I should like to begin by conveying birthday greetings to Professor Irfan Habib. All good wishes, Irfan. You have in your wisdom provided us with excellent historical vision and insight, and you have received the extensive admiration and affection of…
Today we have gathered to celebrate the ninetieth birthday of one of the greatest historians of India, if not the whole world. It is both a solemn and a joyous occasion. There is no point in even sketching the awesome…
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…