The Subaltern is Screaming:
Locale of Agency

They want us to write. In blood. And only write. Of peace. They capture our land. Make us sow rice that is not seed. Kill us. Rape. They tell us we are ungrateful. Like children – who do not see what is good for them. Holding us with many kinds of guns; they grimace at the world calling our blood on their faces- – vermillion.
Ather Zia (Professor, Kashmiri Poet & Activist)

There’s really no thing as the voice-less. There are only those that are deliberately silenced, or preferably unheard.
Arundhati Roy

It is foolish to take solace in the fact that because the Congress is fighting for the freedom of India, it is, therefore, fighting for the freedom of the people of India and of the lowest of the low. The question whether the Congress is fighting for freedom has very little importance as compared to the question for whose freedom is the Congress fighting.
Dr. Ambedkar

INTRODUCTION:
The sub-altern is speaking through the very repression designed to institute it forever as the sub-altern. The sub-altern is represented not in representation, but via the symbolic framework designed for it to be the other. It is by design the sub-altern; it is the antithesis to the very narrowly crafted criteria for whom is the supra-altern. The sub-altern speaks through the suicide bombing, the sub-altern speaks by standing silent in the Plaza de la Madras, the sub-altern speaks passing out langar on the road to Delhi; the sub-altern does not speak, it is screaming. The purpose of this work is to nuance the work put forth by the respected Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak as one which does not capture the agency of the sub-altern, but rather further spectates forth the objectivity’ of their capture. Furthermore, this work will attempt to contradict that of Madam Chakravarty in the appropriateness of the sub-alternate as a category of codification based upon merits of communication, the case studied being that of the education and labour participation of the Indian women. The purpose of this paper is to establish the line of argument that, it is not that the sub-altern cannot speak, but is much rather, that the ‘sub-altern’ is made to be not heard.

THE LOCATION OF SUB-ALTERN:
Although Spivak, a post-colonial Indian intellectual is the author, her work is very much colonised and typographically unsound. The usage of the political as the location of authority and conscription of norm continues forth the universal application of European paradigms of thought; further convoluting the location of Spivak’s sub-altern is her usage of political paradigms [by a racist (Hegel), a Nazi (Heidegger) and a paedophile (Foucault)] upon the conscription of a cosmological deontology. The fallacy of her presumption, at the core of the issue, is the counter-juxtaposition of the cultural practice of Sati[1] via political paradigms of European Scholarship. The supra-structural component of Sati, incorrectly identified as subject-constitution and object formation[2], reside instead in the conscription to the access of the cosmological[3]; the true notion not explored within the work of Mme Spivak, is the notion of access to the epistemology of existence for the subjectify of women via a cultural application
The location of the sub-altern (but not agency) placed in Spivak’s work is that which centres upon the objectified (female) political (non)-subject[4]. This false dichotomy is the bane of Spivak’s work, as Spivak’s only case study is that of the female (Indian) object; the utilization of political thought paradigms alone cannot explain the cosmological divide that initiates/permutates such a sub-alterity. As the late Dr. Ambedkar conscripts regarding the suffering of the Indian, “political tyranny is nothing compared to social tyranny”[5].
The epistemology of exitance for the ‘Indian’ women has been through the definition of the cultural much so rather than the political; this conscription is very much situated within the millennia-long-chain of Brahminical control of the Indian-Subcontinental epistemological facilities. The focus on Sati, a practice long since banished in the political sense, and the promotion of the British as the ones whom ‘civilized the heathens of India’, continues forth the colonial agency afforded to whom Spivak dubs the sub-altern, with herself but a continuation of her most famous quote,” white men saving brown women from brown men”. The agency in Spivak (as per the actor in this acceptance of Sati) is as far removed from Individual (female) agency as one can advocate for in Postcolonial Thought, by (falsely) dichotomizing the divide of the “individual agency with the supra-individual”[6], Spivak not only fails to address the epistemological disenfranchise which results forth from the Brahminic cultural paradigm, but also renders a false interpretation of Atma[7]

THE INVINSIBILITY OF ATMA:
The word for the self that is actually burned is the standard word for spirt in the noblest sense (atman), while the verb release, through the root for salvation in the noblest sense (muc-moska) is in the passive, and the word for that which is annulled in the cycle of birth is the everyday word for body.[8]
Atma cannot be burned, cannot be hurt, and cannot be separated. The respected Spivak gives a misinterpretation of such cosmological proportions; one which curses her methodology to both an irreparable and unusable paradigm. Atma is the pseudonym for the atom, without division, in the noblest of cosmological sense. It can refer to soul, supersoul, intelligence, mind, body, essences[9]; in the Ayurveda sense, it is the soul or spirit: principle of life and sensation, the individual self; the only conscious element in the human body[10]. The at-man is the source, the undriveable fabric to which and of which not only is the ontology (of human) constructed, but the very fabricable existence of the cosmos.
It’s (Atma) root can be understood by anyone viable enough to discern the linguistic roots branching from the Indo-Aryans. To break it down in an ultra-simplistic sense, the prefix a-, is the same in European thought; a is without, indisposed, not containing, an un-conscription of the following suffix; in this particular case, the suffix of ma-terial existence. This mistranslation should have struck Spivak as a mistranslation of astronautical proportions. Even in the general definition (Atma) is that of the underlying metaphysical self, one which transcends both space and time, and by definition, cannot be burned.
The usage of Sati as one which burns the un-burnable self is an operational paradox, a complete befuddlement of the spirit of ethos upon the boundaries of infinite nature of soul. The concreteness of Atma as the unchangeable was elaborated some 2 millennia ago via the Great Buddha: upon their discernment of the Anatman[11], the ever-changing, the impermanent, the interdependent nature of all individuals with things. This definition by its very epistemic purpose erodes the definition of Sati as is presented in Spivak’s work. Through the mis-usage of such, arguments are to be made about the general viability of the Spivakian reading as one which lacks the true agency, definition, or even practice of the Atma. The death of the women at the funeral pyre was never meant as a reward for the piety of burning the female’s soul, Sati is much rather the burden of having the material body of a women, in the patriarchal Hindu world. Sati can be understood better as not the immolation of one act, but rather the immolation of suffering (in life) found in the daily existence of the Indian women.

THE CULTURE OF SATI
In the State of World Population 2020 report[12], by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) (the world organisation’s sexual and reproductive health agency) detailed the number of missing women has more than doubled over the past 50 years – from 61 million in 1970 to a cumulative 142.6 million in 2020; India accounts for 45.8 million of these “missing females”[13]. India leads the world in child brides, accounting for a third of the global total[14]; with the covid-19 pandemic exacerbating further the poverty and female genocide throughout entirety of the country, with a 17% increase (of 25,000 daily[15]) in number of distress calls related to early marriage of girls the last year alone[16].For the starting price of £500 quid (British Sterling Pound), one can buy a girl, with the price increasing respective to beauty[17]. Sati then, could be understood not in the physical burning of the widow, but very much in the base existence of femaleness in the Indian culture. The focus on Sati as the site of the sub-alterity is misplaced by Spivak as Sati is not represented in the good wife, but in the elimination of the female from the world of the male. Sati is as much represented in self-immolation as it is to be trafficked for having the misfortune to exist in India as a woman; one which re-iterates the theme of this work, in such that, it is not that the sub-altern cannot speak, it is much more rather that it is made silenced. Or as Mr. Kumar (NGO Director) details via another thought,
“most traffickers get away with paying fines because they are connected to powerful people. Families rarely report tracking and those that do register police complaints are threatened”[18]
Rani a young woman, saved by the NGO Childline, states,
“I want to go back to school when it reopens, and now I need to work harder as my father is no more,” she said. “It is my responsibility to help my mother run the household.”[19]
The ironical aspect of Rani’s statement is another avenue of incommensurability of the political in understanding the (Indian female) sub-altern. In western thought, schooling is seen as naturally translating to increase in labour participation; however, as one tries to apply this notion to the Indian, via the same paradigm, one actually sees the inverse.

THE ECONOMICAL SATI
Childline saved Rani from a forced underage marriage, but her troubles have only begun. Her wish to be schooled, to be afforded a stable life and job, are again, conscripted via the culture, dominating her action, thought, and identity. One cannot apply western-thought paradigms upon the political understanding of what is India, it simply not only inconsumable via methodology, but more so under another paradigm of epistemological being. Case-and-point would be the example of women participation of academia and their labour-participation. In most cases of the developed world, one finds a direct correlation with education and labour force participation, with it resounding proven to be the primary determinate of economic segregation[20]and is the primary determinant of wealth-capture in all Western statistical models[21]. The index 1[22] (detailed below) gives a model which will result in equal or greater proportion of labour participation[23]. One should find the Gini Coefficient (without Indian cultural variables) to be greater than or on par with OECD countries, the reality in India for women, is found in the inverse. With the primary determinant of western countries failing in the totality of its purpose, (educational-labour attainment).

THE MISUSE OF THE POLITICAL AS A PARADIGM
The labour participation of women in India is Manichean, to reflect the Sati that is their very existence. The purpose of bringing this case- study (in the purpose of this work) is to circumvent that the political oppression of Indian is but a reflection of the culture. As detailed in the Index 1 above, one can marvel at the educational participation which is evidently demonstrated to grant women in India an equal or higher participation of such variables in the Indian social-political realm. Statistics applied in such a simplistic manner continues the colonial project of survey-administration, one which ravage(s)(ed) the (locale) cultural paradigm and results instead the brutalist top-down approach of identity creation and objectification of subjectivity. Spivak’s political understanding can be demonstrated most resounding contradictory via the representation of index 2[24]. What one finds, is the abysmal usage of the (western) political to define ontological conscription of the Indian women (such as done by the respected Spivak).
The political in India has from time immutable, been conscripte primarily via cosmological conscription. With the ownership of 72% of the economy in the hold of the Brahmin[25], subject-relations in India reflect nothing but epistemological constraints or even the access to construction of, with the material but a reflection of the cosmic. To put ink to practice, to discern the reality from numbers, the truth from the context, one is beyond any overlap of logos, operating underneath a complete misnomic application of European political thought, as it is applied to the Indian system. There is no methodology which can explain in a political sense, how as the female educational attainment not only matches but eclipses that of the male, while simultaneously causing a decrease in the labour-force participation rate.

THE MISPLACEMENT OF THE SUPRA-STRUCTURE IN SUBJECTIVITY-OBJECTIVITY
The morphology depicted via Derridean deconstruction which Spivak dubs “much more painstakingly useful in more political issues”[26] is aghast in a horrendous incommutability of logos, one which a postcolonial scholar should readily be able to identify as an erroneous methodological approach. The political does not include the women, it is not her space, as she possesses no access to the institution of epistemology (in the creation of identity and value). The space is and was constructed via the domination of the Aryan upper-caste male (Brahmin)[27], to not only control the ontology of the women, but of every Atma to have the misfortune to not be born as them[28].
A version of history was gradually established in which the Brahmans were shown to have same intentions (as thus providing the legitimation for) the codifying British: In order to preserve Hindu society intact (the successors) [of the original Brahman] had to reduce everything in writing and make them more and more rigid. And that is what has preserved Hindu society in spite of a succession of political upheavals and foreign invasions.[29]
The apologizing for the Brahmin, the orchestrator of such a heinous conscription of evil, the mastermind of the order of disenfranchisement, has no role to play in Spivak’s theory. The placement of them, within the ‘domestic’ and to annul the influence of anything other as that but of ‘foreign’, is irreprehensible; one which directly counters the identity of the Punjabi, the Tamil, the Nepali, or even the Kashmiri in Spivak’s agent of (Indian) thought; but never the Brahmin. The Brahmin are not only to blame in Spivak’s paradigm they are also a causality of the colonial project[30]. Spivak’s apologizing for the Brahmin along with her usage of European paradigms, do not place her in a post-colonial mode of thought, but much more rather, in a neo-colonial state of mental. The notion of the continuation of the categories of imperialism, the control and census-based production of the populace, has its compliancy in the death of sub-alternate agency.

CONCLUSION:
“My children had not eaten for two days, I volunteered myself to the trafficker, but he said nimble fingers were needed for this work and I was of no use to him. I had almost no choice.”[31]
To bring conclusion to this but brief response to the unsoundness of the Spivakian paradigm, one finds the complete disregard for the power in the creation of not only the object in Indian society, but the women herself. The non-bringing of the cultural paradigm, with the messuage of the political to define the lives of the Indian female, Spivak herself, fails to bring anything but a neo-colonial methodology, one which intrinsically separates the agency of the female via the supra-structures misidentified as the result of subject-object paradigms of a European nature. To address the disenfranchisement of the Indian women, we must look beyond not only Western political paradigms, but the very concept of value creation as it relates to the locale of the population in question. It is in the very epistemological sense that the Indian women must arm herself against. To recover the burial of the female agency located not within a supra-structure, but that of men, is the challenge against the continued (made) silence of the Indian women. The sub-altern speaks, but only those who choose to listen.

Works Citied of Respected Authors

“CHILDLINE India Foundation” (Best NGO in India to support child right | CHILDLINE India Foundation) <https://www.childlineindia.org/&gt; accessed April 4, 2021
2020 (The State of World Population) < https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/UNFPA_PUB_2020_EN_State_of_World_Population.pdf&gt;
Alkema L and others, “National, Regional, and Global Sex Ratios of Infant, Child, and under-5 Mortality and Identification of Countries with Outlying Ratios: a Systematic Assessment” (2014) 2 The Lancet Global Health
Ambedkar BR and others, Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition (Verso 2016)
Atkinson AB, “Can We Reduce Income Inequality in OECD Countries?” (2015) 42 Empirica 211
Braga M, Checchi D and Meschi E, “Educational Policies in a Long-Run Perspective” (2013) 28 Economic Policy 45
“Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Can the Subaltern Speak?” [2015] Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory 67
“India’s Covid Crisis Sees Rise in Child Marriage and Trafficking” (BBC NewsSeptember 17, 2020) <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-54186709&gt; accessed April 11, 2021
“India” (United Nations Population Fund 2020) <https://www.unfpa.org/data/demographic-dividend/IN&gt; accessed April 111, 2021
Pti and others, “India Accounts for 45.8 Million of World’s Missing Females over Last 50 Years: UN Report” (ThePrintJuly 5, 2020) https://theprint.in/india/india-accounts-for-45-8-million-of-worlds-missing-females-over-last-50-years-un-report/451545/ accessed April 13, 2021
Roy, Arundhati. The Doctor and the Saint: Caste, Race, and the Annihilation of Caste: the Debate between B.R. Ambedkar and M.K. Gandhi. Haymarket Books, 2017.
Strong J and Hulting S, The Experience of Buddhism: Sources and Interpretations (Wadsworth Cengage Learning 1995)
Vedavyasa SKD (4th edn purebhakti)
“World Population Dashboard” (United Nations Population Fund) <https://www.unfpa.org/data/world-population-dashboard&gt; accessed April 4, 2021
ww.wisdomlib.org, “Atma” (goto glossary/dictionary page April 26, 2021) <https://www.wisdomlib.org/definition/atma&gt; accessed April 12, 2021
Yengde S, Caste Matters (Penguin Viking 2019)
[1] The death of the “good wife” upon the still burning funeral pyre of her deceased husband. A particular Hindu custom found in greater prevalence among the ‘upper’-castes much more rather than the Dalits. See Suraj Yengde’s Caste Matters for further reference.
[2] Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak, 2015, 102. This line of logic should be challenged as the site of the sub-altern based upon variances in epistemology.
[3] The primary aspect of Sati being the promise of ‘cosmic rewards’ past the physio-material.
[4] ibid
[5] Ambedkar, B. R., et al. Annihilation of Caste: the Annotated Critical Edition. Verso, 2016.
[6] Spivak, 99
[7] cf Logos.
[8] Ibid, 99
[9] Srila Krsna Dvaipayana Vedavyasa, Srimad Bhagavad-Gita (4th edition). See page 8 for a more nuanced understanding of the variations of jivatma (individual soul) and Paratma (supreme soul).
[10] gurumukhi.ru, Ayurveda Glossary of Terms. https://www.wisdomlib.org/definition/atma
[11] Hulting Sarah, in The Experience of Buddhism, 1995, http://www.faculty.luther.edu/~kopfg/internal/mosaic/Anatman.html
[12] 2020 (The State of World Population) https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/UNFPA_PUB_2020_EN_State_of_World_Population.pdf
[13] ibid
[14] Alkema L and others, “National, Regional, and Global Sex Ratios of Infant, Child, and under-5 Mortality and Identification of Countries with Outlying Ratios: a Systematic Assessment” (2014) 2 The Lancet Global Health
[15] “CHILDLINE India Foundation” (Best NGO in India to support child right | CHILDLINE India Foundation) <https://www.childlineindia.org/&gt; accessed April 4, 2021
[16] Interview with Childline NGO, Sruesh Kumar, Mr. Lal, and Rani, “India’s Covid Crisis Sees Rise in Child Marriage and Trafficking”(BBC News, September 17, 2020) <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-54186709&gt;
[17] ibid
[18] ibid
[19] ibid
[20] See Atikinson, Can We Reduce Income Inequality in OECD Countries, 2015, and Braga et al, Institutional Reforms and Educational Attainment in Europe: A Long Run Perspective, 2011 for a stupendous breakdown of the primary determent factor of contemporized economic segregation.
[21] ibid
[22] “World Population Dashboard” (United Nations Population Fund) <https://www.unfpa.org/data/world-population-dashboard&gt;
[23] Ibid, See Braga et al for the Statistical Significance Analysis
[24] “India” (United Nations Population Fund2020) <https://www.unfpa.org/data/demographic-dividend/IN&gt;
[25] Yengde S, Caste Matters (Penguin Viking 2019)
[26] Spivak, 104
[27] Yengde details the economic capture of segregation as a facet of the cosmological order and not as the political. Yengde details the epistemological inaccessibility to those who are considered non-Brahmin as the site of sub-alterity.
[28] Brahmin
[29] Spivak, 77
[30] ibid
[31] BBC interview, Mr. Lal. See 14.