It is a matter of great honour to be associated with an event felicitating Professor Irfan Habib, one of the tallest intellectuals India has produced since independence. Professor Habib is a historian with a global presence. He has the rare…
History for a country can be likened to memory for an individual. If one’s memory is vitiated by inaccurate imaginings of vainglory or of false recollections of wrongs suffered, the affected individual is likely to do much harm to himself.…
It is an honour to be asked to contribute a paper to this special issue of Social Scientist on the occasion of Professor Irfan Habib’s ninetieth birthday. The seminal academic influences on the development of some aspects of my own…
This essay analyses the contribution of Irfan Habib to the history of modern India. It presents his engagement with key ideas of modern Indian history in the form of a plot or a story. In writing this story I have…
As he enters his 90s, Irfan Habib has just embarked on a new book on the history of the great Mughal emperor Akbar. The book will be part of the People’s History of India series, a project that has consumed…
The most eminent set of people that I have known are all here, present today. Romila, Professor Bagchi, Aditya Mukherjee, Prabhat himself of course, and many others – many who have taught me, continue to teach me. Hence I am…
Suparna Gooptu (ed.), Writing Women in History: Glimpses from India’s Colonial Past, K.P. Bagchi & Company, Kolkata, 2019, Rs 595 Anirudh Deshpande, The Practice of History in India: Essays in Search of a New Past, New Delhi: Aakar, 2020, 160…
To mark the completion of 25 years since the initiation of the decentralised planning experiment in Kerala, this issue leads with an article by Thomas Isaac who played a leading role in that movement since its inception. Beginning with a…
‘The Left must have a programme to bake more bread before redistributing them. You have proved to be good at distribution. But you have no nprogramme for production.’ This was a common criticism of many liberals in the background of…
I would like to place on record my deep gratitude to Professors Sasheej Hegde and Atlury Murali (2021) for having engaged with my book, Infinite Double: Persons/Things Empire/Economy (Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 2015) (hereafter ID), in such a…