Ranajit Guha (b. 1923) is a historian of modern India, founder of the Subaltern Studies Collective, editor of the first six volumes of
Subaltern Studies
and author of seminal monographs and essays. Guha's work decisively altered the terms of debate concerning forms of domination and subordination, peasant rebellion, as well as colonial constructions and indigenous idioms. Guha's work may also be traced in the role he played from 1979 onwards as mentor to a group of junior historians based in England. He envisioned a form of disciplinary history writing that was both dialogic and yet fiercely individualist. At the same time, Guha's own writings were energized by these intellectual exchanges. Guha resists the impulse to subsume his own work, or that of the Collective, into a unified theory of postcolonial historiography. In Guha's representation, Subaltern Studies is not a theory but a project, one that that involves a set of explorations.
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