Subalterns and the State: Developments in Colonial and Post-Independence India in a Historical Perspective

India has celebrated seventy five years of its Independence. However, when we take a long term view of the performance of the Indian State we see there are many continuities and departures in the way the post-colonial state continued with the traditions set in the colonial period. The paper makes a modest attempt to discuss and analyse two important facets of ‘subaltern’ experience during the colonial and post-colonial times. Of the two one is much discussed in academic discourse, the other comparatively less. One is about ‘caste’ and the other is about ‘spatial ordering’ of today’s ‘North East India’ in both the colonial and post-independence periods.