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Grass hoods history, history seen from below or the history of the common people, people’s history, and even ‘history of everyday life. The conventional history about the great deeds of the ruling classes received further boost from the great tradition of political and administrative historiography developed by Ranke and his followers. The history from below was an attempt to write the history of the common people. It is history concerned with the activities and thoughts of those people and regions that were neglected by the earlier historians. Peasants and working classes, women and minority groups, unknown faces in the crowd, and the people lost in the past became the central concern of this historiographical tradition.

According to Raphael Samuel, the term “people’s history” has had a long career, and covers and ensemble of different writing. The beginning of the history from below may be traced to the late 18^th century. In the classical western tradition, history-writing involved the narration of the deeds of great men. The common people were considered to be beyond the boundaries of history and it was beneath the dignity of the historian to write about them. Peter burke points out, ‘until the middle of the eighteenth century, the word “society” in its modern sense did not exist in any European language, and without the word it is very difficult to have any conception of that network of relationships we call “society” or “the social structure”.

In India, most of members of the subordinate classes, including the industrial classes, are not literate, therefore, direct sources coming from them are extremely rare, if not completely absent. Given this scenario, the historian trying to write history from below have to rely on indirect sources. As sabyasachi bhattacharjee points out, given the low level of literacy we have to depend on interferences from behavior pattern. Report on opinions and sentiments, on oral testimonies etc. oral traditions also have their problems. They cannot be stretched back too far and one has to work within living memory. These problems are outlined by one of the great practitioner of history from below, Ranjit Guha,the founder of the subaltern studies . Above all “history from below” has to face problem of the ultimate relative failure of mass initiative in colonial India,

Most talk about elitist origins of the evidences which the historians use for understanding the mentalities behind the peasant rebellions. This has come down to us in the form of official records of one kind or another –police reports, army dispatches, administrative accounts, minutes and resolutions of governmental departments, and so on. Non-official sources of our information on the subject, such as newspapers or the private correspondence between persons of authority, too speak in the same elitist voice, even if it is that of the indigenous elite or of non-Indians outside officialdom.

History from the below,  As the perspective of the common people in the process of history- writing. It is in against that concept of historiography, which believes I Disraeli’s dictum that history is the biography of great men. Instead the history from below endeavors to take into accounts the lives and activities of masses who are otherwise ignored by the conventional historians. Moreover it attempts to take their point of view into accounts as far possible. It is venture; the historians face a lot of problems because the sources are biased in favor of the rulers, administrators and the dominant classes in general.

The village was not only a territorial area but also a revenue unit. It was viewed as a discrete entity not only in terms of its physical space but also in the sense of a social collective represented by the village community with the muqaddam as its chief spokesman. This is most clearly brought in representation made to the higher authorities by the muqaddam pleading on behalf of the entire village on a variety of issues common to the whole cultivating community. In the official writings of the early British administrators on the rural Indian society the village communities are identified on the social foundation of the peasant economy in India. The village community is characterized as a closed corporate foundation depending on small production to meet its own requirements. According to the British official writing India was a land of little village republics and the people of India lined under this simple form of municipal government or small republic. Sir Charles Metcalf describes the character of the village community as little republics almost independent of any foreign relations and unchanging in the character. He also believes in the independent community character of the various classes of inhabitant living in the village. James mill confirmed his believe in the village community as a corporation. Sir hennery Maine found the Indian communities as an organized self acting group of families exercising a common proprietorship over a definite tract of land. According to him there were two types of village communities 1) in which the village authority was lodged with the village panchayet. 2) In which the authority was in the hands of village headman. Elphinstone also believed in the concept of village community as being a form of municipal institution with some local jurisdiction. He also asserted that 1) the village community was not a universal phenomena in India. 2) He also maintained that not all the classes of functionaries lived in every village and that 3) within the village the waste land was owned by the state rather than the village community. Baden Powell assumed that the concept of village community was associated with land revenue system and that the village community was not invariably the simple survived of a primitive age. He did not agree that the Indian village was inherently democratic or republican in its constitution. He viewed the village essentially as a community of separate cultivating land holders and other village functionaries organized as a small monarchy or oligarchy. He identified two types of villages’ raiyati or non zamindari and zamindari village all these formulation need critical examination in the context of the complexity of the structure and functioning of the village community. The view of the village community as democratic or primitively democratic institutions seems questionable. In all populists accounts of the village community the starting point is to postulate the village community on a more or less universal basis of social organization with special features such as political autonomy, economic anarchy, social homogeneity and the unchanging character of this closed collectivity. The village was viewed as a territorial concept as well as a fiscal unit. It was also viewed in the sense of a social collective represented by a headman. He made representation to the higher authorities on behalf of the entire village on a variety of incuse common to the whole cultivating community. In course of time the village economy was becoming more and more market oriented. Thus the village economy was not a closed stationary but a strongly collective foundation.