moneylenders). The Devi movement started
as a small propitiation ceremony among the fisher-folk of Palghar taluk in late
1921. Later, it spread in other parts of Gujarat.
In the case of Devi movement, Hardiman noticed that the tribals had
involved themselves in a social reform movement not merely as an effort of
reforming themselves, by getting rid of the drinking habit, but also as a rebellion
against the domination of Parsi liquor vendors who had brought them into debt
bondage and also against the domination by large landlords.
This ‘Devi’ was supposed to have come from the mountains to the east, and
she expressed her demands through the mouth of spirit mediums. The medium sat
before the crowd, holding red clothes in their hands, they began to shake their
heads.
Then, they pronounced the commands of Devi:
Stop drinking liquor and toddy.
Stop eating meat and fish.
Live a clean and simple life.
Man should take bath twice a day.
Women should take bath thrice a day.
Have nothing to do with Parsis.
When they finished, the girl who was dressed as Devi was offered coins or
gifts. Later, they sat for a common dinner (Bhandara). The collective and ‘Devi’
words have brought remarkable change in the consciousness among the adivasis.
This led to their political mobilization and ultimately to raise their standard of
living by going away from the clinches of Shahukars and Parsis.
But, what was the result of this kind of quite rebellion, Hardiman asked. It did
not result in the total emancipation of the adivasis, he conceded. For, the
domination of the Parsis was replaced by the more hegemonic domination of the
elite among the adivasis over all others. But it did result in other kinds of benefits.
In the region where the Devi movement spread the far more exploitative
capitalist farmer could not find roots. The adivasis managed to retain a modicum of
dignity and self-control in the face of ever increasing incursions of capitalist
relations protected by the colonial government and even after the movement
dissolved it still left a lingering impression on the tribals of this region by making
them more assertive and giving them memories, which involves self-help and
action for the collective good.
So, if the uniqueness and self-dignity in the current existence of the tribals of
the forested regions of south Gujarat had to be understood, it could be done so only
by first understanding the special way in which the tribals created and responded to
the Devi movement. If the social scientists were to ignore the perspective, they
would lose out on the special understanding that David Hardiman and others of his
ilk provided.
FEEDING THE BANIYA:
The book entitled, feeding the Baniya represents an attempt to understand
something of the quality of power which usurers have exercised over subaltern
classes in rural India over several centuries. As well as the obvious economic
element, this power had strong political and cultural dimensions to it.
It was very tenacious, not only surviving the transition to colonial rule, but
thriving in the new environment. Even when resisted in popular revolt, usurers –
personified in popular imagination by the figure of the Baniya merchant – seemed
to have a remarkable ability to bounce back, redefining the terms of their
relationship with the subaltern to their perpetual advantage.
Hardiman attempts to see how such a domain of power was forged; how,
over the centuries, usurers managed to adapt their practice so effectively within
succeeding state formations; and how the classes whom they exploited related to
them, and also resisted them.
A peasant proverb in western India gives expression to the hegemony of
Baniya usurers over the peasants: “I love the Sheth-Baniya so much that I have
given him a fat belly.” The indebted peasantry feeds the Baniya merchants’ never
ending demands for agrarian produce, enriching the usurers while being itself
trapped in a cycle of poverty.
Hardiman’s second major book, feeding the Baniya reflects the integration
of a small-scale agrarian society with a larger capitalist economy. Hardiman
investigated the deep meanings involved in the relationship between the villager
and the moneylender. Anyone who has had any experience of the borrowing
practices in villages knows how usurious the village moneylender is.
Yet it has often puzzled observers that the villagers prefer going to him for
help in times of need rather than visit the local branch of the State Bank of India or
other banks even though they provide loans at much cheaper rates and without
much difficulty. A crucial part of the answer to this puzzle was provided by
Hardiman’s study.
Rich in historical and sociological details, the study pointed out that the
moneylender was located in a complex web of domination exercised by the local
dominant classes. The moneylender himself might not always be the dominating
person, but he definitely was the front for the other dominant sections of local
society.
In so far that here was a society not sufficiently suffused with capitalist
relations and institutions, the moneylender provided the small-scale agrarian
producer with adequate means to relate to the wider capitalist world.
In this detailed and comprehensive study of the relationship between
peasants and Baniya usurers in western India, Hardiman examines how and why
usurers have, over the centuries, managed to exert their power over the peasantry.
An explanation purely in terms of economics of the relationship is, he argues, not
adequate.
Crucial also has been the support extended to the Baniyas by successive
states from pre-colonial to colonial times. But, over and above, this is the
ideological or hegemonic power that Baniyas have been able to exert over their
clients.
Applying insights derived from the works of Gramsci, Foucault and
Bourdieu, Hardiman explores the nature of this hegemony, seeing how a shared set
of beliefs could help the Baniyas consolidate their power. Despite this, the
relationship was by no means a harmonious one. There was a whole range of
tensions which at times gave rise to protest and resistance.
His book feeding the Baniya was conceived initially as a study of usury in
Gujarat, which has been his chief area for historical research. However, in the
course of the investigations, the project expanded to include other parts of western
India. Rajasthan is also included in part because it was the heartland of the
Marwari Baniya – a critical group for any study of usury.
Feeding the Baniya spans the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial
periods of Indian history. The role of merchant and usurer capital in the
appropriation of the peasants’ surplus is examined, revealing crucial changes over
time and it is argued that the institution of usury has undergone a metamorphosis in
the period since Indian independence.
Once again, as in the case of his study of the Devi movement, Hardiman had
provided an additional perspective into the changing world of the villagers as they
tried to cope with the changes in the wider society around them. And it was
creating special knowledge that the subaltern perspective has been used to any
student of society.
