Paper short abstract:

The argument is that because of caste, subaltern communities in India are enabled to produce and represent their past well beyond what is feasible for subalterns in a less communitarian setting.

Paper long abstract:

Historicity, the ability and the willingness to explain the present by the past, may well be a human universal but it is enabled and framed by social organization. It is well known that patrilineal genealogies extend farther back than bilateral ones. It is also well known that high-status families tend to cherish the past in so far as it contributes prestige to the present. For the same reason, low-status families and those who have recently risen from a low position tend to minimize their past.

But when the whole community shares a past, the matter presents itself somewhat differently. The 'we' that underlies caste identities in India tends to extend far back, since it does not depend on the memory of single families. Here, the collective identity is to some extent abstracted from the actual network of social relations, preparing the way for myth or history to fix the collective past.

The argument here is that because of caste, subaltern communities in India are enabled to produce and represent their past well beyond what is feasible for subalterns in a less communitarian setting. This capacity to represent the past is shared, however, with other communities, including more powerful ones, implying that it is also harder for Indian subalterns to escape a stigmatized past.