The Jharkhand Andolan: A silencing of Muslim voice(s)

Abstract

The subaltern turn in historiography has changed the way we read history/histories. The omissions and silence(s) that happen at the stage of ‘fact creation’ provide us with a way of looking into how events become facts. Taking cues from the sociological and historical understanding of silencing, this article examines the process through which Muslim voices have been silenced in the historiography of Jharkhand’s statehood movement (the Jharkhand Andolan). While going through the mainstream accounts on this subject, what I encountered was a significant lack of discussion about the Muslim presence in the movement. This lack becomes visible in contrast to the accounts in the vernacular newspapers that recount how Muslims have been an integral part of the statehood struggle. Through personal interviews of Muslim Andolankaris (freedom fighters) conducted during my fieldwork along with the documents collected from their personal archives, I show how the subduing of Muslim voices was enabled by Jharkhand’s political parties and carried over to the common narration of the movement’s formation and history.