The calling of history : Sir Jadunath Sarkar and his empire of truth

A leading scholar in early twentieth-century India, Sir Jadunath Sarkar (1870–1958) 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. __The Calling of History__ examines Sarkar’s career—and poignant obsolescence—as a way into larger questions about the discipline of history and its public life. Through close readings of more than twelve hundred letters to and from Sarkar along with other archival documents, Dipesh 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. Insightful and with far-reaching implications for all historians, __The Calling of History__ offers a valuable look at the double life of history and how tensions between its public and private sides played out in a major scholar’s career. Surveying more than 1,200 letters that two famous Indian historians, Sir Jadunath Sarkar (1870-1958) and his collaborator Govind Sakharam Sardesai (1865-1959), wrote to each other in the first half of the twentieth century, this book develops a two-tiered argument about the modern and academic discipline of history. At one level, it demonstrates how the basic concepts and practices of the discipline (such as those relating to historical evidence, historical truth, or even ideas of research and practices of archiving) were formulated in colonial India through vigorous, sometimes bitter and hurtful debates in public life, bypassing the institutional authority of the university. This “public” life of the discipline was necessitated by the colonial officials’ unwillingness to make official historical documents available to Indian researchers; it was also enabled by the fact that nationalist Indians interested themselves in historical research long before history became a researchable subject in Indian universities. Sarkar, with fraught support from Sardesai, played a central role in introducing Indian researchers to Rankean models of historical research while indigenizing the model in significant ways. Sarkar and Sardesai’s struggle to give early modern Indian history an academic form shows how unavoidable debates in public life shaped the discipline, even after historical study finally gained an academic status in India. Chakrabarty also develops a larger proposition about the discipline of history generally, arguing that, being non-technical in nature, the discipline remains open to the pressures of its “public life,” in addition to those emanating from its “cloistered” life in the university Features a leading scholar in early twentieth-century India, Sir Jadunath Sarkar (1870-1958) 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. 'The Calling of History' examines Sarkar's career - and poignant obsolescence - as a way in to larger questions about the discipline of history and its public life. Through close readings of more than twelve hundred letters to and from Sarkar along with other archival documents, Dipesh 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.0Methodological 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. Insightful and with far-reaching implications for all historians, The Calling of History offers a valuable look at the double life of history and how tensions between its public and private sides played out in a major scholar's career Dipesh Chakrabarty s eagerly anticipated book examines the politics of history through the careerand in many ways tragic fateof the distinguished historian Sir Jadunath Sarkar (1870-1957). One of the most important scholars in India during the first half of the twentieth century, Sarkar was knighted in 1929 and is still the only Indian historian to have ever been elected an Honorary Fellow of the American Historical Association. He was a universalizing and scientific historian, highly influential during much of his career, but, by the end of his lifetime, he became marginalized by the history establishment in India. History, Chakrabarty writes, sometimes plays truant with historians: by the 1970swhen Chakrabarty himself was a novice historianSarkar was almost completely forgotten. Through Sarkar s story, Chakrabarty explores the role of historical scholarship in India s colonial modernity and throws new light on the ways that postcolonial Indian historians embraced a more partisan idea of truth in the name of democratic and anti-colonial politics. India's leading historian during the first part of the twentieth century, Sir Jadunath Sarkar (1870-1958) influentially embodied a "scientific" approach to his discipline, then was dramatically marginalized as the Indian academy took a postcolonial turn. The Calling of History explores Sarkar's career-and poignant obsolescence-as a way into larger questions about the discipline, of history and its public life. Book jacket Sir Jadunath Sarkar (1870-1958) was knighted in 1929 and became the first Indian historian to gain honorary membership in the American Historical Association. This book examines Sarkar's career - and poignant obsolescence - as a way in to larger questions about the discipline of history and its public life.