Dominance without Hegemony

By Ranajit Guha

Published in 1999

A bold book that tries to fit India's colonial experience into a surprisingly simple theoretical model. The thesis is that the British bourgeoisie retained control of India for centuries without achieving hegemony, which can be understood as winning the ability to speak for the ruled rather than dictate to them. The colonizer never managed to assimilate the colonised through persuasion, choosing instead to use coercion, heralding his own demise. The Indian nationalists too according to Guha have pursued dominance of India without hegemony causing them to rely too much on coercion to perpetuate their rule. Guha's book affords a very interesting way of looking at the non-cooperation movement by drawing a conceptual distinction between subaltern and elite politics.