Articles by Gyanendra Pandey

A shift from policies to that of the politics of the distribution of power and privilege in societies may bring with it recognition of the entirely new ethos of nationalism and democracy in our times. This article begins with this changed ethos by invoking that politics, and especially, a politics of indifference. It deals with two dimensions of the rule of indifference, beginning with the matter of difference as pluralism, and then turning to the issue of lack of sympathy with the here and now, the present generation, those living through the uprooting and displacement of diverse projects of "development." It should become clear from what follows that these two senses of the term, and the practices flowing from them, feed on each other, even if they appear in rather different guises and seem to be directed at very different kinds of objects.

M S S Pandian, who passed away in New Delhi after a cardiac arrest on 10 November 2014, at the age of 57, was among the younger members who joined the editorial collective of the Subaltern Studies in 1990.

This paper tries to prize away the notion of difference from the rather impoverished sense of diversity and explores how this concept is used by subaltern groups struggling against the hierarchical ordering of social, political and economic power. It argues that the subaltern foregrounding of difference is not a politics that flows from cultural essentialism, but rather a culture that emerges from attempts to work out an alternative political future. The article, with cross-continental comparisons, attempts to extend and deepen our investigations of subalternity, and to return more sharply to the question that feminist and other oppositional movements have raised - how can modern societies and states take account of, and live with, difference?

The "re-presentation" of the subaltern (a relational position in the way power is conceptualised) as subaltern citizen is not about the technical question of citizenship; rather the claim is about historical agency, and about belonging - in a society and in its self-construction. For 200 years and more, the struggles waged by the oppressed and subordinated, i e, the subalterns, were seen as struggles for recognition as equals. The history of these efforts appeared as a history of sameness. However, in the later decades of the 20th century, this struggle was extended to encompass another demand - the demand for a recognition of difference - the existence of a variety of differences that explained the diversity, density and richness of human experience. It is this paradox that needs to be answered, while debating the construction of a subaltern citizen: how is the long-standing struggle for equality supposed to be folded into this newly asserted right to the recognition of difference?

The self-conception of India and Pakistan in 1947, when they gained independence, and a half century later. What are the terms of the discourse on 'religious conflict' and violence in the subcontinent and what are our criteria for classifying particular events as 'historical' and consequential?