INVC,Delhi,
The Vice President of India, Shri M. Hamid Ansari released a book entitled “Subalternity, Exclusion and Social Change in India” co-edited by Shri Shri Ashok K. Pankaj, Professor at Council for Social Development, New Delhi and Shri Ajit K. Pandey, Professor at BHU, Varanasi at a function here today. Addressing on the occasion, the Vice President said that subaltern studies is a relatively new discipline, an approach to history from below focused more on what happens among the masses at the base levels of society than among the elite and as agents of social and political change.
He said that in this broad conceptual framework but in a departure from it, the contributors to the volume go beyond historiography and examine subalternity and exclusion in its multiple determinants and dimensions in post-independence India. The focus is on subalterns as active agents of change, on how they absorb social and political change, on what are dominant and subdued trends in the process. Each of these is a critical matter of contemporary societal discourse; hence the relevance of this book.
The Vice President opined that like all serious works, it is not to be classed as easy reading. Each essay sheds new light on seemingly familiar subject; each compels the reader to think. The going – at least to this reader – is slow but immensely rewarding. He congratulated the editors and the publisher for this addition to serious literature.
The book emphasizes the need for adopting an integrated approach to understand the concepts of subalternity, exclusion and social change in India. It also explores the dynamic relations among these three concepts, instead of treating them as unconnected and discrete social facts.
