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Articles by Sudhir ChandraSubscribe to Sudhir Chandra

V N Datta: ​A Student’s Reminiscence

V N Datta, Professor Emeritus of History, Kurukshetra University, breathed his last on 30 November 2020. He was 94.

Thinking of Gandhi Today

Learning to think without being hindered by fear or temptation will, among other things, help those who want to emulate M K Gandhi deal with the gravest challenge that they face. That challenge is posed by those who, behind their deviously articulated public lip-service to him, are tirelessly engaged in realising that vision of India which is diametrically opposed to Gandhi’s humane vision.

Other Than This and/or That

Communalism and the Intelligentsia in Bihar, 1870-1930: Shaping Caste, Community and Nationhood by Hitendra Patel (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan), 2011; pp x+253, Rs 645.

Gandhi's Twin Fasts and the Possibility of Non-violence

Gandhi died a sorrowful man, following his discovery that the freedom struggle led by him was not non-violent. It was passive resistance, which is always "a preparation for active armed resistance". The violence which had lain repressed had erupted on the eve of Independence. Gandhi's insight seems to have left academic wisdom and popular memory unaffected. This study of two "twin" fasts by Gandhi is part of a larger attempt to use that insight to make sense of his 30-odd years in India and of his undying faith in non-violence. It asks: Can non-violence be more than an impossible possibility?

Ambivalence of Social Consciousness

In the latter half of the 19th century, a social consciousness increasingly characterised by ambivalence began to emerge in the wake of the colonial encounter. The dominant response to the British presence came to be one that felt the pain of subjection, understood the fundamentally baneful character of the alien dispensation and paradoxically, hailed that dispensation as the harbinger of national regeneration. It produced a consciousness that recognised no incongruence between loyalism and nationalism. A similar ambivalence also manifested itself in issues like tradition, which came to be seen as â??rottenâ? but also formed a "spring of renewal". This divided view of tradition was articulated in various forms that derived from and in turn hardened prevailing community identities.

Gender Injustice: Supreme Court Mandate

The members of the committee set up to inquire into the complaint of sexual harassment at the MS University may have been innocent of the realities of women's subordination to men at home and at the workplace, but they could not have possibly misunderstood the Supreme Court's new comprehensive definition of sexual harassment.

Gender Injustice at MS University

Whatever the truth of the MS University sexual harassment allegation, the committee investigating it has proved itself negligent and worse. The committee's incompetent and biased investigation is an injustice both to the complainant - if her allegations are true - and to the defendant - if he is innocent.

Rukhmabai Debate Over Woman s Right to Her Person

Justice Pinhey's verdict rescinding Dadaji Bhikaji's claim to restitution of conjugal rights over his wife, Rukhmabai, snowballed in the late 19th century into a verbal duel between the Anglo-Indian press and the native press. While the Anglo- Indian press was exultant at the proven moral superiority of the British legal system, the native press was alarmed at the threat of socio-cultural subversion of Hindu family and society the judgment posed. Only in the writings ofMalabari and a few other reformers do we find a justification of the verdict based on native discourse of conjugal norms.

Difficulty of Understanding Gandhi

Difficulty of Understanding Gandhi Sudhir Chandra Colonialism/Tradition and Reform: An Analysis of Gandhi's Political Discourse by Bhikhu Parekh; Sage Publications. New Delhi; pp 288. hardback Rs 190. paperback Rs 85.

Of Communal Consciousness and Communal Violence-Impressions from Post-Riot Surat

Violence Impressions from Post-Riot Surat Sudhir Chandra It is not easy to offer generalisations about the way Hindus behaved during the communal riots and how they will behave in the foreseeable future. The exercise acquires an extra complexity if the speculation sought on the basis of behaviour during these difficult times relates to the future of HIP in the Indian political system, for the exercise necessarily involves projection about the likely electoral behaviour of people.

Conflicted Beliefs and Men s Consciousness about Women-Widow Marriage in Later Nineteenth Century Indian Literature

Seeking to understand the manifest in relation to the implicit and the unstated

Maithilisharan Gupta and the Idea of Indian Nationalism-A Centenary Critique

Indian Nationalism A Centenary Critique Sudhir Chandra Viewed within the perspective of the evolution of Indian national consciousness, Maithilisharan Gupta's nationalist ideology would warrant the conclusion that though he was proud of his Hindu legacy and zealously promoted Hindu consciousness, he was not a communalist. He envisaged a free and ever progressing democratic India that would extend equal rights to all its citizens irrespective of their caste and creed. At the same time, however, tike most Hindus, he was heir to a historically produced complex of feelings that did not quite square with the logic underlying the vision of such an India. Nationalist Hindus of the generations of Romesh Dutt and Maithilisharan Gupta may have, as indeed they did, entertained the virtually undefined belief that Hindu and Indian were synonymous terms.

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