A MILLION MUTINIES IN THE WILDERNESS: READING SUBALTERN INSUBORDINATION OF COLONIAL AUTHORITY IN PERSPECTIVE

Abstract [English]

To retrieve the voices of the subalterns from the pages of history, they need to be reiterated repeatedly. The voices of the subalterns were frequently ignored in the mainstream historical writings, and when they were recorded, they were chastised in the name of spontaneity and impulsiveness. Their resistance, history, and experience have got subsumed into the elitist record of the events, and they could not be expressed the way they should have been. This paper tries to record the little experiences of the subaltern groups and the stories of their resistance to the colonial authorities. These petty resistances were not the armed revolts or the organized insurgency against the colonial rule which could overthrow the colonial government in a short span of time. Rather, these were a million little mutinies with limited reach but they were no less effective in challenging the colonial narratives and the image they were trying to portray. These small resistances stood against the self-validating, self-authenticated colonial discourse and consequently posed serious threat to their authority. These little mutinies were not recorded properly due to their constricted scale and the lack of a wider and organized approach. This paper aims to foreground how effective and incisive these little mutinies were in their retaliation to the colonial discourse with which they paved the way to the larger aim of the decolonization of the mind. This paper tries to record the reactions, often in the form of satire, laughter, and even a sniff or a calculated silence, of the subalterns against the colonial authority and interpret them as a counter-narrative to the colonial one.