Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist thinker, is credited with introducing the term �subaltern� to literary and critical theory. Gramsci uses the term in his notebook �Notes on Italian History,� which forms part of his Prison Notebooks, written between 1929 and 1935 when he was imprisoned by Italy�s Fascist regime. Though Gramsci uses the terms �subaltern� (classi subalterne), �subordinate� (classi subordinate), and �instrumental� (classi strumentali) interchangeably in the said work, the consensus is that the Gramscian subaltern refers to those groups in society that are of inferior rank, subjected to the hegemony of the ruling class. One of the founders of the Italian Communist Party, Gramsci employs the term to refer to the peasantry, the working class, and other such groups traditionally denied access to hegemonic power by the ruling elite�i.e., those that the Marxists would collectively designate �the proletariat.�

The term �subaltern� gained wider currency and newer significance in the early 1980s when it was adopted by the Subaltern Studies Group (SSG), a group of South Asian intellectuals interested in the postcolonial and postimperial societies, to refer to the populations that are politically, socially, and geographically outside the hegemonic power structure of the colonies, with a new class of colonialist elite and bourgeois-nationalist elite replacing the erstwhile colonial rulers in the pecking order.

Today, a subaltern is any person or group of inferior rank or station whether because of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, race, or class. And the approach of the subaltern studies is essentially an antiessentialist one, where history is told �from below,� focusing more on the subaltern voices that challenge the majoritarian discourse and the silencing effect of domination. It is a case of not just the Empire but many Mini-Empires within writing back to the Centers of political power, challenging the alternative formulas for legitimation of neocolonialism. Subaltern studies then focuses on �history from below��the counter-hegemonic practice, social movement, resistance, and struggle against neocolonial forces that seek to privilege their dominant discourse as the normative one. In sum, the subaltern struggle and the politics of place is an evolving story of their ongoing quest for human equality, voice, agency, and representation.

However, as Gramsci (Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, London: ElecBook, 1999, 206) informs, �the history of subaltern social groups is necessarily fragmented and episodic,� because of their tendency to submit, despite their efforts to break free of the entrenched system, to the authority of the ruling class, in the process limiting their access to and representation in the dominant discourse and social and cultural institutions. �There undoubtedly does exist a tendency,� continues Gramsci, �to unification in the historical activity of these groups, but this tendency is continually interrupted by the activity of the ruling groups� (206-207). Hence, it is necessary to study, Gramsci avers, the origins of disparate subaltern groups in preexisting social groups; their active or passive affiliation to the dominant political formations and their attempts to influence the programs of these formations in order to press claims of their own; the birth of new parties of the dominant groups intended to conserve the assent of the subaltern groups and maintain control over them; the formations which the subaltern groups themselves produce in order to press claims of a limited and partial character; those new formations which assert the autonomy of the subaltern groups, but within the old framework; and those formations which assert the integral autonomy.

�The subaltern classes, by definition,� contends Gramsci, �are not unified and cannot unite until they are able to become a �State�� (202). In other words, the subaltern groups cannot unite and present a unified front if they fail to establish organic relations with the political society (the realm of force, comprising the police, the army, the judiciary, and so on) and the civil society (the realm of consent, comprising the family, the education system, trade unions, and so on).

Incidentally, Indian author Arundhati Roy�s latest novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness�an engagement with the larger political and social history of India, especially with its margins�seeks to bring together and unify disparate subalterns on a counterhegemonic platform.

Rajeshwar Mittapalli discusses, in his paper, how the subalterns in Arundhati Roy�s abovementioned novel go on to create and expand �an alliance of utmost happiness� against the majoritarian attack and thus chart their own course from passivity to autonomy.

Shraddha Dhal delineates the plight of Shanta the Ayah in Bapsi Sidhwa�s Ice-Candy-Man, who as a helpless victim of communal oppression and patriarchal perversion symbolizes the fate of gendered subalterns.

Kabita Mondal and Joydeep Banerjee assert, with reference to Amruta Patil�s graphic novel Kari that features a lesbian protagonist, that graphic novel, with its dual medium of visual and verbal, has the same potential as other literary genres to induce empathy in us, the readers, and thus teach us values such as the importance of understanding those who are different from ourselves.

Eman Khalil Mukattash examines the different forms of �semiotic takes��namely, surrogate mothers, nature, surrogate fathers, sisterhood, storytelling, and motherhood�and the two protagonists� ability to retain connection with the World of the Mother in each case in Willa Cather�s novel My Antonia.

Saumya Bera, Soumyajyoti Banerjee, and Rajni Singh attempt to, using existentialism as an analytical tool, deconstruct and deexoticize, with reference to Gita Mehta�s Karma Cola, the orientalist metanarrative of the �self,� in the context of Orient-Occident encounter, with a view to highlighting the need for demythologizing the standardized norms of perception.

Devi Archana Mohanty and Sangeeta Mukherjee analyze Jhumpa Lahiri�s short story �Interpreter of Maladies� using face negotiation theory to illustrate that participants in social interaction are guided by their cultural assumptions and situational needs while negotiating their face needs and face concerns.

Ashima Shrawan discusses in detail the theory of vakrokti as propounded by Kuntaka (circa 950�1050 CE), a Sanskrit literary theorist, in his work Vakroktijivitam, highlighting how vakrokti that emanates from the creative faculty of the poet endows the common language with flair, salience, and consummate beauty.

G Alan discounts the conventional Eurocentric language learning methods and proposes a postmodern ethno-relative model of language learning that stresses on incorporating multiple skills, including life skills, in the learning process to fulfill the requirements of the learners as well as the corporate.