Sugata Bose (born 7 September 1956) is an Indian historian and politician who has taught and worked in the United States since the mid-1980s. His fields of study are South Asian and Indian Ocean history. Bose taught at
Tufts University
Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...
until 2001, when he accepted the
Gardiner Chair of Oceanic History and Affairs at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
.
Bose is also the director of the Netaji Research Bureau in
Kolkata
Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...
, India, a research center and archives devoted to the life and work of Bose's great uncle, the Indian nationalist,
Subhas Chandra Bose
Subhas Chandra Bose ( ; 23 January 1897 – 18 August 1945
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*) was an Indian nationalist whose defiance of British authority in India made him a hero among Indians, but his wartime alliances with Nazi Germany and Imperia ...
.
Bose is the author most recently of ''His Majesty's Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India's Struggle against Empire'' (2011) and ''A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire'' (2006).
From 2014 to 2019, Bose has served as a Member of India's Parliament from the
Jadavpur Constituency in
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 ...
with his party affiliation in
Mamata Banerjee
Mamata Banerjee (; born 5 January 1955) is an Indian politician who is serving as the eighth and current List of chief ministers of West Bengal, chief minister of the States and union territories of India, Indian state of West Bengal since 20 ...
-led
All India Trinamool Congress
The All India Trinamool Congress (English: All India Grassroots Congress; AITC), colloquially the Trinamool Congress ( TMC) is an Indian political party which is predominantly active in West Bengal. The party is led by Mamata Banerjee, the cur ...
(TMC).
Early life and family
Sugata Bose was born in
Calcutta
Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...
, India. After studying at
Presidency College, Kolkata
Presidency University, Kolkata (formerly known as Presidency College, Kolkata) is a second major public state aided research university located in College Street, Kolkata. Considered as one of best colleges when Presidency College was affili ...
,
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 ...
Bose subsequently completed his PhD at the
University of Cambridge
, mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts.
Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge.
, established =
, other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
before being named a
research fellow
A research fellow is an academic research position at a university or a similar research institution, usually for academic staff or faculty members. A research fellow may act either as an independent investigator or under the supervision of a pr ...
of
St. Catharine's College at Cambridge in 1981.
The grandnephew of
Indian nationalist
Indian nationalism is an instance of territorial nationalism, which is inclusive of all of the people of India, despite their diverse ethnic, linguistic and religious backgrounds. Indian nationalism can trace roots to pre-colonial India, b ...
Subhas Chandra Bose
Subhas Chandra Bose ( ; 23 January 1897 – 18 August 1945
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*
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*) was an Indian nationalist whose defiance of British authority in India made him a hero among Indians, but his wartime alliances with Nazi Germany and Imperia ...
and grandson of nationalist
Sarat Chandra Bose
Sarat Chandra Bose (Bengali: শরৎচন্দ্র বসু) (6 September 1889 – 20 February 1950) was an Indian barrister and independence activist.
Early life
He was born to Janakinath Bose (father) and Prabhabati Devi in Cuttac ...
, Bose is the son of former
Trinamool Congress
The All India Trinamool Congress (English: All India Grassroots Congress; AITC), colloquially the Trinamool Congress ( TMC) is an Indian political party which is predominantly active in West Bengal. The party is led by Mamata Banerjee, the cur ...
parliamentarian Krishna Bose and paediatrician Sisir Kumar Bose.
Bose's brother,
Sumantra Bose
Sumantra Bose is an Indian political scientist and professor of international and comparative politics at the London School of Economics. He specialises in the study of ethnic and national conflicts and their management, with a particular focus on ...
, teaches at the
London School of Economics
, mottoeng = To understand the causes of things
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £240.8 million (2021)
, budget = £391.1 millio ...
; his sister,
Sarmila Bose
Sarmila Bose is an Indian-American journalist and academic. She has served as a senior research associate at the Centre for International Studies in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. She is th ...
, is a researcher at Oxford University.
[Anjali Puri]
Lunch With BS: Sugata Bose
Business Standard, 4 March 2016.
Academic career
After completing his PhD at Cambridge, Sugata Bose began his career as a professor of history and diplomacy at
Tufts University
Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...
. In 2001 Bose was appointed to the
Gardiner Chair of Oceanic History and Affairs at Harvard University, a position that had lain vacant for almost two decades, one which had been previously occupied by historians of the
Western Hemisphere
The Western Hemisphere is the half of the planet Earth that lies west of the prime meridian (which crosses Greenwich, London, United Kingdom) and east of the antimeridian. The other half is called the Eastern Hemisphere. Politically, the term We ...
, but one for which Harvard specifically wanted a historian of South Asia.
From 2003 to 2010, Bose headed up the university's South Asia initiative as well as the graduate program in the history department.
Books
In 2011 Bose published ''His Majesty's Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India's Struggle against Empire'', a biography of his great uncle Subhas Bose. The biography, a
trade book, has been criticised in scholarly reviews for soft-pedaling or oversimplifying Subhas Chandra Bose's alliances with Italian Fascism, German
National Socialism
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hit ...
, and Japanese
imperialism
Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas, often through employing hard power (economic and ...
. The book has also been criticised for its optimistic speculations on what Subhas Bose might have accomplished had he lived. Some popular reviews have been more positive.
In his earlier ''A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire'' (2006), Bose attempts to challenge the thesis pioneered by
Kirti N. Chaudhuri
Kirti Narayan Chaudhuri (born 8 September 1934) is a historian, author, writer, graphic artist, and lately, a film-maker. He is the second son of the Indian writer Nirad C. Chaudhuri.
Chaudhuri has spent most of his adult life travelling and worki ...
in and developed by Andre Wink and others, which holds that the world's first "global economy," the trans-Indian-ocean maritime economy—whose trade was assisted by the alternating winds and currents of the monsoons and which arose in the wake of the spread of Islam—was in turn undercut by European capitalism in the early 18th century. Instead, Bose contends, in the main thesis of his book, an inter-regional economy of middle-level bazaar merchants and traders continued well into the late 1920s, existing between the dominant European capitalists at the top and the peasants and peddlers at the bottom. This according to Bose, was not just the case in the market of goods and services, but also in the barter of ideas and culture. Attempting to bolster the latter notion are sections in the book on
Mohandas K. Gandhi,
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore (; bn, রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He resh ...
, and Bose's great uncle
Subhas Chandra Bose
Subhas Chandra Bose ( ; 23 January 1897 – 18 August 1945
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*) was an Indian nationalist whose defiance of British authority in India made him a hero among Indians, but his wartime alliances with Nazi Germany and Imperia ...
. ''A Hundred Horizons'' was praised by academic reviewers for explicating the transformations to networks which linked Indian Ocean societies, beyond the influence of colonial empires, and for exploring "cosmopolitan notions of anticolonialism" throughout the Indian Ocean world. However, Bose's delineation of that economy has been criticised for not going much beyond India and Indians, for reducing the complex exchange between the British and India to a clash of Indian nationalism and British authoritarianism; and for not providing sufficient warrant for the main thesis in the book.
Bose is also the author and editor of books on the economic, social and political history of modern South Asia. Beginning his career with work on the economy of agrarian
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 ...
, Bose published two volumes on his research. ''Agrarian Bengal: Economy, Social Structure and Politics, 1919–1947'', published in 1986, contextualised rural economic life within the wider currents of the global economy, while a 1993 contribution to the ''New Cambridge History of India'', ''Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital: Rural Bengal since 1770'', analysed two and a half centuries of regional economic and social change.
Political career
Sugata Bose was a
Trinamool Congress
The All India Trinamool Congress (English: All India Grassroots Congress; AITC), colloquially the Trinamool Congress ( TMC) is an Indian political party which is predominantly active in West Bengal. The party is led by Mamata Banerjee, the cur ...
MP (2014 -2019) at the 16th
Lok Sabha
The Lok Sabha, constitutionally the House of the People, is the lower house of India's bicameral Parliament, with the upper house being the Rajya Sabha. Members of the Lok Sabha are elected by an adult universal suffrage and a first-past ...
, representing the
Jadavpur
Jadavpur is a southern neighbourhood of Kolkata in the district of Kolkata of West Bengal, India. Jadavpur is one of the important junctions in South Kolkata. Jadavpur University and a number of research institutes of national and internation ...
constituency.
Other activities
In January 2012, Bose joined ''
New Yorker
New Yorker or ''variant'' primarily refers to:
* A resident of the State of New York
** Demographics of New York (state)
* A resident of New York City
** List of people from New York City
* ''The New Yorker'', a magazine founded in 1925
* ''The New ...
'' editor
David Remnick
David J. Remnick (born October 29, 1958) is an American journalist, writer and editor. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for his book '' Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire'', and is also the author of ''Resurrection'' and ''King of th ...
, former ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' editor
Joseph Lelyveld
Joseph Salem Lelyveld (born April 5, 1937 in Cincinnati, Ohio) is an American journalist. He was executive editor of ''The New York Times'' from 1994 to 2001, and interim executive editor in 2003 after the resignation of Howell Raines. He is a ...
and journalist Peter Popham at the sixth
Jaipur Literature Festival
The Jaipur Literature Festival, or JLF, is an annual literary festival which takes place in the Indian city of Jaipur each year in the month of January. It was founded in 2006. It is the world's largest free literary festival.
The Diggi Palace ...
in a panel on the challenges of biographical writing.
Bose has been active in researching, speaking, and publishing on
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore (; bn, রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He resh ...
, contributing to projects across different media. In 2007, Krishna and Sugata Bose co-edited Purabi: the East in its Feminine Gender, a book and CD of Tagore's poetry and music. Bose has produced a four-CD set of Tagore's songs written outside of India as ''Visva Yatri Rabindranath'', and has lectured widely on Tagore in North America, Europe, and Asia.
Beyond his work at Harvard and Tufts, Bose has helped steer two major projects advancing higher education in India. Since 2007, Bose has been a member of the
Government of India
The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, c ...
's Nalanda Mentor Group, which seeks to establish an
international university
An international university is funded by the governments of many countries and thereby is controlled by the officials from the government of different countries. These universities are often formed by the regional and international organizations.
...
on the site of the ancient
University of Nalanda in Bihar. Since 2011, Bose has served as chairman of the
Presidency College Mentor Group, which seeks to revitalise the 194-year-old Kolkata college. He also served on the Social Sciences jury for the
Infosys Prize
The Infosys Prize is an annual award given to scientists, researchers, engineers and social scientists of Indian origin (not necessarily born in India) by the Infosys Science Foundation and ranks among the highest monetary awards in India to re ...
in 2009, and the Humanities jury in 2015 and 2016.
Bibliography
Books
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Chapters in books
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Notes
Cited Sources
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Further reading
* Anjali Puri
Lunch With BS: Sugata Bose Business Standard, 4 March 2016.
External links
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Faculty page at Harvard University History Department
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bose, Sugata
1956 births
Alumni of the University of Cambridge
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Historians of South Asia
Living people
Politicians from Kolkata
Presidency University, Kolkata alumni
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India MPs 2014–2019
Lok Sabha members from West Bengal
American people of Indian descent
Trinamool Congress politicians from West Bengal
People from South 24 Parganas district
American male non-fiction writers
Indian scholars
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