Citizen Historian
Explorations in Historiography

S.N. Mukherjee (Author)

9788173041419

Hardback, published 20 November 2024

162 pages
23 x 15 x 1.5 cm, 0.5 kg

This is a collection of essays on historiography written in the period between 1961 and 1994. Some of these were published in learned journals and books in Europe, India and Australia, while others appear in this book for the first time. Together they are an exploration into historiography. The author, using the old tools of history, neglected by the postmodernists, draws the attention of the young historians to the future of our past.

The book starts with the role of the historian in society; then in three other essays the author discusses the methods in the study of the history and state. Yet another essay deals with the historiography of nationalism. The book ends with an essay on 'autobiography as history'.

• Preface vii Introduction ix The Citizen Historian 1
• The Social Implications of the Political Thought of Raja Rammohun Roy 11
• Raja Rammohun Roy and the Status of Women in Bengal in the Nineteenth Century 41
• The Idea of the Village Community and the British Administrators 66
• Politics and Poetics: Sir William Jones and the Debate on Aesthetics in the Eighteenth Century 75
• Satinath Bhaduri's 'The Vigil': An Essay on the Novel and History 92
• Origins of Indian Nationalism: Some Questions on the Historiography of Modern India 104
• The Tradition of Rama Gupta and the Indian Nationalist Historians 120
• Polygamy and Genealogy in the Gupta Age: A Note on Feudalism from Above in Ancient India 126
• My Discovery of Nehru: Autobiography as History 138