ABSTRACT
This chapter problematizes the idea of "Indians" "representing themselves in history". There is a peculiar way in which all the histories tend to become variations on a master narrative that could be called "the history of Europe". In this sense, "Indian" history itself is in a position of subalternity; one can only articulate subaltern subject positions in the name of this history. That Europe works as a silent referent in historical knowledge itself becomes obvious in a highly ordinary way. The "European" historian does not share a comparable predicament with regard to the pasts of the majority of humankind. Thus follows the everyday subalternity of non-Western histories with which I began this paper. The idea is to write into the history of modernity the ambivalences, contradictions, the use of force, and the tragedies and the ironies that attend it.
