In 1992, he wrote the article Post-colonialism and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for "Indian" Pasts?6 where he outlined both the goal of the Subaltern historians as well as engaging in self-criticism for not achieving these very same goals.
Chakrabarty's main goal in the article was the idea of Indians representing themselves in history. He believed that within History, as a discourse produced in University academia, Europe (as a meta narrative) remained the sovereign and theoretical subject of all histories. Subsequently, all these "imagined" histories tended to become a variation of the master narrative that he termed "the History of Europe."
Therefore, Indian history itself was in a position of sub-alternity, or inferiority. He observed, for example, a tendency by Indian historians to describe versions of Indian history in terms of an absence or incompleteness. He also cited the need of these historians - like many of his compatriots in the Subaltern Studies Group - to refer to European history in their own works, bestowing upon it the only genesis of modernity and progress.7
Chakrabarty's thesis is not new off course, notwithstanding his focus on the Indian Academe, and the notion of the Colonial Nationalist gaining his freedom using Colonialist discourse and therefore subverting his own identity represents a recurrent theme in the critique of Sarojini Naidu's work. Nonetheless, it remains a powerful critique.
