In Quest of the Historian's Craft

This felicitation volume honours Professor Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri, a doyen among scholars of modern Indian agrarian history. He retired as UGC Professor of Economic History at the University of Calcutta where he had taught for about four decades. He also served as Visiting Fellow in prestigious universities and institutes in Germany, France, USA, the Netherlands, Japan and Bangladesh. Viewed as a whole, this felicitation volume, in two parts and with 35 contributions, may be taken as a unique exercise in quest of 'the historian's craft', to borrow the well-known coinage of the legendary historian. The essays honour a master craftsman of the discipline, whose exemplary research and teaching assumed the form of a quest where old and new ideas were constantly reassembled, making the historians' territory a site of unusual vigour and stimulation. The contributors include several generations of historians and scholars whose individual search for the historian's craft have always been original and thought provoking. The essays concentrate on socio-economic and cultural aspects of historical change in pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial India, and their larger historical connections. The themes include economic history, environmental history, adivasi histories, statecraft and law, aspects of social, cultural and religious history, the cultural life of the Indian diaspora, regional histories and identities and labour history.