Hari Sen (born 15 August 1955) is an academic historian from
Himachal Pradesh
Himachal Pradesh (; ; "Snow-laden Mountain Province") is a state in the northern part of India. Situated in the Western Himalayas, it is one of the thirteen mountain states and is characterized by an extreme landscape featuring several peaks ...
, India. He is a former teacher of history at
Delhi University
Delhi University (DU), formally the University of Delhi, is a collegiate central university located in New Delhi, India. It was founded in 1922 by an Act of the Central Legislative Assembly and is recognized as an Institute of Eminence (IoE) ...
and conducted research on the
Bhils
Bhil or Bheel is an ethnic group in western India. They speak the Bhil languages, a subgroup of the Western Zone of the Indo-Aryan languages. As of 2013, Bhils were the largest tribal group in India.
Bhils are listed as tribal people of the ...
of colonial
Rajasthan
Rajasthan (; lit. 'Land of Kings') is a state in northern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the largest Indian state by area and the seventh largest by population. It is on India's northwestern s ...
. He is also the current titular
Raja
''Raja'' (; from , IAST ') is a royal title used for South Asian monarchs. The title is equivalent to king or princely ruler in South Asia and Southeast Asia.
The title has a long history in South Asia and Southeast Asia, being attested f ...
Hari Sen was born in 1955 in the royal family of Suket, an erstwhile 11-gun salute princely state whose capital used to be the present-day town of
Sundar Nagar
Sundar Nagar (also spelled as Sundernagar) is a town and a municipal council in Mandi district in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.
Formerly it was a princely state, known as Suket.
History
Sunder Nagar was formerly the seat of pri ...
in Himachal Pradesh. Sen's father was
Lalit Sen
Lalit Sen (21 April 1932 - 18 October 1985) was an Indian politician from Himachal Pradesh. He was elected to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament of India, from the Mandi constituency, as a member of the Indian National Congress. ...
(b.1932 - d.1985) - a two-time
member of parliament
A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members o ...
from the Mandi constituency - and his paternal grandfather was Raja Lakshman Sen Bahadur (b.1895 - d.1970), the last ruling king of Suket. Sen's mother is Krishna Kumari, daughter of Maharawal Sir Lakshman Singh (the last ruling king of
Dungarpur
Dungarpur is a city in the southernmost part of Rajasthan, India. It is the administrative headquarters of Dungarpur District. It is the fastest developing town in the southern part of Rajasthan, alongside Aspur ''tehsil''.
History
Dungarpu ...
) from his second wife. Sen nominally succeeded to the 'gaddi' (throne) of Suket on 18 October 1985, as the 52nd 'Raja Saheb' of Suket. His nominal title is ''His Highness Raja Hari Sen Bahadur of Suket''. Sen is married to Dr. Radhika Chopra, a renowned Indian sociologist who is also the daughter of the journalist
Pran Chopra
Pran Chopra (January 1921 – 22 December 2013) was an Indian journalist, political analyst and newspaper editor.
Chopra was born in 1921 in Lahore, British India. He began his career as a journalist in 1941, with the ''Civil and Military Gazette ...
.
Sen is the trustee and president of the Maharaja Lakshman Sen Memorial College in Sundar Nagar.
Sen, who is a friend of the writer
, features prominently in Ghosh's often-reprinted essay about the
1984 anti-Sikh riots
The 1984 Anti-Sikh Riots, also known as the 1984 Sikh Massacre, was a series of organised pogroms against Sikhs in India following the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. Government estimates project that about 2,800 Sikhs ...
in Delhi, 'The Ghosts of Mrs Gandhi'.
Academic career
Education
Sen did his schooling from St. Columba's School, Delhi, his MA in history from St. Stephen's College, Delhi University, and PhD from the Department of History, Delhi University. His PhD dissertation was titled ''Popular Protest in Mewar in the Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Centuries'' (unpublished,1996)''.''
Teaching
Sen taught history at
Ramjas College
Ramjas College is a college of the University of Delhi located in North Campus of the university in New Delhi, India.The college admits both undergraduates and post-graduates, and awards degrees under the purview of the University of Delhi. ...
, Delhi University, from October 1991 till his retirement in August 2020. He was widely known as a teacher of history at Delhi University. He has been mentioned as an influence in the works of several historians and other scholars of
South Asia
South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical
Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth descr ...
, including
Ramchandra Guha
Ramachandra "Ram" Guha (born 29 April 1958) is an Indian historian, environmentalist, writer and public intellectual whose research interests include social, political, contemporary, environmental and cricket history, and the field of economics ...
* Sen, Hari. "The Bhil rebellion of 1881". In ''Issues in Modern Indian History: for Sumit Sarkar''. Popular Prakashan, 2000.
* Sen, Hari. "The Bhils in Colonial Mewar." In ''Negotiating India’s Past: Essays in Memory of Partha Sarathi Gupta.'' Tulika Books'','' 2003.
* Sen, Hari. "The Maharana and the Bhils: The ‘Eki’ movement in Mewar, 1921–22." In ''India's Princely States'', pp. 157-172. Routledge, 2007.