Editorial Note, Mar-Apr, 2022

This issue of Social Scientist, concerned predominantly with historical questions, begins with an article by Sanjeev Kumar on what he sees as a contemporary effort on the part of distinct social entities to face the challenge of post-colonial efforts to crystallise a new essentialised identity as part of the project of nation building. This compares with the history of communities in pre-colonial South Asia, in which ‘they succeeded for centuries, to breach the rigidity of essentialised identities through a constant process of invention and reinvention of traditions’.