The lead article in the current number of Social Scientist, which contains the text of Romila Thapar’s Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial Lecture this year, discusses an issue which has not received the attention it deserves, namely the role of the ‘public…
Deciding on a topic for this lecture has been problematic. As has been rightly said, Nikhil Chakravartty was a man of many parts. He was a warm and affectionate friend; he was curious about people, about politics and about the…
From the Neolithic to the Urban Revolutions Roughly 13,000 years ago, mankind discovered how to domesticate wild plants and animals for its own use, as sources of food, shelter, transport and tools. Cattle, sheep, goats, camels and horses were used…
The entrance to the shrine is situated at the extremity of a long bazaar, which runs the whole length of the town. Several monumental gateways, marble domes, and mosques can be seen above the exterior line of wall sand stand…
… A cooperative is an association of women and men who come together to form a jointly owned, democratically controlled enterprise where generating profit is only part of the story. Cooperatives put people before profit. They also help their members…
The marriage laws of many communities either originate or receive sanction from religious scriptures and are legitimised through religious rules and rituals. Different religions differ on different counts on the notion and nature of marriage. Yet, even before marriage as…
It was just after I had passed my M.A. examination from Aligarh in 1953, that I read Tapan Raychaudhuri’s book that had just been published, Bengal under Akbar and Jahangir (Calcutta, 1953). It set for me a model of how…
Radha Balasubramanian, The Influence of India on Leo Tolstoy and Tolstoy’s Influence on India: A Study of Reciprocal Receptions, Edwin Mellen Press Ltd., New York, 2013, 296 pages, $139.95. Syed Jaffar Ahmed (ed.), Challenges of History Writing in South Asia:…
Each one in the series of annual lectures instituted in the memory of D.S. Borker is supposed to discuss the speaker’s vision of India in 2047. This accordingly is the theme of the lecture, published in the current number, by…
Examined here is the link between the collapse of internationalism in 1914, as some on the left endorsed nationalist and/or pro-war positions, and the analogous shift a little short of a century later, as some leftists saw virtue in the…