3CT Book Salon: Dipesh Chakrabarty "Calling Of History"
Channel: Wilder House
Date: 2015-11-11

University of Chicago Professor and 3CT Fellow Dipesh Chakrabarty discusses his latest book "The Calling of History, which explores the life of Sir Jadunath Sarkar (1870–1958)". Sarkar was knighted in 1929 and became the first Indian historian to gain honorary membership in the American Historical Association. By the end of his lifetime, however, he had been marginalized by the Indian history establishment, as postcolonial historians embraced alternative approaches in the name of democracy and anti-colonialism. Professor Chakrabarty demonstrates that historians in colonial India formulated the basic concepts and practices of the field via vigorous—and at times bitter and hurtful—debates in the public sphere. He furthermore shows that because of its non-technical nature, the discipline as a whole remains susceptible to pressure from both the public and the academy even today. Methodological debates and the changing reputations of scholars like Sarkar, he argues, must therefore be understood within the specific contexts in which particular histories are written. 

Professors Bill Sewell and Martha Nussbaum offer a brief commentary on the text.