Reading Social History: E.P. Thompson through Sumit Sarkar

Reading Social History: E.P. Thompson through Sumit Sarkar

    My journey towards historian Sumit Sarkar’s works began in a rather circuitous way. After reading Sharankumar Limbale’s new novel Sanatan, which reimagines colonial Indian history from a Dalit perspective, I felt compelled to write about it. The novel’s approach — placing historical events we vaguely remember from school textbooks within a Dalit framework — fascinated me. It escaped the binary of nationalist versus colonial narratives, creating a new territory that centered the experiences and culture of the marginalized. This immediately brought to mind the concept of “history from below,” a historiographical approach advanced by British historian E.P.Thompson. Further readings led me to other social historians like Eric Hobsbawm, George Rudé, and Christopher Hill, who had expanded historical horizons by focusing on the experiences and the culture of the masses. While particularly focusing on modern Indian history to contextualize my essay, one name appeared consistently across the scholarship: Sumit Sarkar. This led me to borrow his book Writing Social History from the university library, a work that would significantly shape my understanding of social history and its methodological implications, particularly in the Indian context.

    This essay examines two specific pieces from Sarkar’s book that focus on E.P. Thompson: “The Relevance of E.P. Thompson” and “Edward Thompson and India: The Other Side of the Medal.” Through these essays, we can understand not only Thompson’s contributions to historical methodology but also how his approaches have influenced writing of social history, particularly in the Indian context. The analysis will focus on three key aspects: Thompson’s methodological innovations, Sarkar’s interpretation of Thompson’s relevance, and the broader implications for social history.

    E.P. Thompson’s significance in historical scholarship stems primarily from his groundbreaking work, The Making of the English Working Class (1963). This seminal text revolutionized historical methodology by emphasizing the importance of examining history from the perspective of ordinary people. Thompson’s approach challenged traditional historiography’s focus on elite narratives and political leadership, arguing instead for the recognition of working-class agency in historical processes. His work was deeply rooted in his personal and familial experiences. His father, Edward John Thompson, was a Methodist missionary and critic of British imperialism, which instilled in Thompson a sense of moral responsibility to address historical injustices. This background informed his belief that history should serve as a tool for social change, allowing for a critical examination of the past to inform present struggles.

    Sarkar’s examination of Thompson’s relevance is particularly crucial in the context of the 1990s - a period marked by significant ideological shifts. The late 1980s and early 1990s in India saw two major developments: the rise of Hindu right movements culminating in the destruction of the Babri Masjid, and the strengthening of lower-caste assertions surrounding the Mandal Commission debates. These events occurred against the backdrop of declining Left influence and the increasing dominance of free-market ideology. This period also witnessed a theoretical turn in historical scholarship, with the growing influence of Michel Foucault and Edward Said’s approaches to power, knowledge, and representation. Their work, along with broader postmodernist approaches, offered alternative radical frameworks for understanding domination and resistance. Foucault’s insights into how power operates through knowledge systems and self-regulation, rather than just through state or class dominance, posed new questions about Thompson’s more traditional materialist approach. In this context, Sarkar examines whether Thompsonian social history remains relevant, or whether these newer theoretical frameworks have superseded his methodological contributions.

    One of the most striking aspects of Sarkar’s assessment is captured in his observation about Thompson’s unique ability to combine scholarly rigor with political engagement: “Perhaps the most remarkable thing about him was the way he could combine, throughout his life, passionate political commitment and activism with the highest standards of professional rigour and originality, each feeding into the other, and both communicated through superb prose, meticulously-wrought arguments, and carefully accumulated material”. This observation highlights a crucial aspect of Thompson’s legacy: the possibility of maintaining scholarly integrity while engaging with pressing social and political issues.

    Sarkar’s analysis thoughtfully addresses various criticisms of Thompson’s work. These include questions about potential Eurocentrism in Thompson’s approach, limited attention to gender issues in his historical analysis, and the relationship between his work and growing postmodern approaches to historical representation. While acknowledging certain limitations, particularly regarding gender analysis, Sarkar defends Thompson’s broader methodological contributions. He argues that accusations of Eurocentrism overlook Thompson’s nuanced understanding of cultural differences and his engagement with non-European contexts. Regarding postmodern critiques, Sarkar suggests that Thompson’s empirical rigor and attention to human agency offer valuable counterpoints to extreme forms of historical relativism.

    In his analysis of Edward Thompson’s The Other Side of the Medal, Sarkar explores how the 1857 uprising in India received different interpretations — characterized as a sepoy mutiny in British accounts and as the first war of independence in Indian nationalist narratives. Thompson’s work challenged colonial narratives by exposing British atrocities, though Sarkar emphasizes that his primary concern was fostering cross-cultural understanding rather than simply critiquing colonialism. This analysis reveals the complexity of colonial historiography and demonstrates the possibility of critical engagement with colonial history that moves beyond simple binary oppositions.

    The significance of social history as developed by Thompson and interpreted by Sarkar lies in its potential to democratize historical narrative. By focusing on the experiences and agency of ordinary people, this approach enriches our understanding of historical processes and challenges us to consider multiple perspectives when examining the past. Sarkar’s conclusion that “Perhaps a bit of the incandescence that was Thompson’s whole life may help to light our paths, too, in these difficult times” speaks to the enduring value of this approach to historical scholarship. It seems fitting to turn Sarkar’s own words about Thompson toward himself. While he noted that Thompson’s incandescence could ‘help to light our paths,’ Sarkar’s own scholarly contributions have become a similar beacon. His nuanced understanding of social history and its methodologies continues to guide new generations of historians through their own difficult times.

Kathiravan Annamalai