• Rajeev Rai

The task of historiography is to elucidate the past in order to help in changing the idea of the contemporary world, and such a change involves a radical transformation of consciousness in explaining the meaning of its actions. In the Sikkimese historiography or in the field of Sikkimese Studies where much of the narrative relating to Sikkim is enunciated, question drawn from critical studies on the postcolonial discourse has never been raised. Subaltern studies and other examples of post-colonial scholarship have not yet been as influential for the study on Sikkim. The historiography of Sikkim has been continued in orientalist descriptive mode inherited from the British Raj. The orientalist traditions and the politics of knowledge about contemporary Sikkim are much more important in explaining the absence of subaltern approaches in Sikkimese studies. India and Latin America shared the experiences of colonialism, revolutionary peasant movements, and Marxist intellectual traditions. By contrast, it might be tempting to say that subaltern studies would be developed in the Sikkimese studies as Sikkim was not subject to the direct European colonisation, had no peasant movements before the 1940s and the Marxism was not influential in Sikkimese society as in India or abroad. However, Sikkim did experience the peasant movements, which in most of the narratives have been obscured. This paper contextualises the people’s movement in Sikkim for democratic transition in terms of Guha’s ‘The Prose of Counter-Insurgency’, a classic essay from ‘Selected Subaltern Studies’ (1988). To acknowledge the peasant as the marker of his rebellion is to attribute consciousness to him, and this is what this paper seeks to do. The historical writing on the 1949/1973 uprising in Sikkim provides representative examples of each type of discourse which Guha provides in the ‘The Prose of Counter-Insurgency.’

Sikkim, historiography, democracy, Subaltern Studies, peasant movements

"The Cry for Democracy in Sikkim: Tracing the ‘Subaltern Voices’ in the Historiography of Sikkim", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 6, page no.230-236, June-2019, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1906322.pdf

"The Cry for Democracy in Sikkim: Tracing the ‘Subaltern Voices’ in the Historiography of Sikkim", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 6, page no. pp230-236, June-2019, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1906322.pdf