History from Below

This review of two books authored by Denzil Saldhana—Structure, Consciousness and Social Transformation: The Adivasis in Thane District, Maharashtra and The Subaltern Subject in Structured Historical Process—works on a leitmotiv: the emergence of class consciousness in the text of dialectical materialism and the understanding of the nature and mechanism of the subaltern subject in historical process.

Saldhana’s books are of importance since they bring in the critical analysis of agency in the process of historical change and the reinstatement of classical dialectical materialism in this scrutiny. Though he situates himself in the text of Subaltern Studies, his basis is in the epistemology of classical Marxism and does not transgress into the discourses on poststructuralism and other “borrowed” disciplines. The strength of both these works lies in this dialectical materialist grounding.