To say that the eighteenth century is one of the few periods of Indian history that continues to engender extensive polemics and valuable scholarship, is now somewhat of a cliché. Yet it continues to hold true. As if the almost…
The recent decades have witnessed a heightened academic engagement with the role of women in social movements. This comes in the wake of a substantial surge in the participation of women in trade unions, human rights struggles, militant movements, and…
The Mughal warfare was centred on the mobile force of the cavalry. Therefore, good horses, especially foreign and imported horses like the Arabian, Persian, Turki and Tazi horses played a significant role at the Mughal court and also in the…
The sudden passing away of Biswamoy Pati on 24 June 2017 came as a shock to all his friends, colleagues, students and fellow-activists. Born in 1955, Biswamoy went to school in Cuttack. He graduated from the University of Delhi where…
Nirupam Sen who passed away on 2 July 2017, was a phenomenon even in his college days. We were in the same college (St. Stephen’s) and he was two years my junior. But already in his very first year as…
Basudev Chatterji – Robi to his legion of friends and admirers – was certainly not an ordinary person. Rather, we are talking here of someone extraordinary: exceptional not only for his remarkable mind, irresistible charm and many other positive qualities,…
It was some time towards the end of August 1967. The assembly hall of Delhi’s Hansraj College was packed with excited teachers. The Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) was holding its routine biannual general body meeting. But this one was…
Jasodhara Bagchi, Interrogating Motherhood, Sage and Stree, 2017, 140 pages,Rs 295 This posthumous book revives grief over the untimely death, on 9 January 2015, of its author, Jasodhara Bagchi. However, it is also a matter of great happiness for her…
The lead article by K.M. Shrimali in the current issue of Social Scientist traces the development of religious identities in India over a long span of nearly four millennia. It explores the material conditions underlying this development, such as for…
Historians are always concerned about identifying elements of change and continuity, and points of disjunctures, in outlining and explaining historical processes. Further, the need to locate them within temporal and spatial contexts is also a sine qua non for them.…