From the Secretary's Desk

Dr Adiga is an independent scholar and she specialises in Ancient Indian history and has done research on the early medieval history of Karnataka. Her PhD thesis on the socio-political history of Southern Karnataka under the Western Gangas was later published by Orient Blackswan as The Making of Southern Karnataka: Society, Polity and Culture in the Early Medieval Period (AD400-1030) in 2006. Subsequently she has availed of a Post-doctoral Research Associateship from the ICHR (1998-2000) and the UGC (2004-2009) during which her research focus has been on gender, kinship, family and violence in the early medieval period in Karnataka.

Professor Ishrat Alam is the former chairperson and co-ordinator at the Centre of Advanced Study in the Department of History, Aligarh Muslim University. He is an experienced professor with a record of working in the higher education and curriculum development. He has been a recipient of the Netherlands Government Reciprocal Fellowship. He has worked as a managing Editor for the Indian Historical Review on behalf of the Indian Council of Historical Research. He has also been a part of the editorial Board for Studies in People’s History, by SAGE Publications and the Indian Journal of History of Science, Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Calcutta, and at Department of History, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong, He has been a member-Secretary of the ICHR, and a member of Research Council for National Commission for History of Science, Indian National Science Academy. He has given a series of lectures in various states across the country on various aspects ranging from Technology and Society in Pre-Modern India, Palaces, Gardens and Water Bodies in the 17th Century to social transformations in Medieval India and Tolerance as essence of Secular Democracy Apart from being associated with the Indian History Congress, he has also chaired sessions in the section of Medieval India at the U.P History Congress and the Andhra Pradesh History Congress as well as the Punjab History Conference. He has edited many volumes which include Blending Nation and Region, Essays in Honour of Late Professor Amalendu Guha eds. Sajal Nag and Ishrat Alam, (Primus books, 2018); The Varied Facets of History, Essays in Honour of Aniruddha Ray eds. Ishrat Alam and Syed Ejaz Hussain, (Primus Books, 2011). He has published several articles and has contributed in various works including, History of Technology in India, Medieval Period, ed. Harbans Mukhia, Vol. II, Indian National Science Academy.

Professor Salil Mishra is Dean at the School of Law, Governance and Citizenship, Ambedkar University. He is also a Professor at the School of Liberal Studies, Ambedkar University. He has been a Professor of history at the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). He was a visiting researcher at the Centre for History of Emotions in Max-Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin. Apart from being associated with the Indian History Congress, he has also chaired sessions in the section of Modern India at the U.P History Congress and the Andhra Pradesh History Congress as well as the Punjab History Conference. He has authored works which include A Narrative of Communal Politics, Uttar Pradesh, 1937-39, monograph titled “Emotions in Politics and Politics of Emotions: Making of a Muslim Nation in Colonial India, 1937-46.” He has co-edited the volume, Towards Freedom, a collection of documents on the freedom struggle for the year 1942, Oxford University Press. He has published a series of research articles in books and journals on various themes pertaining to communal and identity politics, Indian National Movement, Partition of India and politics of Hindi-Urdu Languages. A number of his articles have been extensively published in various newspapers including the Deccan Herald, The Economic Times and the Times of India. He has also published works in Hindi.

Prof. Margit Koves is currently at the Department of Slavonic and Finno-Ugrian Studies in the University of Delhi. She is affiliated as a fellow with research institutions like the Indian Historical Research Council, the Indian Philosophical Research Council and the Indian Sociological Research Council. The research of Prof. Koves is diverse has ranged from comparative studies in Hindi and Hungarian Literature, impact of Hungarian language in India and religious, philosophical and historical studies. She has many research papers to her credit, of which include “Hungarian Studies in India: Hungarian Language and Culture in Delhi University” (THL2 Journal of Teaching Hungarian as a 2nd Language and Hungarian Culture), “Hungarian Responses: Between Support and Disagreement” (Insurgent Sepoys: Europe Views the Revolt of 1857 ed. Shaswati Mazumdar) and “Lukács and Fascism” (Social Scientist). Her diverse interest in research is best highlighted by her two monographs titled The English Curator and the Buddhist Doctor: Charles Fabri's Identities in India (1997) and Telling Stories of Partition and War: Saadat Hasan Manto and Istvan Orkeny (1998) published by the Centre for Contemporary Studies, NMML, Delhi. She has also edited a volume of papers titled Buddhism among the Turks of Central Asia (2009) and co-edited a reader on Fascism with Shaswati Majumdar titled Resistible Rise: A Fascism Reader (2005). She has also translated many literary works from Hungarian to Hindi, key works include the Abhineta ki Mrityu and Dasa ādhunika Haṅgārī kavi with Girdhahra Rathi.

Dr. Bishnupriya Basak is Associate Professor in the Department of Archaeology, Calcutta University. She has been a recipient of many grants and awards, including a post-doctoral Visiting Fellowship in the UK, awarded by the Nehru Trust for Indian Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum (2001), the UK Travel Award from the Nehru Trust for the Indian Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum (2009) a research grant from Society of Antiquaries of London (2015) among various others. Her specialization is in Bengal prehistory but she also researches extensively on Archaeological theory, history of Indian archaeology and Heritage studies. She currently has a project on ‘Tracking ancient migration routes and cultural connections in Northeastern India’ under the UGC-UPE 2 scheme of India Looking East of the University of Calcutta. She is also on the editorial board of peer- reviewed journals like Public Archaeology. She has also reviewed papers for peer-reviewed journals like ‘Quaternary International’ and is a regular reviewer of research grants awarded by the Indian Council of Historical research (ICHR).

Prof. Sudha Pai retired as Professor of Political Science at the Centre for Political Studies and as Rector (Pro-Vice Chancellor) of the Jawaharlal Nehru University in January 2016. Her research interests include Dalit Politics, State Politics in India, Agrarian Politics, Globalization and Legislative Governance. She has been member of many projects including SIDA and UNIRISD and was Senior Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Teen Murti, New Delhi from 2006 to 2009 where she completed a book project Developmental State and the Dalit Question: Congress Response. This project was published as the Developmental State and the Dalit Question in Madhya Pradesh: Congress Response (2010) by Routledge. Her recent work Constitutional and Democratic Institutions in India: A Critical Analysis (2020) which provides critical insights on the constitution and the democratic institutions of India. Prof. Pai has also edited and coedited numerous volumes of paper on the history of politics in contemporary India. The edited volumes include titles like Handbook on Politics in the Indian States Regions, Political Parties and Economic Reforms (2015), Interrogating Reorganization of States: Culture, Identity and Politics in Independent India (edited with Asha Sarangi, 2011), Developmental State and the Dalit Question in Madhya Pradesh: Congress Response (2010) and Political Process in Uttar Pradesh: Identity, Economic Reforms and Governance (2007). Apart from her academic contributions she is also head of a think-thank named PRAMAN (Policy Research and Management Network) at Gurgaon, which undertakes research on aspects of Public Policy such as Health, Education, Agriculture and India's foreign policy. She also regularly contributes to leading national newspapers such as The Indian Express, The Economic Times and websites such as thewire.in. on contemporary politics and public policy.

Professor Kesavan Veluthat is a former Professor in the Department of History from the Delhi University (2009-2016) and Chairman of the Department of History, Mangalore University. He has been a visiting professor at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris; Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris as well as Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam. In 2008 he completed a major research project funded by the Ford Foundation known as the, "Historical Atlas of South India". He has given lectures as well as presented papers in conferences across the country, as well as internationally in Columbia University, New York, University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and in Germany in the Universities of Kiel, Erfurt, Freiburg and Tubingen. He has been associated with the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) in assessing universities and colleges in India. Apart from being associated with the Indian History Congress, he has also chaired sessions at the Andhra Pradesh and the Punjab History Congress. His major works include, Brahman Settlements in Kerala: Historical Studies, (Kozhikode, Sandhya Publications, 1978; revised and enlarged edition, Cosmo Books, Thrisssur, 2013); The Political Structure of Early Medieval South India, (New Delhi, Orient Longman, 1993; second revised edition, New Delhi, Orient Blackswan, 2012); Kerala Through the Ages, (Thiruvananthapuram, Department of Public Relations, Government of Kerala, 1976) with M. G. S. Narayanan, et al. He also has edited several volumes including, Kerala State and Society in Pre-modern South India, ed., with R. Champakalakshmi and T. R. Venugopalan (Cosmo Books, Thrisssur, 2002); The Early Medieval in South India, Oxford University Press, (New Delhi, 2009; first paperback edition, 2010; sixth edition, 2014); Irreverent History: Essays for M. G. S. Narayanan, ed., with Donald R. Davis, Primus Books, Delhi, 2014. He has also authored several books in Malyalam which deal with history and literature in Malyalam, and has edited a Latin-Malyalam dictionary volume.

Amiya Kumar Bagchi (born 1936) is a distinguished Indian political economist. His contributions have spanned economic history, the economics of industrialisation and deindustrialisation, and development studies from an overall Marxist perspective, incorporating insights from other schools of radical political economics, including left Keynesianism. Among Marxists, he is known for his extensive contributions to theories of imperialism and underdevelopment. His academic career began when he started teaching in Presidency College, Kolkata. In the 1960s, he taught in the Faculty of Economics in Cambridge (where he was Fellow of Jesus College), but resigned his post in 1969, to resume his academic career in Presidency College, Kolkata. In 1974 he joined the newly founded Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, which went on to become one of the most productive and globally famous research institutions in India. Bagchi has specialised in the history of Indian banking and finance, and acted as Official Historian of the State Bank of India (SBI) from 1976 to 1998; he played a leading role in ensuring that the unique archives of SBI are preserved for posterity. After retiring as Reserve Bank of India professor from the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta in 2001, he became the founder-director of the Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata, a multidisciplinary centre of excellence in the social sciences, which is affiliated with the University of Calcutta, and is promoted by the government of West Bengal. Here, he spearheads research in development studies in an array of areas, notably banking and finance, public health, labour studies, information and communication studies, gender studies, education, and the sociology of literature. He has been Visiting Professor in international academic institutions such as Cambridge University, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Cornell University, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, Naples University, and University of Bristol.

R. Mahalakshmi is Professor at the Center for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her research interests include the development of state, society, religion, and art in ancient and medieval India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Her book The Making of the Goddess: Korravai-Durga in the Tamil Traditions (Penguin, 2011) was awarded the prize for the best book by a woman historian by the Indian History Congress in 2013. She has also authored The Book of Lakshmi (Penguin, 2009) and Colonization: A Comparative Study of India and Korea, co-edited with Vyjayanti Raghavan (Academic Foundation Books, 2015), in addition to articles in peer-reviewed journals and books. She is the Secretary of the Indian History Congress for the period 2018-20. She has delivered the Presidential addresses of the Historiography Section of the Andhra Pradesh History Congress for 2018-19, and the Ancient Section of the Punjab History Conference (2019-20).

Professor Bodh Prakash teaches at the School of Letters at Ambedkar University Delhi. He has worked on the intersections between history, literature and ideology. His main areas of research are Partition, gender, violence and cultural diversity in South Asia.Author of Writing Partition: Aesthetics and Ideology in Hindi and Urdu Fiction, he has published widely on issues of identity and culture in a multi-lingual and multi-religious society and the challenges of majoritarian and totalitarian, political formations to the age old inclusive, consensual culture fashioned over centuries in comtemporary India.

Professor Irfan Habib is Emeritus Professor of Department of History of AMU he also held the post of Chairman in the same department. He served as coordinator of Centre of Advanced Studies in Department of History of AMU. He was appointed as the Chairman of Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR). He was General Secretary, Sectional President and General President in 1981 and Vice-President in 2006 of Indian History Congress. He delivered Radhakrishnan Lecture at Oxford and he was recognized by the international community as Corresponding Fellow of British Royal Historical Society. He was bestowed with Padma Bhushan in 2005. He has authored and edited many books and research papers on various fields of Indian and World History. The Agrarian System of Mughal India is one of his widely acclaimed works. He edited works like People’s History of India Series and UNESCO publications and The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. Ifor this work he was awarded Watumull Prize.

Dr. Burton Cleetus teaches Modern History at the Centre for Historical Studies in Jawaharlal Nehru University. His area of specialization is history of science and medicine. He has studied emergence of biomedicine in Europe, healthcare practices in non-European societies, indigenous response to western medicinal intervention, repositioning and institutionalization of indigenous health care traditions. He also looked at public health initiatives taken up during colonial India and the interventions of Christian missionaries in the field of medicine. His published articles and chapters include ‘Missionaries, Marxists and the “model State”: Engaging with political practices in Kerala’, ‘Relocating the Kottakal Experiment: Science, Medicine and Society in Colonial Malabar’, ‘Negotiating Western Science and the State: The Institutionalization of the Indigenous Medicine in Kerala, 1900‐1947’ and ‘Subaltern Medicine and Social mobility: The Experience of Ezhavas in Kerala’.

Krishna Mohan Shrimali (b. 1947), former Professor of History at the University of Delhi, is the author of A History of Pañcāla, 2 vols (1983, 1985); Agrarian Structure in Central India and the Northern Deccan: A Study in Vākāṭaka Inscriptions (1987); and Dharma, Samaj aur Sanskriti (2005). He has edited Indian Archaeology since Independence (1996) and Reasons and Archaeology (1998). He has published widely in academic journals, on ancient Indian history and archaeology. He is currently working on a project on Dictionary of Social, Economic and Administrative Terms in Indian Inscriptions. He presided over the Ancient Indian History Section of the Indian History Congress in 1988, and general president in 2017 and was also the Secretary, Indian History Congress, 1992-95.