This issue of Social Scientist includes three articles addressing different themes in History. In the first, Seema Bawa questions notions regarding the appearance and proliferation of the goddess cult and worship ritual in India, especially in early historic Bihar (fifth…
This paper, in its primary aim, attempts to question the notions regarding the appearance and proliferation of the goddess cult and worship ritual in India, especially with reference to early historic Bihar (fifth century BCE to fifth century CE), through…
Among historians of early India, all of repute who have made notable contributions to our knowledge, there has been a worrying tendency of a remarkably relaxed attitude, bordering on apathy, towards the numerical value of all kinds of important facts.…
In the 83rd annual session of the Indian History Congress (IHC), certain issues concerning the teaching and purveying of secular historiography in India were tagged. Of the five resolutions taken up by the Executive Committee and the General Body of…
The partition of India in 1947, which witnessed enormous bloodshed in the name of religion, and was described by Salman Rushdie as ‘something of colossally horrible proportions’ and ‘one of the century’s great tragedies’ (Rushdie 1997), has been one of…
Unique systems of exploitation and forms of societal contradictions make India a distinct South Asian nation. Indian society is stratified along the lines of caste, gender, class, ethnicity, language, and religion. B.R Ambedkar reasoned, ‘You cannot build anything on the…
Ali Raza, Revolutionary Pasts: Communist Internationalism in Colonial India, New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2020, 287 pages, Rs 995 Ali Raza’s book under review, Revolutionary Pasts: Communist Internationalism in Colonial India, is a significant contribution to the history of the communist…