“Touch It Not, If You Are Not a Historian”: Toward a New Historiography of Colonial Indian Law: Recrafting Clio

This conversation is largely about the ways of doing and writing histories: whether legal/juridical or social histories of law. The difference between the two genres is briefly explored in Baxi’s essay, but obviously more collaborative work is needed. As concerns histories of human rights, it would seem the mainstream and the varying dissident crafts of writing history have largely ignored the micro stories of cruelties in state and civil society. How periodization poses many a challenge to the craft of writing histories of law is explored, as are the interplays in writing history between subjection and resistance in colonial and postcolonial times. The text highlights the need for a new (and ongoing) debate about the viability of subaltern studies of history and history writing.