Writing History through Biographies

Presentation of a research project as part of the "Jeudis de la Maison Suger", a residents' research seminar.

Sangeeta Dasgupta teaches in the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She is also Senior Research Associate at the Centre for World Environmental History, University of Sussex, Brighton. She is an editor of The Indian Economic and Social History Review, and on the editorial board of ‘The Anthem Impact in Social History for South Asia’ series. She has been Agatha Harrison Memorial Fellow at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford and Asa Briggs Visiting Fellow at the University of Sussex. She has also been the recipient of fellowships from the Charles Wallace India Trust, the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, the Ministry of Human Resource Development, the Nehru Trust for the Indian Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the University Grants Commission. She is presently working on a digitization project funded by the Modern Endangered Archives Programme of the UCLA Library and is writing a biography of the anthropologist Sarat Chandra Roy.

Presentation of the project

"Through the writing of a biography of the Indian anthropologist Sarat Chandra Roy, this paper talks about the historian’s craft and how biographies open up the possibilities of writing history differently. It discusses the relationship between anthropologists and the making of an Adivasi identity since Adivasi communities, paradoxically, continue to be understood through an imagination which is a legacy of colonial times. Referred to as the Indigenous Peoples of India and officially declared as Scheduled Tribes in the Indian constitution, Adivasis are located in the margins of mainstream India. As marginalized communities with a marginal presence in the colonial archive, their voices are dismissively relegated to the realm of songs, myths and folklore. It, then, becomes important to look at missionary texts, anthropological writings and ethnographic texts – all representing non-adivasi voices - to understand Adivasi histories. Roy’s was one such prominent voice in Jharkhand, a state in India, and a hugely prominent voice even today."

Speaker

Sangeeta Dasgupta is a professor in the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.