HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Sekhar Bandyopadhyay (born 7 July 1952) is an Indian historian and a Fellow of the
Royal Society Te Apārangi The Royal Society Te Apārangi (in full, Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi) is an independent, statutory not-for-profit body in New Zealand providing funding and policy advice in the fields of sciences and the humanities. History The R ...
. Bandyopadhyay is known for his research on the Dalit caste of
Bengal Bengal ( ; bn, বাংলা/বঙ্গ, translit=Bānglā/Bôngô, ) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predom ...
.


Life

Bandyopadhyay was born to Nanigopal Bandyopadhyay, a professor of
Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...
and Pratima Bandyopadhyay. Bandyopadhyay earned his B.A. degree in History at Presidency College and an M.A. degree at the
University of Calcutta The University of Calcutta (informally known as Calcutta University; CU) is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate State university (India), state university in India, located in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. Considered ...
. He was awarded a doctorate at the
University of Calcutta The University of Calcutta (informally known as Calcutta University; CU) is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate State university (India), state university in India, located in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. Considered ...
. He is married to Srilekha Bandyopadhyay and lives in
Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by me ...
with his wife.


Career

Bandyopadhyay is Emeritus Professor at
Victoria University of Wellington Victoria University of Wellington ( mi, Te Herenga Waka) is a university in Wellington, New Zealand. It was established in 1897 by Act of Parliament, and was a constituent college of the University of New Zealand. The university is well know ...
and was the founding director of the New Zealand India Research Institute. He has also taught at the
Ramakrishna Mission Residential College, Narendrapur Ramakrishna Mission Residential College (Autonomous), Narendrapur is an institute for pursuing undergraduate and postgraduate studies in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is an autonomous college located in Narendrapur, Kolkata. The college ...
,
University of Kalyani The University of Kalyani, established in 1960, is a Government of West Bengal administered, UGC affiliated, NAAC accredited, collegiate Public Research university in Kalyani, West Bengal, India. It offers courses at the Undergraduate, Post ...
, and the
University of Calcutta The University of Calcutta (informally known as Calcutta University; CU) is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate State university (India), state university in India, located in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. Considered ...
. Bandyopadhyay was the first recipient of the Charles Wallace Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Centre for South Asian Studies,
SOAS University of London SOAS University of London (; the School of Oriental and African Studies) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury are ...
. He has also held visiting fellowships at the
University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
,
National University of Singapore The National University of Singapore (NUS) is a national public research university in Singapore. Founded in 1905 as the Straits Settlements and Federated Malay States Government Medical School, NUS is the oldest autonomous university in the c ...
,
International Institute for Asian Studies The International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) is a global research institute and knowledge exchange platform, based in Leiden, the Netherlands. The Institute initiates and promotes interdisciplinary and trans-sectoral programmes that engage ...
, Curtin University,
Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies and ...
and
Rabindra Bharati University Rabindra Bharati University is a public research university in Kolkata, India. It was founded on May 8, 1962, under the Rabindra Bharati Act of the Government of West Bengal in 1961, to mark the birth centenary of the poet Rabindranath Tagore. ...
. From 2009-2010, Bandyopadhyay served as the President of the
New Zealand Asian Studies Society The New Zealand Asian Studies Society (NZASIA) is established in 1974. It is an independent academic society that seeks to encourage the spread of knowledge about Asia, its history, its culture, and its role in international affairs. The society ...
and currently co-edits its journal, the
New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies The ''New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal that was founded in June 1999. It is the official journal of the New Zealand Asian Studies Society. The journal covers a broad range of Asia-related topics. It is pu ...
. In 2009, Bandyopadhyay was awarded the Rabindra Smriti Puraskar (Rabindranath Tagore Memorial Prize), given by the Government of
West Bengal West Bengal (, Bengali: ''Poshchim Bongo'', , abbr. WB) is a state in the eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabitants within an area of . West Bengal is the fourt ...
, for his monograph ''Decolonisation in South Asia: Meanings of Freedom in Post-Independence Bengal 1947-52''. Bandyopadhyay has been a recipient of a Marsden grant of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Since 2021, the Sekhar Bandyopadhyay Prize has been awarded annually by the Department of History at
Victoria University of Wellington Victoria University of Wellington ( mi, Te Herenga Waka) is a university in Wellington, New Zealand. It was established in 1897 by Act of Parliament, and was a constituent college of the University of New Zealand. The university is well know ...
to the student submitting the best essay or thesis on an aspect of Indian history or the history of colonialism or nationalism. The award 'acknowledges and celebrates the distinguished career of Professor Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Professor of History at Victoria University of Wellington'.


Awards

*
Rabindra Puraskar The Rabindra Puraskar (also Rabindra Smriti Puraskar) is the highest honorary literary award given in the Indian state of West Bengal. This award is named after the famous Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore and is administered by the Government of W ...
(Rabindranath Tagore Memorial Prize) * Fellow,
Royal Society Te Apārangi The Royal Society Te Apārangi (in full, Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi) is an independent, statutory not-for-profit body in New Zealand providing funding and policy advice in the fields of sciences and the humanities. History The R ...
* Inaugural Fellow, New Zealand Academy of Humanities


Select works


Monographs

* ''Burma To-day: Economic Development and Political Control since 1962'' (1987) * ''Caste, Politics and the Raj: Bengal 1872-1937'' (1990) * ''Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal, 1872-1947'' (1997; Second Edition 2011) * ''Caste, Culture and Hegemony: Social Dominance in Colonial Bengal'' (2004) * ''From Plassey to Partition and After: A History of Modern India'' (2004; Second Revised and Enlarged Edition 2015) * ''Decolonization in South Asia: Meanings of Freedom in Post-independence West Bengal, 1947-52'' (2009/2012) * ''Caste and Partition in Bengal: The Story of Dalit Refugees, 1946-1961'' (2022, With Anasua Basu Raychaudhury)


Edited collections

* ''Bengal: Rethinking History. Essays in Historiography'' (2001) * ''Nationalist Movement in India: A Reader'' (2009) * ''India in New Zealand: Local Identities, Global Relations'' (2010) * ''Decolonization and Politics of Transition in South Asia'' (2016)


Co-edited collections

* ''Caste and Communal Politics in South Asia'' (1993, with Suranjan Das) * ''Bengal: Communities, Development and States'' (1994, with Abhijit Dasgupta and William Van Schendel) * ''People of India: West Bengal'', 2 volumes (2008, with T. Bagchi and R.K. Bhattacharya) * ''China, India and the End of Development Models'' (2011, with X. Huang and A.C. Tan) * ''Globalization and Challenges of Development in Contemporary India'' (2016, with Sita Venkateshwar) * ''Religion and Modernity in India'' (2016, with Aloka Parashar Sen) * ''Calcutta: The Stormy Decades'' (2015, with Tanika Sarkar) * ''Indians and the Antipodes: Networks, Boundaries and Circulation'' (2018, with Jane Buckingham)


Books in Bengali

* ''Ashtadas Sataker Mughal Sankat O Adhunik Itihas Chinta'' ighteenth-Century Mughal Crisis and Modern Historical Thinking(1995) * ''Jati, Varna O Bangali Samaj'' aste, Varna and Bengali Society(1998, co-edited with Abhijit Dasgupta)


Journal articles

* "Caste, Nation and Modernity: Indian Nationalism's Unresolved Dilemma" .R. Davis Memorial Lecture, Sydney, 2016 ''The Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia'', 48 (2016), pp. 5-24. * "India-New Zealand Relations in the New Century: A Historical Narrative of Changing Perceptions and Shifting Priorities", ''India Quarterly'', 69(4) (2013), pp. 317-333. * "Rabindranath Tagore, Indian Nation and Its Outcasts", ''Harvard Asia Quarterly'', 15 (1) (Spring 2013), pp. 28-33. * "Partition and the Ruptures in Dalit Identity Politics in Bengal", ''Asian Studies Review'', 33 (4) (2009), pp. 455-67. * "A History of Small Numbers: Indians in New Zealand, c.1890s-1990s", ''New Zealand Journal of History'', 43 (2) (2009), pp. 150-168. * "Freedom and its Enemies: Politics of Transition in West Bengal, 1947-1949", ''South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies'', XXIX (1) (April 2006), pp. 43-68. * "Transfer of Power and the Crisis of Dalit Politics in India, 1945-47", ''Modern Asian Studies'', 34 (4) (2000), pp. 893-942. * "Protest and Accommodation: Two Caste Movements in Eastern and Northern Bengal, c1872-1937", ''The Indian Historical Review'', XIV (1-2) (1990), pp. 219-33. * "Caste in the Perception of the Raj: A Note on the Evolution of Colonial Sociology of Bengal", ''Bengal Past and Present'', CIV, Parts I-II (198-199) (January-December 1985), pp. 56-80. * "Caste, Class and Census: Aspects of Social Mobility in Bengal under the Raj, 1872-1931", ''The Calcutta Historical Journal'', V (2) (January-June 1981), pp. 93-128.


Book chapters

* "Caste and Politics in Bengal: Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century", in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (Ed.) ''Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal 1700-1950'', Volume III, Kolkata: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 2019, pp. 338-86. * "Indian Unity and the Caste Question: Nationalist Readings of History" in S. Bhattacharya (Ed.) ''Rethinking the Cultural Unity of India'', Kolkata: Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, 2015, pp. 324-354. * "Does Caste Matter in Bengal? Examining the Myth of Bengali Exceptionalism", in M.N. Chakraborty (Ed.) ''Being Bengali: At home and in the World'', London and New York: Routledge, 2014, pp. 32-47. * "Caste, Class and Culture in Colonial India", in S. Z. H. Zafri (Ed.) ''Recording the Progress of Indian History: Symposia Papers of the Indian History Congress 1992-2010'', Delhi: Primus Books, 2012, pp. 225-39. * "The Minorities in Post-Partition West Bengal: The Riots of 1950" in Abhijit Dasgupta et.al (Eds.) ''Minorities and the State: Changing Social and Political Landscape of Bengal'', New Delhi, Sage Publications, 2011, pp. 3-17. * "Caste, Widow-Remarriage, and the Reform of Popular Culture in Colonial Bengal", in
Sumit Sarkar Sumit Sarkar (born 1939) is an Indian historian of modern India. He is the author of ''Swadeshi Movement''. Early life, education and career He was born to Susobhan Sarkar. His maternal uncle was Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis. He completed h ...
and Tanika Sarkar (Eds.) ''Women and Social Reform in Modern India: A Reader'', Volume II, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007, pp. 100-117. * "Eighteen-Fifty-Seven and Its Many Histories", in ''1857: Essays from Economic and Political Weekly'', Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2007, pp. 1-22. * "From Subjects to Citizens: Reactions to Colonial Rule and the Changing Political Culture of Calcutta in the mid-nineteenth century", in Michael Wilding and Mabel Lee (eds.) ''Society and Culture: Essays in Honour of S.N. Mukherjee'', New Delhi: Manohar Publishers and Distributors, 1997, pp. 9-31. * "Popular Religion and Social Mobility in Colonial Bengal: The Matua Sect and the Namasudras", in Rajat K. Ray (Ed.) ''Mind, Body and Society: Life and Mentality in Colonial Bengal'', Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 152-92.


References


External links


The Conversation

Radio New Zealand

Economic and Political Weekly
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar 1952 births Living people Indian historians Presidency University, Kolkata alumni University of Calcutta alumni Scholars from West Bengal