Subaltern Matter Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

Subaltern Studies

What is subaltern studies?
What is in it?
In terms of colonies, we use it subaltern,
But for medieval foreign rulers
Taxing the natives for their religion,
What will you in this regard?

Make you not a subaltern history of modern British India,
But of medieval India as well,
How did it the purdah pratha, child marriage, nazar-gozar,
Irrational mantra-tantra excesses
Wreak it havoc?

Subaltern history,
Subaltern economics,
Subaltern anthropology,
Subaltern literature
All through
Subaltern eyes
All through subaltern lens,
The making of a subalternist.

A subaltern man,
How to write his subaltern hstory,
His race, gender?
The rights of man as a man,
The life of woman as a woman,
How our mind-sets, belief-patterns, living-styles?

My Subaltern Sudies

An Indian woman counting her days
Under the purdah,
Holding onto
So that it may not slip off,
Picture and photograph of a Dalit society,
Housing, poor conditions, below the poverty line,
A picture of India agrarian villages
Where hunger does it the rounds?

An Indian widow,
How did she remain it secluded all through her life,
A child married during childhood
When she was unawre of bridal, nuptial love,
How was disposed off?
It is a recount of all that.
Did the White European women not feel it secluded
In our ethnic, racial, multi-lingual society?


Witch-doctor, Nazar-gozar Specialist, See His Antics! (A Subaltern Reading; A Case-study)

What doctor is he,
O subaltern historian?
That he is making the client
Smell the old leather shoe
And the burning red dry chilly?

A watch doctor
For making the satan flee,
The devil leave,
The bad air or spirit.