ABSTRACT
Subaltern Studies historians, in particular, gravitated to Thompson because, through his study of English working-class formation, voice, experience, and narration of the marginalized came to fore, but also because in Thompson's history, the past is beginning of the political situation of the present. While Subaltern Studies historians lauded Thompson, one of Thompson's staunchest critics was a labor historian of India, who innovated a new approach to Indian labor history. Far from the typical Cambridge lifer, Rajnarayan Chandavarkar was a committed Marxist and is among the greatest Indian labor historians. But Chandavarkar's work is important not only for its contributions toward a global analysis of Indian labor, but also for his fervent critical engagement with Subaltern Studies historian's treatment of labor histories of Global South. Chandavarkar argues that problems of working-class unity in India stemmed not from communal issues and an enduring precapitalist culture, as Dipesh Chakrabarty would contend, but, instead, from colonial repression and a historical legacy of uneven development.
