aporias of history

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Some Aporias of History: Time, Truth and Play in Dangs, GujaratAuthor(s): Ajay SkariaSource: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 34, No. 15 (Apr. 10-16, 1999), pp. 897-904Published by: Economic and Political WeeklyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4407847 .

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SPECIAL ARTICLESS o m e A p o r i a s o f H i s t o r y

Time, Truthand Play in Dangs, GujaratAjay Skaria

Historians and social scientists confronted with pasts imagined differently from history have resorted toone of two strategies: converting oral traditions into the equivalent of archival sources and then writinghistories that adhere to the norms of western professional history writing; or by denying any significanttraffic between history and otherfroms of conceiving pasts, sbsuming the latter under the rubrics of mythor more recently, memory. This article argues that the Dangi's 'vadilcha goth' or tales about ancestorsare an engagement with modernity and its paradigmatic trope, history. The subaltern practice of anomalousand hybrid histories, in the Dangs, produces a multiplicity of pasts quite differentfrom those multiple historieswhich historians conceive of and increasingly call for.WITHINdays of commencing fieldworkin Dangs in Gujarat,I realised thatDangishad a rich fund of 'vadilcha goth', orstories aboutancestors. These 'goth' oftenreachedbackinto the 17thand 18thcentury;they involved detailed accounts of theactivities thatthe narrators'ancestorswereinvolved in. The question is: how is oneto think of these stories about the past?The issues this question raises aremorecomplex than might appear at first sight.The problem is posed by the emergencesince the 18thcenturyof anunderstandingof historywhichbasically shapes the waysin which we thinkaboutpasts. Previously,as ReinhartKoselleck remarks, 'historieshad existed in the plural'. With theEnlightenment, history emerged as "ageneral concept which became thecondition of possible experience andpossible expectation". It "gained anenhanced degree of abstraction, allowingit to indicate a greatercomplexity, whichcapability has since made it necessary forreality to be generally elaborated in ahistorical manner"1

"Realityto be generally elaborated in ahistorical manner":few remarks could bemore appropriate. Consider simply howthe oppressed and marginal - whethernations, women, lower castes, or othersubaltern groups - have sought to givethemselves a history, how often the callhasresounded:"We musthaveahistory".2To claim a history, and to claim that thishistory is not simply something that canbe added on to an already existing historybut transformsthe idea of history itself -this is a strategy that not only historiansbut subaltern groups have repeatedlyresortedto. Note thatwhat isbeingclaimedhere is not simply pasts (this would beunexceptionable, foreverybody haspasts)

buthistory. The other pasts are subsumedvariously under the rubrics of memory,myth or chronicle; they are what historymay grow out of but is fundamentallydifferent from; they are at best theprehistoryof history.3With modernity, asso many have said or implied, historyemerges as a privileged form of being.Thus it is that one of the more seriouschargesthatscholars can levy againsteachother is often thatthey are 'ahistorical' (itis surely significant that there are nowidespread parallel conceptions of beingwithout sociology or anthropology, andthat there are some sorts of parallels inpolitics and economics).I do not wish to go into the questionsof why history should thus become aparadigmatic trope of modernity, or howthe distinction between history and otherpasts is maintained. Suffice to say for nowthat these mattershave to do with a varietyof aspects of modernity: with thesignificance accorded to agency, and howhaving history(making history)is one wayto claim such agency;with thesignificanceaccorded to reason, and how history isalways necessarily from the point of viewof the rationalsubject;withthesignificanceaccorded to time as not merely a staticbackdrop but a dynamic element whichitself a principle of transformation, andhow history is precisely this kind ofnarrativeabouttime.ThepointIammakingis much more modest: it is that those ofus dealing with the pasts of marginal orsubaltern groups have necessarily had toengage with history in this moder sense.We can never be innocent of themodernisttropeof history,anymorethanthesubalterngroups we write about can be.So thequestion could now beformulatedmoresharply:how do we, andthesubaltern

groups we write about, engage withhistory? When as historians and socialscientists, we have been confronted withpasts imagined differently from history(as, say, with many oral traditions) wehave usually resorted to one of twostrategies. Such scholars as Jan Vansina(who in many senses put the study of oraltraditions on a disciplinary footing) andhis manybrilliant studentshave proceededby converting oral traditions into theequivalent of archival sources, and thenwriting histories that adhere to the normsof western professional history writing.In the process, they have produced noveland exciting histories of regions andsubjects, histories that would haveremained impossible if we had stuck towritten records. Politically too, oralhistory has been a way of contesting thecolonial refusal to acknowledge that thecolonised had any history. Yet thisstrategy, though not only valuable butabsolutely requiredin manycontexts, doesalmost self-confessedly ride roughshodover the alternative historicities - thedifferent ways of conceiving pasts,presents and futures - that might beinvolved in oral traditions. For much oralhistory in this genre, rather,oral traditionsbecome a form of history, and the differ-ences between the two are minimised.4A second, intimately linked strategy,resorted to by many oral historians, andalmost an organising principle of theethnographic method, involves denyingany significant traffic between historyand other forms of conceiving pasts,subsuming the latter under the rubrics ofmyth or, more recently, memory. It issalutary to recall that when Levi-Straussmadethe distinction between hotsocietiesthat have history and cold societies that

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havemyth,hesoughtimplicitlyto affirmmythoverhistory.Butsohegemonicwasthenotionthathistorywas the desirablewayof thinkingof paststhatto describeanysocietyaspossessingsimplyamythicconsciousness,aslackinghistory,seemednot merelyinappropriateor wrong buteven politicallyconservative.I do not wish to adoptthe historicisttacks that were takeii to criticise Levi-Strauss,or that, in a relatedvein, havebeen taken in recent times to criticiseanthropology'spracticesof othering;Idonot wish to claim that I espy historyeverywhere.Whatworriesme is some-thingelse. It is thatin thisstrategybothmythandmemoryareusuallycastas thatwhichisspatiallyorchronologicallyapartfrom history. Thus. scholars conven-tionallyassumethatoraltraditionssurvivemost vigorously in non-literate and'traditional'societies.Withtheemergenceof a literateculture,oraltraditionsaboutthepastareexpectedtobeslowlyforgotten,to be replacedby a literate historicalculture.It was in this spiritthat AshisNandyonceremarkedthatthemajorityofIndiansstillhaveamodeofthinkingwhichis distinctfromhistory.5 Such remarksoftenseem topresumeaninnocencefromhistory. Andeven if it could have beenclaimed in earliercenturies,alternativehistoricitiestodayarenotsimplyinnnocentof history but emerge through anengagementwith it.Inthiscontext,I wouldliketoarguethatvadilchagothare not local traditionsstillpreservedbecauseofsomeDangiisolationfromthe largerworld. Rather,theyarean engagementwith modernityand itsparadigmatictrope,history.By this,I donot mean thatthey are anti-modern(asParthaChatterjeehasremarkedacerbically,one can hardlychoose to be modernoranti-modern,onecanonlytalkofstrategiesforcopingwithmodernity);6rather,Ireferto an engagement that exceeds themodernitieswhich thecolonial andpost-colonialstate andeliteshaveespoused.Iwouldlike to focus hereon two crucialdimensions of this Dangi engagement:thewaysin whichitrefiguresandexceedsmodernisttime andtruth.In theprocess,Ihopetoforegroundthesubalternpracticeof anomalousandhybridhistories,whichinDangsproducesamultiplicityof pastsquite different from those multiplehistorieswhichwe,ashistorians,conceiveof and increasinglycall for.

THETIMEOF GOTHDangs is an approximately66G sq milearea that now forms a district in south-easternGujarat.Itis inhabitedlargelyby

bhils,koknis,and varlis- communitiesthatthemodernIndiangovernmentwouldclassifyas scheduledtribes,and that theBritishdescribedas the wild tribes.Inthe18th and 19thcentury,Dangswas ruledby severalbhil chiefs. Thoughit neverformallybecamepartof Britishterritory,its chiefs were subordinatedto Britishpowerin the early 19thcentury. In the1840s, Britishpowerin the regionwasfurther consolidated when colonialofficials secureda leaseof Dangiforests.Sinceforestscoveredmostof Dangs,thiseffectivelymeant thatthe whole regioncame underBritishauthority.As partoftheireffortsto producemoretimberfromDangiforests,colonialofficialspreventedDangisfromusingforestsforsubsistence,causing widespreadand persistentlocalresentment.As used in Dangs,the wordgoth canbebroadlytranslatedasstory,narrativeoraccount,and is ubiquitousin everydaylife, being deployedto describea rangeof narratives. People tell theirgoth tovisitingofficials,whichis to saythattheymakea representation.Theytell thegothof whattheydidduringtheday.And ofcoursetheytellgothof divinefigures,ofhunting,of ancestors,of formertimes. Sogoth in that sense can be the story oraccountof virtuallyanything.Nevertheless,therearebroadgenresofgoth. Stories of Dangi pasts are oftenreferredtointerchangeablyas 'juni'goth,'mohorni'gothor 'puduncha'goth- all

phrasesmeaning'storiesof formertimes'or 'old stories'. Withinthesejuni goththereareat leasttwobroadgenres - the'devdevina'goth,or stories of gods andgoddesses,andthevadilchagoth,orstoriesof ancestors.Thebulkof the devdevinagoth, literally'storiesof the gods andgoddesses'tellofdealingsbetweendeitiesand spiritssuch as Vadudev,Bhutdev,Simariodev, Vaghdev, Sitalamata,Kanasarimataor the many malevolentfemalespiritsknownasjoganis. Thereare also goth of the two majorpopularepicsof thesubcontinent,theRamavanaandtheMahabharat.Theseepics,radicallydifferentfromthe textualversionsof theplains,aresituatedwithinDangs. Thereis thevillageofPandva,wherethePandavbrothersvisited;thevillageofSubir,whereShabiriBhilinstayedwhenshemetRama;andseveralothersuchplaces.7Devdevinagothare set in a verydistincttime- thatbeforethetimeof the humans. Thegothareoftenaboutthemakingof thephysicaland geographicalfeaturesof Dangs bygods, goddessesand spirits.Incontrast.vadilchagothis often usedas a shorthandto refer to all stories

involving humans. The word 'vadil' canmean both lineage ancestor and, morebroadly, elders, whether living or dead.The time of humans does often involvedivine beings, and such stories are bothvadilcha goth or devdevina goth. Someof these tell of ancestors' encounters ordealings with spirits, gods or goddesses;theyare about how Dangsandotherregionswere made suitable for humans. They tell,for example, of how humans were givencorn to cultivate with, how the 'mahua'liquor that Dangis drink was discoveredfirst by Vadudev and then passed on tohumans, how kingship was given to someDangi chiefs, and so on. However, mostvadilcha goth have anentirelyhumancast.Some are about the loss of forests to theforest department, or the coming of theBritish. Others are about the everydaylives of ancestors: of theirmigrationsfromvillage to village, their harassmentby theBritish and the forest department, theirmodes of livelihood, theiralarmatthefirstmotorised vehicles, the prices they paidfor goods, and of the disputes amongstbhil chiefs.

Running throughvadilcha goth is a verydistinctive understanding of time. What Imean by this can be illustrated bycontrasting it with the acknowledgementof coevalness, the preferred strategy inthat classic, Time and the other. Fabianargues thatimperialism andanthropologywere both fundamentally based on thedenial of coevalness, that anthropologistsplaced the societies they studied in a timedifferent from and before their own. Inopposition to this, Fabian called for theacknowledgement of coevalness, or arecognition of the shared historical timeof anthropologists and the societies theystudied.8I do not wish to imply that Fabianwaswrong in calling for such a strategy; it iscertainly often required for strategic andpolitical reasons. But let us stepback fromthat issue for a moment, and ask: what isthe vision (broadlysharedby a substantialsection of the most radical and excitingsocial theorists of the eighties and earlynineties) from within which the denial ofcoevalness seems such an imperialistact,and acknowledgement of coevalness themost appropriate strategy against it? Adeeply modernist one, in the very directsense that modernity is about a particularkind of relationshipwithtime. As Vattimoremindsus, "modernityis thatera inwhichbeing modern ... becomes thefundamentalvalue to which all other values refer".Modernity defines itself by claiming to beat the cutting edge of time, to be alwayscontemporary, and to always be

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overcoming itself (this after all is theparadoxicalsense in which one way to bemodern now is to be post-modern).9 Theacknowledgement of coevalness seizedon this index, time, to claim modernity forthe anthropologist's subject, andto attackthe old imperialising strategy of denyingmodernity by denying coevalness.Time in vadilcha goth is subtly differentfrom this. The two major epochs (thisword is not entirely appropriate,as willbecome clearerbelow) within which mostDangis frametheirpasts are 'moglai' and'mandini'. Roughly speaking, moglai isthetimewhen Dangis moved inthe forestswithoutrestrictions, when they raided theplains to collect a due called 'giras', whenthey had a distinctive patternof politicalauthority. Moglai, in this sense, informsradical politics in the Dangs today.Mandini is both an epoch, and an eventthat marks the end of moglai. Withmandini,often associated with the Britishsubordinationof theregion,Dangi politicalauthoritywas undermined and they couldno longer move about as formerly,or raidsurrounding plains.Now, moglai could easily be glossed astheDangiversionof aromanticisedgoldenage of freedom. But this would be anextremely reductive reading: the epochsof moglai and mandini involve rather aforceful acknowledgement of coevalness.The notion of mandini seizes on colonialandpost-colonial statepower and accordsto it a revolutionary role in the shapingof contemporaryDangs. It creates a sharedhistorical time with imperialism andcolonialism, and points to the particularformsof domination involved in that time.Furthermore, the epochs mime thedistinction between the pre-modern andthe modern. In the truisms of westernthought, for example, the modern is castas a radical departure from history, as arevolutionary epoch - this is why all thatpreceded itcan be lumped togetheras pre-modern, and before history. So too withmandiniwhich is similarlyarevolutionaryepoch, above all constituted by colonialand post-colonial state intervention.And moglai, even if its etymologicalroots may be a reference to Mughal rule,ineverydayusageoften refers to thatwhichprecedes mandini. Subsumed withinmoglai areseveral otherepochs which hadbeen important formerly. For example,there was the time of 'gavali raj', whichmay be a reference to the reign of theyadav kings of Devgiri (later Daula-tabad, near Aurangabad) who reignedfrom AD 1216-1312. 10 Similarly, thereis the epoch of 'Aurung-badshah', thetermDangisuse to referto whatmaybe

the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. There isalso the period of what is known as the'kuplin-bahadurin', which may be areference to the Company Bahadur,as theBritishEastIndiaCompanywassometimescalled. But these epochs are not asso-ciated with any major events; they areinvoked by narratorsprincipally as partof a narrationof epochs thatdemonstratesknowledge of vadilcha goth. In otherwords,theveracityof goth is notdependenton theirbeing from these epochs: for this,it is sufficient for goth to be from moglai.Even more to the point, moglai andmandini do not stop with an acknow-ledgement of coevalness. These Dangiepochs are subtly different from epochsor periods in the sense that professionalhistorians use such terms. For the latter,an epoch or a period is marked bychronological contiguity and continuity:despite some overlap, it could be broadlysaid that one epoch succeeds another.When Fabian insists on the acknow-ledgement of coevalness, what he meansis that it should be recognised that thecolonised share the same position in thelinear time of modernityas the colonisers,a time after the pre-modern. Sometimes,Dangi narrators too talk similarly: thus,moglai often is identified with theprecolonial andearlycolonial period, andmandini is associated with 'gora raj' orBritish rule. But this is not the only waymany Dangis talk. Quite as often, Dangiepochs traverse diverse chronologicaltimes,almostrunningparalleltoeachother.It is not unusual for events that occurredas recently as 20 years back- such as sayincidents during hunts - to be part ofmoglai, andthose that occurred 200 yearsback to be part of mandini. That is tosay, mandini is not only after moglai butalso along it, parallel to it. Indeed, insome very suggestive ways, moglai isabout what is extra-colonial. By extra-colonial, I obviously do not only meanpre-colonial - it is precisely that kind ofchronological separation that I am tryingto avoid. What I mean is something thatoften includes the pre-colonial, but is inmoreimportantwaysdefined inoppositionto the colonial and postcolonial, inopposition to the relations of dominationover Dangs that surrounding plains areashave established. Thus, ratherthanbeingabout an unsullied Dangi space, or anautonomous world or hidden transcriptofsubaltern groups, moglai is about spacesand times created by traversing andexceeding colonialism and the relationsof domination that it is associated with.

Ranajit Guha has pointed to how muchhistory writing is statist, which is to

say that it "authorises the dominantvalues of the state to determine thecriteria of the historic". Even storiesof resistance to this narrative arecomprehensible within its terms:This is a level quite accessible to statistdiscourse: it is never happierthan whenits globalising and unifying tendency isallowed to deal with thequestionin gross

terms. It is a level of abstractionwhereall the many stories ... are assimilated tothe storyof the Raj. The effect of suchlumping is to oversimplify the contra-dictions of powerby reducingthemto anarbitrary singularity - the so-calledprincipalcontradiction,thatbetween thecoloniser and the colonised.11Goth of mandini and moglai can bethought of as sustained engagements withthis statist narrative. Goth of mandini tellof the interventions of the British and the

post-colonial state - mandini, above all,is about the initiatives of the 'sarkar'. Butthey extensively displace that statistdiscourse, and focus instead on Dangirefigurings of it. Goth of moglai movefurther beyond the 'arbitrarysingularity'of that discourse: they traverse mandini(rather than being always before it) andcreate a multiplicity of local and regionalnarratives that have little do with theconcerns of statist power. Through theirrefiguring of time by the initiatives of thesarkar, through their exceeding of statistnarratives,goth underscorethedominationthat has marked their colonial and post-colonial modernity,theyrenderitsintimacyinto an exteriority.

THIE CONSTITUTIVEOUTSIDEOFTRUTHA similar engagement with modernityis very much foregrounded in Dangiconcerns with establishing whethervadilcha goth are 'khari', a word whichcan for the present be glossed as 'true'.Maybe we can begin understanding kharigoth or true stories throughwhat is beyondthem, such as the manytall tales in Dangs.Often very whimsical, with a sting in thetail, they are about a range of themes -about the sexual peccadilloes of men andwomen and gods and goddesses, aboutheroic figures who successfully undertakedaunting tasks, or about tricksters whoget out of the most difficult situations.While there is no specific worddesignatingthese stories, they are recognised as adistinct genre. Most of all, they areconsidered as imaginary, in the sense ofbearingverytangential relations to figuresof the past or present.These stories could be called false, butthat is not a word many Dangis wouldvoluntarily use to describe them. Instead,



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it maybe helpfulto think of these gothas aboveall aboutplay. Onewaytothinkof the playfulnessof these goth is toconsidertheir ludic element. Imaginarygothareoftennarratedatoccasionsknownas 'tamashas',usuallyheld in the slackagriculturalperiodbeforethe monsoons.Largeevents wherealcohol flows freely,tamashas,enactedincreasinglyby semi-professionalperformersandtroupesfromthe neighbouringareaof Khandesh,aresometimesspreadacross two or threeevenings,andareattendedbyhundredsofmen and women,manyof whom walkoveradayor two fromdistantvillagestoparticipatein it. Imaginarygothare alsonarratedat casualor spur-of-the-momentgatherings,when men and women arerelaxingin theevenings. Suchoccasionsare overwhelmingly preponderantinrelationto the tamasha:theyoccuralmostevery second or thirdevening in somecorerof everyvillage.Onsuchoccasions,some person with a particularlygoodreputationas a 'gothiya or tellerof talesmay,underpressurefromothers,startoffonagoth;slowly,othersfromsurroundinghutsmayjoin in. Andif thereis mahualiquorto lubricatethe telling and liste-ning, the occasion gains in gusto andvigour.12Theunderstandingof imaginarygothasplayfulis alsoevidentin thewaythefigureof thegothiyaorstorytelleris constructedfor these goth. In all genre of goth, ofcourse, the gothiya is so centralas torendermeaninglessthose conventionaloppositions which assign such oraltraditionsto a pre-authorialfolk world,andcontrastit to thecultureof printandthe emergenceof the author. But thereasonsforandmannerin whichthegothiyais accordedcentralityvary. Inimaginarygothespecially,itis the narrativeskill andstyle - thepauses,interjections,glosses,gestures,andsuddenflurriesof detailthatnarrationinvolves-ofthegothiya(usuallythoughnot necessarily,a man)whichisvalued:he makesthegothanewwitheachtelling.Of course,severalof the goth told onsuchoccasionsareextremelycontentious,and lead on to heatedarguments. Butnevertheless,the playfulness of theseoccasionsallowsgothacertainextricabilityfrompartisan,politicalor otherconside-rations,andcontentiousnessrarelypreventsgoth frombeing told or performed.Suchplayfulnessmaytemptus to readthesegothasmarginalorinessential.Thatis to say, imaginarygoth could seem asa relativelyinessentialform of leisure,abreakfrom the more serious work ofeverydaylife which kharigothareabout;

it could seem that it is the veryinessentiality of imaginary goth thatdefines the more important khari goth.Even some Dangi readings may seem tosupport such an interpretation:on someoccasions, imaginary goth have beendescribed to me as 'emaj', a word whichcould be translated as 'just like that' or'inconsequential'.Now, it would be easy enough to under-mine such an interpretation. Imaginarygothformpartof everydayDangi language,with casual references to characters fromthem abounding in casual conversation;and highly contentious arguments oftentake the form of contenders narratingtoeach other goth supporting the kind ofvalues they valorise. As such, it could beargued that these goth posit, sustain,-hallenge, contest andperhapseven create-valuescentral to many Dangis. Yet, thereis something dissatisfying aboutundermining, in this manner, the

interpretation of imaginary goth asmarginal. To show that imaginary gothalso involve relations of power - surelythis is no more than a predictable pre-liminary gesture in a context where weincreasingly realise the ubiquity ofrelations of power? Andhere,preliminaryto what? To the point that imaginary gothare as central to Dangis, if in differentways,as kharigoth? Here,centralitycomesto signifyananodynesameness (ironically,this is also the dominant way in whichhistoricism today conceives difference),and any ascription of marginality toimaginary goth can only be understood asfalse consciousness or ideology.Perhaps it would be more satisfying towork within the ascription of marginalitybut against the grainof the way in whichour habits tempt us to read marginality.Maybe we should consider another sensein which imaginary goth areplayful: theirplay in relation to the truth of khari goth.That is to say, because of their indepen-dence from time and place, they areconsidered tobe beyond the claims to truthandfalsitywhich kharigoth involve. Whilekhari goth are those that successfullysustain a claim to referto a particulartimeandspace,thesestoriesdo noteven advancethat claim, whether successfully orunsuccessfully. In this sense, they arenotthe negation of khari goth but itsconstitutive outside: they define what isoutside the field of khari goth, cannot bejudged by its criteria, and yet makespossible the very imagining of kharigoth.It is precisely in this that their peculiarmarginalityresides: they aremarginalnotbecause they are inessential but ratherbecause they come into visibility only at

the margins of khari goth. Nor even isit adequate to think that when questionsof truthbecome important,then kharigothpredominateandplayful orimaginarygothbecome impossible: forms of playfulnessprovidealso thelanguagein which vadilchagoth exceed the truthof history. To pursuethese points, consider the enactment ofkhari goth.TRUTHOFVADILCHAGOTH

In contrast to imaginary goth, vadilchagoth posit an intimate connection withtime and space; every narration of themconstitutes a claim to tell what actuallyhappened at some specific place in somespecific time. They involve the claim tobe kharigoth, or true stories.13 But estab-lishing most vadilcha goth as khari is adifficult task. This is not merely becausethey are highly fragmented and diverse,with virtually every locality, lineage oreven individual having theirown differentgoth. It is also because of their inextric-ability, in the eyes of most Dangis, frompractical, partisan, political, emotive,calculative or other considerations.Consider goth around the lineage of maledescent. The lineage has since the early20th centurybeen one of the crucialarenaswithin which Dangi politics is conducted.There are currently 14 chiefs who areofficially recognised by the Indiangovernment as the descendants of theformer rajas or kings of Dangs. Myriadothers are recognised as their close kin,while yet others are recognised asdescendants of those who held land-grantsor village headships under these rajas.Such recognition as descendants is notonly an honour (turbans and shawls arepublicly bestowed on the rajas and theirassociates at a darbar held annually), butis often accompanied by a substantialpolitical pension.In this context, to know and tell gothof the power wielded by one's ancestorsis to make an implicit claim to some sortof power. Also, people often narrategothdesigned to impugn claims of otherlineages, claiming forexamplethatapersonwidely recognised as the male descendantof some vadil is not the true descendant,or that the true raja or patil was not thespecified vadil but someone else. Evenlack of knowledge of gothtakeson differentimplications depending on itsrelationshipwith claims to power. Officially orpopularly recognised chiefs are notparticularly disconcerted when they donot know goth: their authority is by nowtoo secure in usual contexts forit tomatter,and lackof knowledgeis easilyascribedto vagariesof transmission. But those



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chiefs who are neither officially norpopularlyrecognised feel deeply worriedwhen they do not know their vadilchagoth. Such is the case with one lineageof Vasurna. The father of the presentlineage head did not listen much to storieswhen he was young, and as a result thelatterdoes not know the stories. Since thelineage now claims a share of Vasurna,he has expended considerable effort inmeeting persons of related lineages whomight know goth of his ancestors, plyingthem with them liquor and trying to prisestories about his lineage out from them -so far with little success. Had he knownsuch goth, and were they persuasive, hemight at least have secured some popularacceptance of his claims (though ofcourse this would not have secured himofficial recognition). For well told gothcan actually create power. Haipat Lasu,a distant descendant of the Ghadvi chiefSilput raja, has through his inventiveretelling of vadilcha goth securedpopular authority as a chief far beyondwhat either descent, alliances or officialrecognition would allow him to claim.Even where not so directly connectedtopersonalclaims to power, vadilcha gothare still deeply political. Goth of how theBritish took over the forests, of howancestorsrebelled against colonial power,of raids on plains by ancestors, ofoppressive state practices, or even of theplenitude of modes of subsistence duringmoglaiquestion thelegitimacy of the state.Goth of how koknis and bhils behavedwith each other in former times, of howkoknis brought agriculture to Dangs, ofhow a particularwitch was dealt with -all of these are involved in complexeveryday politics.Becauseof thisinextricabilityof vadilchagoth from practical, partisan, political orother considerations. they are (unlikeequallycontentious imaginarygoth) rarelyperformedon occasions like the tamashaor the 'thaali'. As events in which almostanybodycanparticipate,these arescarcelydesirable occasions for discussing suchmatters. More appropriate is everydayconversation. Old men and women,reduced to immobility by age, might oftentell children and othersthe stories ol theiryouth, and the stories they learned fromtheir vadils. Inevenings when friends gettogether and drink liquor, or during longafternoons when there are no pressingagriculturaltasks, or while working withfriends in the field, conversation mayturnto vadilcha goth. What makes suchoccasions particularlyappropriateis that,unlike the tamashaor thaali, they are notopen to virtually anyone who might stray

in. As with othereveryday conversation,theyinvolve spacesof intimacywithhighlyflexible and contextual boundaries. Whengoth that are relatively uncontentious arebeing told, such as those of how theBritishtook over the forests, these spaces ofintimacyhaveboundariesinclusiveenoughto take in virtually every Dangi (thoughnot necessarily persons like me). Butwhen the truth of goth narratedis a morecontentious matter, the spaces are quiterestrictive: it is not unusual for narratorsto segue out of one goth into anotherrelatively inoffensive one when a newperson joins the group. And when gothinvolve challenges to the authorityof verypowerful persons or lineages, they arenarratedalmost secretively - often afternightfall, when only members of thenarrators' huts and those they havespecifically invited are around. Suchspaces of intimacy are themselves deeplypolitical: they are not based simply onfriendships or blood-ties, but are also partof theeffort to buildalliances andpersuadelisteners that the narrator's goth is themost khari or true.

PERSUASIONSOFTRUTHYet, persuading listeners about what isor is not a kharigoth is as a task scarcelyinnocent of colonial and post-colonialpower. There is the importanceof 'jod',which canbe translatedasconjoining. Theconfluence of differentaccounts,especiallyaccounts by narratorswhose interests arebelieved todiverge, is themostself-evidentformofjod. Amongst themost persuasiveforms of jod is the claim to affirmationof the goth by the written documents ofthe sarkar or state. Because the sarkarconstitutes Dangi realities in profoundlyinescapable ways, it is thought of asenormously powerful, often evenomniscient in its knowledge of Dangs -its records will contain a true account.Bhil lineages who consider themselves

dispossessed often assert that proof oftheirhaving held the gadi orseat of powerin formertimes will be found in the districtrecords. The members of a dispossessedlineage of Ghadvi (one of the principalchieftancies in Dangs) went further in1988. Seeking to assert a claim to the gadiof Ghadvi, they searched British recordsat the district headquarters at Ahuwa tofind proof of their having formerly heldthe gadi. Meeting with little success, theyventuredas faras Sakriinthe old Khandeshdistrict to find the records. again with nosuccess. Now too, the insist that aphotograph of their ancestor, the early19thcenturyGhadvi chief Silput raja,canbe found at Delhi.

Equally significant, in this context, isthe association of writing and truth. AsI have argued at length elsewhere, in thecourse of the 19th and early 20th century,the centrality of writing to the exercise ofcolonial power was accompanied by afetishisation of writing, especially thatassociated with the sarkar - hence, ofcourse, theemphasis on the writtenrecordsof the sarkarinestablishing thekharinatureof a goth. But the aura of writing, withits connotations of power, extends further.Thus, some families inDangs have writtenversions of their goth; this is thought totestifyto theirkharinature.In these senses,truthis thought of through tropes that arefundamentally colonial.14This is scarcely to suggest, of course,that the records of the sarkar are alwaystreated as khari. When these recordscontradict claims of goth, they are likelyto be disregarded;they aresignificant onlyto the degree that they are invoked byDangi narrators, whether to affirm orcontest the khari nature of any goth.Besides, other kinds of jod are veryimportant too, and sustained efforts aremade to secure them. For example, in1994, a discussion was held betweenvarious descendants of a 19th centuryKokni, Dadaji Patil, where differentversions of the 'same' goth (about howtheir ancestors moved from one villageto another to eventually reach Dangs)were put together over two evenings toproduce a khari account of their migra-tions.

Also, narrativestrategies other thanjodare important too in making a goth seemkhari. Narratorsare sometimes believedto be telling khari goth when theydemonstrates a command of detail. Detailin a goth is evocative, linking it up in asmany directions as possible with othergoth. By alluding to details from othergoth already considered khari, the kharinatureof thenarrrator'sgoth is establishedby association. Indeed, there is almost asuperfluity of detail, an extensiveelaboration of details that do not reallymatter. By introducing abundantdetail inthis way, narrators demonstrate theirknowledge, showing that what they tell islikely to be true. Goth thus abound inreterences to now-vanished villages, totrees that stood at the time and place ofthe goth, to the clothes the protagonistswore, or how they looked.Depth of recall is a another narrativestrategy likely to make a goth seem morekhari. The furtherback that a narratorcantake her or his account, or the longer thenumber of ancestors through whom aperson can trace descent, the greater the



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goth's legitimacy. Thus, ancestors' namesareoften recited backwards till the oldestone remembered, though no goth areknown about most of the figures whosenamesare taken. Similarly, the invocationof former epochs such as gavli raj or'kuplin bahadurin raj' (of which as Iremarked there are few substantivememories) is partof the demonstration ofdepth of recall.Furthermore,theidentityof thenarrator,partially created through his narrations,may make his goth seem more or lesskhari. What makesidentities so importantis their connection with the spaces ofintimacy in which vadilcha goth are told.These spaces areof course recognised asprofoundly arbitrary- many narratorswho know goth may not, because ofsuspicion or plain disinterestedness, passthese on; disinterested persons may noteven learn goth told within spaces ofintimacy that they have considerableaccess to; interested persons mayparticipate in several spaces of intimacyand learn a wide range of goth. Never-theless, some identities are believed tofacilitate participation in these spaces.Men, forexample, arethoughtmore likelyto know and tell khari goth than women.Vadilcha goth are principally about theactivities appropriate to and carried outby men. This bias towards men as subjectis almost inscribed in the word vadil itself,forthe ancestors that it refers to are tracedalmost exclusively throughmen. Womenfigure very rarely in vadilcha goth, saveas witches or the occasional ruling queen.Because goth are concerned so largelywith activities viewed as male spheres, itis presumed that male narrators wouldhave betterknowledge of these activities,and that the goth would be the concert.of men. Still, anacknowledgement of thecrucial and constitutive role of women inDangi pasts lurksat the marginsof manygoth, and emerges in sustained discu-ssions. Furthermore, women do oftenknow these goth as well as men - theyparticipate as audience in spaces ofintimacy,sometimes correctmale narratorswhen they go wrong, and narratevadilchagoth themselves.Similarly, goth are more likely to betreated as khari if their protagonists andthe narratorsare from the same localityor male lineage. Many goth, lacking indepth of recall or detail, are still treatedas khari because their narrators arethought to be descendants of the figureswhom the goth are about. Indeed, depthof recall and detail are often drawn onprecisely by those whose claims aretenuous in other ways - whether because

of lack of popular recognition of theirversions, or because of their marginalityas narrators.Still, no amount of detail, depth ofrecall, jod or identity can ensure that agoth is treated as khari, and privilegedover competing versions. When thepolitics involved diverges drastically,different versions of vadilchagoth simplycannot be reconciled with each other.Usually, such disagreement leads to nobitterness. Narratorsmay insist that theirversion is khari, and may even bedismissive of rivals and theircredentials,but things go no further than that. Butsometimes, especially where goth areintimately connected to claims to powerand authority in the present, there is amore concerted effort to establish asingular truth, to have only one gothconsidered khari. The claims involved inthese goth may be so contentious that totell them is itself a direct challenge to theauthority of other persons or lineages,thattheirnarrationininopportunecontextscanleadto vehementquarrelsanddisputes.So these goth tend to be told within spacesof intimacy to which access is highlyrestricted and select, within which theirkharinatureis less likely to bechallenged.That is to say, there is a multiplicity ofrivalgoth claiming to be the singular truthof the same event, all of which are toldin spaces of intimacy that are largelyexclusive of each other.

PLAYOFTRUTHIn all the discussions of truthabove, wemay be tempted to discern affinities withthe familiar discussions of the nature ofhistorical truth. Perhaps we can readparallels with an epistemologicalphilosophy of history, with its attemptstodetermine "the criteria for the truth and

validity of historical descriptions andexplanations; ...to answer the epitemo-logical question as to theconditions underwhich we are justified in believing thehistorian'sstatementsaboutthepast(eithersingularorgeneral) to be true".15Perhapswe can read parallels with a narrativistphilosophy of history, with its focus onthe linguistic instruments and rhetoricalstrategies that historians use in theirconstructions of the past, even in theirefforts to create a 'reality-effect'. But itwould surely be naive and fruitless to setout on such a comparative project,detailing the contrasts and convergencesbetween aDangi historical sensibility anda western historical sensibility. Forwhenwe discern such parallels or echoes, weareacting quite in keeping with that oftenevoked anthropological truism about

rendering the familar strange, and thestrange familiar. It is not only that theconceits of that truism, with its refusal torecognise radical difference, whetherencountered in the familiaror the strange,should worry us; it is also that Dangiunderstandings are not comparablebecause they traverse historical truth ornarrativeandgo on to diverge dramaticallyfrom it.Thus, there is not always this obsessivefocus on establishing a single goth askhari. Thereis also, paradoxicallyenough,the converse phenomenon. Goth that areat variance with one another - usuallyeither in the sense of being differentaccounts of the 'same' event, or in thesense of contradicting each other as unitsin a larger sequential narrative of whichthey are supposed to be part - coexistwith one another. Sometimes the samenarratorsmay provide radicallydivergentversions on different occasions; in anycase, they would never tell the same gothtwo times round with precisely the samedetails. Dangi listeners and narratorsareaware of these contradictions, but oftencontinue to consider all of them kharigoth.This multiplicity of truth is in starkcontrast to the social sciences, which aremarkedprimarilyby the will to singularisetruth. Here, within each narrative,differences have to be resolved andcontradictions ironed out for it to makea persuasive claim to truth. Of course,the social sciences do allow for multipletruths (by now it is after all quitecommonplace to call for multiplehistories), but they allow for multipletruthsthat are exclusive of each other, thatare within themselves singular. Multipletruths always betoken multiple pers-pectives and narrations. For the samenarration to simultaneously embrace (asopposed to narratingfrom an omniscientperspective) stories that not onlysupplement but contradict each other -this is not easy within the social sciences.When we as social scientists abandonomniscience, we are left defending oraffirming the fragment or anecdote,insisting on the impossibility of goingbeyond them.How then do we understandthe Dangimultiplicity of truth, where the samenarratorsandaudience simultaneously andcomfortably hold to several contradictorytruths'? One kind of explanation couldresortto anopposition between theepisodicform of pre-modern or non-westerncultures and thewill tocomprehensivenessof western modernity. The will tocomprehensiveness requires a totalising



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narrativewhere contradictions cannot betolerated, while an episodic form allowsfor fragmentarynarratives which do nothave be reconciled within the sameperspective or vision, making it possibleto sustain multiple truths withoutdemanding resolution.Such an explanation, often implicitlyresorted to byradicalscholars, is howeversteeped in modernity's representation ofitself. In this representation, while therewere multiple times in thepast, modernitycreated a unified time - manifested inboth a unifled historical timeanda uniformclock time bettersuited to therequirementsof capital and industry. By creating sucha time, it made possible comprehensiveand singularising narratives.16 That is tosay, it is partof western modernity's self-image that the will to comprehensivenessis impossible outside itself.Yet this self-perception may make fora misleading andinadequate explanation.As I argued above, the Dangi telling ofgoth is also characterised by a will tocomprehensiveness: narrators are oftenengaged in discussions to establish a khariversion, or to deny other versions. Whatis fascinatingis thatthis is averydistinctivewill to comprehensiveness: it allows insome cases at least for multiple kharigoth. It is precisely this will to compre-hensiveness that also renders untenableany assumption about the relativism oftruth for Dangis - any suggestion thatDangis have a relativist understanding oftruth, that they accept the point thatdifferent people perceive truth diffe-rently, and therefore accept multiplekhari goth.Within what kind of understandingthendo many Dangis both share a will tocomprehensivenessandsimultaneouslydothe opposite - narrateseveral divergentkharigoth about the same event, and allowthese goth to coexist'? Perhaps we needto understand this as part of the play oftruth. As I have already suggested, playis the constitutive outside of truth in thesense that it is playful goth which makepossible the very imagining of kharigoth:the latterare precisely that which, unlikeplayful goth, referto a particulartime andplace. But paradoxically, khari goth areoutside play in their claim to refer to aparticulartime and space, they are oftenplayful andverymuch like imaginarygothin their narrationand performance. Thatis to say, vadilcha goth are often enactednotonly inthewayswhich would persuadelisteners thatthese are khari;they are alsosimultaneously performed as imaginarygoth would be. In stories of how theBritish took over the forests, of various

rebels against the British, of ancestralmigrations, the emphasis is often on thegothiyas, how well they tell the story, andon how inventive they are. Most vadilchagoth. even when they involve a moreexclusive claim to be khari, even whenthey are told within highly circumscribedspaces of intimacy, draw on these tropesof playfulness. Persuasion thus does nottake only the form of convincing listenersof an exclusive truth that renders othergothfalse:itcan alsoalmostsimultaneouslytake the form of extricating khari gothfrom partisanor political considerations,and locating them within a different kindof contentiousness, a playtul contenti-ousness. In this sense, play is not onlythe constitutive outside of truth. There isalso theplayof truth,aplaywhichpervadesthe latter's will to comprehensiveness,which suff'uses it with a profound,inescapable fragmentariness, and yet isitself bound up with ratherthandisruptiveof the will to comprehensiveness.Set aside the ensuing and relativelytrivial point that when a goth is widelyconsidered khari, this leads not to theconstructionof a monolithic singularkharigoth, but to the proliferation of kharigoththat coexist; that, therefore, whetherbecause everybody agrees that a goth iskhari or because everybody disagrees,there is always a proliferation of goth.What is more interesting is that thisplayfulness is quite distinct fromconventional post-modern critiques ofhistory and metanarratives, fromvalorisations of the fragment, or evenfrom recent narrativist philosophies ofhistory. For all of these usually involvea suspension of claims to truth,or at leasta claim to such suspension; here, truthcanfigure at best as a 'reality effect'.17 Yetfor Dangi narrators,playful goth are notabout such a suspension. For there isafter all a politics to the suspension oftruth: too many truths are produced notonly within relations of domination andsubordination, but by the dominant. Todisengage from these truths, to claim tosuspend them - perhaps (and I say thishesitantly) this is a gesture that is easierfor the dominant. Subalterns, dare onesay, remain haunted by truth;for them itis only too often a nightmarethat will notgo awayPerhapswe can take our cues from this,and read multiple khari goth not only asthe play of truth but as also, in a verydistinctive sense, the truth of play. Forconsider where kharigoth are likely to beplayful. It is strikingthat there are so manymore playful khari goth around mandinithan aroundmoglai, clustering most

densely aroundthe coming of the British.around rebellions against the colonial orpost-colonial government, aroundstoriesof forest restrictions, around accounts ofconfrontations with liquormerchantsfromthe plains. Thus, there are riotouslydifferent goth of how the British leasedthe forests, but there is virtuallynever anyattempt to establish one of them as moretrue than the others. Similarly, goth ofthe 'same' rebellions against the state areradically different versions, all revellingin detail, andall equally khari. In all thesecases, what makes playful goth possibleis the overwhelming truthof mandini, atruthwhich exceeds thepractical, partisan,political, emotive, calculative or otherconsiderations which otherwise dividenarratorsor listeners. This excess makesit possible for goth about mandini to takeon a playful dimension. Sometimes, ofcourse, such overwhelming truths aresustained in relation to moglai (how couldit not be, for moglai is also after all theother side of mandini). Thus, there areplayful gothclusteredaroundsome themesof moglai: hunting, raids on plains, thecoming of koknis to Dangs. and so on.Still, in imagining an extra-colonial spaceof moglai, it is precisely the practical,partisan, and other considerations whichare foregrounded, making playful gotharound moglai more difficult to sustain.This is why the multiplicity of kharigothis not reducible to that familar scenarioof a different culture understanding truthdifferently: it is at least partially aconsequence of aDangi engagement witha modernity created largely by colonialand post-colonial powers.

HYBRID HISTORIESThinking vadilcha goth in this way -as an engagement with history whichsimultaneously exceeds history - opensup, it seems to me, the possibility ofwriting anomalous or hybridhistories. Ina sense, of course, pasts such as thosethose narrated in goth are already hybridhistories, both being and exceedinghistory. I refer now, however, to thepossibilities of attempting hybrid,contrapuntal narrratives that bringtogether, necessarily inconstantly andincompletely, the concerns of professionalhistorians and narrators such as Dangigothiyas.There is nothing necessarily new abouthybrid histories. To the extent thatmodernity's emphasis on history hasnever been hegemonic, such historiesare coeval with it. The very enactmentof subalternity-whetherfemale,workingclass,colonisedorother- involvessome



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creation of such histories. Also, whilethey may be radical in terms of theirchallenges to the canons of history, thereis nothing necessarily radical about themin terms of their commitment to a relatedpolitics of subaltern empowerment. Insome cases, thesurplusof hybridhistoriessprings fromtheir fetishisation of history,as for example in Hindu fundamentalistconstructions of the Babri masjid-RamJanmabhoomi dispute.18 It is importantto recognise this, for else we slip intoclaiming an (infra)structural site forhybrid histories; we assume that theyare always already empowering forsubalterngroups. Itis not because hybridhistories are new or are always em-powering to subaltern groups that theyare fascinating; it is rather becausesubaltern struggles against dominationwill be about accentuating the hybridityof their histories; they will be aboutengaging with (challenging, affirming,ridiculing) that paradigmatic trope ofmodernity - history.

Notes[I thank Arun Agarwal, Dipesh Chakrabarty,Alon Confino, Tamara Giles-Vernick, AllanMegill, DavidNewburyand KSivaramakrishnanfortheirextensivecomments. An earlierversionof thispaperformsChapter2 of mybook,HybridHistories: Forests, Frontiers and Wildness inWesternlIndia, Oxford University Press, NewDelhi, forthcoming.]I ReinhartKoselleck, Futures Past: On theSenuinticsof Historical Time, translatedbyKeithTribe,MITPress,Boston, 1985,pp200,202.2 Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and itsFragment, Oxford University Press, NewDelhi, 1993.3 1 explore the relationshipbetween historyand other pasts in my Hybrid Histories:Forests, Frontiers and Wildnessin WesternIndia. OxfordUniversity Press. New Delhi,forthcoming. The oral traditionsdiscussedin this paper are narrated in the book.4 See especially Jan Vansina's pioneeringmonograph. Oral Tradition as History,London, 1985, 2nd revised edition. Forsome thoughtful reflections on the formsof oral history, see RenatoRosaldo, 'DoingOral History', Social Analysis, No 4,September, 1980 and David WilliamCohen, 'The Undefining of OralTradition'Ethnohistorv, Vol 36, No 1, 1989, andespecially DavidNewbury, 'Contradictionsat the heartof thecanon:oralhistoriographyin Africa, 1960-1980', unpublished paper.5 Ashis Nandy,'History'sForgottenDoubles'.History and Theory,vol 34, no 2, 1995.6 ParthaChatterjee,'Our Modernity'Sephis-CodesriaLectureNo 1,Sephis-CodesriaPress,Dakar, 1997.7 For Dangi narrativesof the Ramayana andMahab(harat,as well as a list of villages withnames associated with the two epics, seeD P Khanapurkar,'The aboriginesof south

Gujarat', Unpublished PhD dissertation,Universityof Bombay, 1944, Vol l. See alsoK S Singh (ed) The Mahabharata in theTribal and Folk Traditionsof India, IndianInstitute of Advanced Study, Simla, andAnthropologicalSurveyof India,New Delhi,1993;and K S Singh, Rama-Kathain Tribaland Folk Traditionsof India: Proceedingsof a Seminar,Seagull Books, Calcutta, 1993for accounts of other such traditions.8 JohannesFabian,Timeand the Other:HowAnthropologyMakes Its Object, ColumbiaUniversityPress, New York. 1983.9 Forsuggestivediscussions of this point,andof the relationship between time andmodernity,see PeterOsborne, The Politicsof Time:ModernityanldAvant-Garde,Verso,London, 1995; Gianni Vattimo, The End ofModernity: Nihilism and Hermeneutics inPost-modern Culture,Trans Jon R Snyder,Johns HopkinsUniversityPress, Baltimore,1988, p 99. Especially useful for thinkingabout colonialism and time is DipeshChakrabarty's'Marxaftermarxism:history,subalternity and difference', in SareeMakdisi, Cesare Casarino. and Rebecca EKarl (eds), Marxism beyond Marxism,Routledge,New York, 1996.10 DavidHardiman,'Small DamSystemsof theSahyadris',inDavidArnoldandRamachandraGuha, Nature, Culture and Imperialism:EssaysontheEnvironmientalHistoryofSouthAsia, Oxford University Press, New Delhi,1994, p 196.11 RanajitGuha, 'The Small Voice of History'inDipeshChakrabartyandShahidAmin(eds),SubalternStudiesIX.WritingsonSouthAsianHistoryandSociety,OxfordUniversityPress.New D[elhi.1996. pp I.

12 Forsome of thesegoth,see D P Khanapurkar,'The Aborigines of South Gujarat', un-published PhD dissertation, University ofBombay, 1944, Vol II.13 Not all Dangi uses of thewordkhariposit anintimaterelationshipwith actualhappeningsin aspecific timeandplace- theremarkthatwomen aremorevulnerableto evil spirits,orthat all bhils are rajas,wouldbe regardedaskharibymostDangiswithoutreferencetoanyactual happening.14 See my 'Writing,Oralityand Power in theDangs' in Shahid Amin and Dipesh Chakr-abarty (eds), Subaltern Studies, Vol IX,Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1996.15 F R Ankersmit,Historyand Tropology: TheRise and Fall of Metaphor, University ofCaliforniaPress, Berkeley, 1994, p 44.16 On the emergenceof singularisingtime, seeDavid Landes, Revolution in Time: Clocksand the Making of the Modern World,HarvardUniversityPress,Cambridge,1983;StephenKern,TheCultureofTimeandPlace,1880-1918. HarvardUniversityPress,Cam-bridge, Mass, 1983. On singularising timein a colonial context, see FrederickCooper,'Colonising time: work rhythmsand labourconflict in colonial Mombasa' in NicholasDirks (ed), Colonialism and Culture, Uni-versityof MichiganPress,AnnArbor,1992.17 Forathoughtfulcritiqueof suchconstructivistpositions, see Michel-Rolph Trouillot,SilencingthePast:Powerand theProductionof History, Beacon Press, Boston, 1995.18 Forafascinating analysis of Hindu funda-mentalist constructions, see GyanendraPandey,'Modes of historywriting:newHinduhistoryof Ayodhya', EconomicandPoliticalWeekly. June 15, 1994, Vol 29, No 25

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