How did the Subaltern Studies group seek to restore the agency of Indian peasants?

The Subaltern Studies group sought to restore the agency of Indian peasants by challenging the Marxist historiography that had relegated their actions to the category of the "prepolitical".1

Traditional Marxist frameworks often viewed peasant movements as "backward" or "primitive" because they were frequently organized around kinship or religious relations rather than the class-based or universal interests defined by European political thought. By questioning these developmental scales—which positioned cultures on a spectrum between "archaic" and "civilized"—the Subaltern Studies scholars aimed to recognize peasants as genuine political actors in their own right.1

This project involved a broader skepticism toward the historicism of both Marxist and liberal historiography, which often imposed Western categories of knowledge onto non-European contexts. By rejecting the idea that peasant actions were only valid if they mirrored European practices of rights or sovereignty, the group sought to validate alternative forms of sociability and political engagement that had been historically marginalized or discredited by imperialist narratives.21