ABSTRACT
The study of minority politics has become a central topic in comparative politics in the last few decades (McGarry and Keating 2006; Keating and McGarry 2001). This development has not been fully related to the study of subaltern groups, an important social science discipline (Guha and Spivak 1988). The latter developed as a theoretical and methodological approach in the 1980s, and was an attempt to re-read the sociology, history and politics of post-colonial areas, away from the elitist bias that characterized previous studies, especially in India (Ludden 2001; Gandhi 1998). Subaltern studies sought to connect to Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci and to emphasize the role of peasants and people of inferior rank in insurgencies and in fighting injustices caused by colonial rule (Young 2003). This theoretical approach was part of the rise of post-colonial studies in various academic centers in the third world and was used by third-world thinkers studying or working in leading universities in the first world. It focused on post-colonial areas and states as well as criticizing national narratives of post-colonial countries and the elitist bias in such narratives. It also sought to reframe the identity of the historical subject and present new data that emphasized the role of “regular” people in the struggle for independence.
