Beyond Nationalist Frames: Postmodernism, Hindu Fundamentalism, History

by Sumit Sarkar

The political context in which historians of India find themselves today, says Sumit Sarkar, is dominated by the advance of the Hindu Right and globalized forms of capitalism, while the historian's intellectual context is dominated by the marginalization of all varieties of Marxism and an academic shift to cultural studies and postmodern critique. In Beyond Nationalist Frames, one of India's foremost contemporary historians offers his view of how the craft of history should be practiced in this complex conjuncture. In studies of colonial time-keeping, Rabindranath Tagore's fiction, and pre-Independence Bengal, Sarkar explores new approaches to the writing of history. Essays on contemporary politics consider the implications of the "Hindu Bomb," the rewriting of national history textbooks by Hindu fundamentalists, and the issue of conversion to Christianity. Scholars in all the fields touched by recent developments in South Asian historiography―anthropology, feminist theory, comparative literature, cultural studies―will find this a stimulating and provocative collection of essays, as will anyone interested in Indian politics.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

280 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2002

About the author

Sumit Sarkar (born 1939) is an Indian historian of modern India. He is the author of Swadeshi Movement.

He studied at Presidency College, Calcutta and at the University of Calcutta. He taught for many years as a lecturer at the University of Calcutta, and later as a reader at the University of Burdwan. He was Professor of History at the University of Delhi.

He was born into a family of illustrious historians. His father Sushovan Sarkar was also a pioneering historian and his elder sister Sipra Sarkar, was also a reputed historian and educationalist. His mother was the cousin of legendary statistician P C Mahalanobis. His wife Tanika Sarkar is also a historian and daughter of renowned educationalists Sukumari and Amal Bhattacharya.

He was awarded the Rabindra Puraskar literary award by the West Bengal government in 2004. He returned the award in 2007 in protest against the expulsion of farmers from their land.

(from Wikipedia)