An overview of the intellectual trajectory and contributions of B D Chattopadhyaya, the departed historian and thinker, underscores his role as a crusader against the homogenised representation of Indic pasts.
The Making of Regions in Indian History: Society, State and Identity in Premodern Odisha by Bhairabi Prasad Sahu, Delhi: Primus Books, 2020; pp xvi + 274, ₹1,095.
India in the Interregnum: Interim GovernmentSeptember 1946–August 1947 by Rakesh Ankit, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019; pp xii + 376, ₹1,195.
The multicultural enclaves and plurilateral overlaps resulting from constant cultural transactions and change, which defi ne the idea of India today, it is argued, dates back to the early medieval times, spanning the mid-fi rst to the mid-second millennium CE. Flowing from it, the author urges the recognition of “the early medieval origins of India,” replacing earlier constructions, howsoever cherished. The shift in the discursive ground in recent times and emerging consensus needs appreciation.
Public culture is a mental and physical space where basic ideas of the self and world view get crystallised. It is the main space to form varied communicative lines. These communicative lines discipline person’s behaviour. Since the Dalit’s ideas about self and consciousness were largely shaped by their everyday experience, Ambedkar thoughtfully evolved the Dalit’s public culture towards conscientising mental and physical space. A number of nodal points in varied communicative lines were generated to cultivate the autonomous Dalit assertive self and emancipatory world view. It produced an atmosphere where social discursive engagements were developed along with Ambedkarite praxis. As Mumbai happens to be the place where Ambedkar conceived, started and developed the key emancipatory movements, the city turned out to be a precursor for the “Ambedkarite public culture.”
When religion is being held up as a unique source of faith, we need to remind ourselves that there are other firm foundations upon which we can build moral and ethical projects, in both private and public life. If secularism, as we have recently been told, has multiple meanings, so too does faith. In our own recent history, there is perhaps no better practical instance of the effort to find a non-religious bedrock for morality than that of Nehru himself. Today, as we survey the shattered nationalisms of the Balkans, as we feel collapsing about us the ruins of Arab nationalism, as we see the precipice on which nations like Indonesia balance, it is more important than ever to see the force of what Nehru understood. It is exactly religion's persistence, its fulsome presence as we stumble into the new century that, far from undermining or disproving the force of Nehru's views on the subject, exactly underline their relevance and resonance for us today. On this particular point, he just was right.
