Who was the first Subaltern historian

Correct option is B

Ranajit Guha was the pioneer and founder of the Subaltern Studies collective, making him the first Subaltern historian of modern Indian historiography.
Information Booster:
· Founder of Subaltern Studies: Ranajit Guha launched the revolutionary Subaltern Studies Group in the early 1980s along with a group of South Asian scholars to challenge traditional ways of history writing.
· The Concept of "Subaltern": Drawing the term from the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci, Guha used it to denote groups of "low rank"—such as peasants, tribals, laborers, and marginalized masses whose voices were omitted from mainstream historical records.
· Critique of Elite Historiography: He argued that both Colonialist and Bourgeois-Nationalist historiographies were inherently elite-centric, attributing historical developments solely to prominent leaders or British officials while neglecting popular, grass-roots agency.
· Major Publications: His groundbreaking works, such as Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (1983) and the foundational edited series Subaltern Studies, established an autonomous domain of subaltern politics independent of elite leadership.
Additional Knowledge:
· David Hardiman: While a key founding member of the Subaltern Studies Collective, he was an editor and contributor who worked alongside Guha (focusing on peasant resistance in Western India like The Coming of the Devi), but he was not the founder or first subaltern historian.
· Romila Thapar: A world-renowned Ancient Indian historian associated with Marxist historiography and critical textual analysis, best known for her work on the Mauryas and social history, but not part of the Subaltern Studies core founding tradition.
· M. N. Srinivas: A legendary sociologist and social anthropologist who conceptualized famous terms like "Sanskritization" and "Dominant Caste," working outside the Subaltern Studies historiographical collective.