Latest news with #RajatKantaRay
Indian Express
2 days ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
My teacher Rajat Kanta Ray
In 1975, we were third-year students at Presidency College, Calcutta, when a breath of fresh air entered seminar room 17 on the first floor of the old building in the form of Professor Rajat Kanta Ray. A freshly minted PhD from the University of Cambridge, he integrated the most recent, cutting-edge historical research in his lectures to undergraduates. He believed in the inextricable link between scholarship and teaching. The more mischievous among us parodied the extravagant hand gestures that accompanied his erudite lectures, but we loved him because he treated us as equals. In February 1977, he was the professor-in-charge who took us on a historical excursion to Khajuraho and other sites in Madhya Pradesh. We were mesmerised by his deep knowledge of architectural history. The doors of his home in Jodhpur Park were always open to his students. Rajat Kanta Ray had done his doctoral research in the environment of the so-called Cambridge school of nationalism, but he expressed his reasoned dissent from some of its supercilious attitudes in a pathbreaking article on 'Political change in British India'. His first work focused on the political history of Bengal during the 50-year timespan from 1875 to 1925. He also wrote authoritatively with Ratnalekha Ray on agrarian history in the colonial period. Having been taught by him to think critically and challenge orthodoxies, I offered an alternative analysis of agrarian social structure in my own doctoral work at Cambridge. I was always struck by his generosity and open-mindedness in accepting criticism from even his most devoted students. Equally adept at political and economic history, Rajat Ray did path-breaking research on the history of industrialisation and industrial policy. One of his finest long-form articles was on the bazaar and the long-distance flows of credit and finance that connected South Asia to Southeast Asia, West Asia and East Africa across the Indian Ocean. I urged him to write a book on the subject, but he was quite happy to hand over the baton to the next generation of Indian Ocean historians. Later in his long and distinguished academic career, he turned to exploring cultural and intellectual history. He wrote with grace and imagination about emotional history and what he called 'the felt community'. During a visit to Harvard early in the 21st century, those were the topics he wanted to discuss with me. In conventional terms, being appointed vice-chancellor of Visva Bharati from 2006 to 2011 was his crowning glory. I was not particularly excited about seeing my revered teacher take on the burdens of administration. On one occasion, he prostrated himself before a statue of Debendranath Tagore to seek the sage's guidance. Yet, his time in Santiniketan rekindled his interest in Rabindranath's concept of jibandebata. He devoted himself in his final years to writing in Bengali on this theme. There was another context in which I saw Rajat Ray closely. For decades, he was a member of the Council of the Netaji Research Bureau. My late mother Krishna Bose and I sought his advice about international academic conferences at Netaji Bhawan where he was invariably a very lively intellectual presence. He was masterful in chairing history seminars. The passing of this exemplary scholar-teacher at this critical juncture in our country's history leaves an enormous void. He was bold and forthright in standing up to the assaults on academic freedom and the discipline of history by the forces of Hindu majoritarianism. His answer, however, was not to retreat into narrow provincialism but to uphold the best intellectual traditions of Bengal in their full amplitude. In the enveloping darkness of Bengal's all-round educational and cultural decline, my teacher Rajat Kanta Ray lit a candle whose flame will forever burn bright. The writer is Gardiner Professor of History at Harvard University
Indian Express
3 days ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
Rajat Kanta Ray taught history not for applause, but to cultivate independence of mind
Written by Anandaroop Sen Rajat Kanta Ray was my teacher at Presidency College (2003-2006), the generosity of whose spirit, the relentlessness of erudition, the disarming charm, and the unflappable poise, we were privileged to experience. I write 'we' because it is difficult for me to talk about Rajat babu without a sense of collective, imagined, or otherwise. A collective forged in the history department in particular and at Presidency College at large. He, as the individual par excellence, crafted this collective through decades of his work at Presidency College. This was the key paradox (for many of us) of Rajat Kanta Ray, the accomplished, widely respected historian of South Asia, shaping and inhabiting the world of South Asian (and beyond) historiography, an almost incorporeal entity and our undergraduate professor, organising the everyday, very much a corporeal figure, with his slow delivery, soft voice filling up the classroom as we huddled closer to catch his words. He gave us the keys to historical imagination. Fiercely independent as a thinker, he never reached out to be a popular teacher. Yet, he held us captivated with his histories of 1857 and Gandhi. He nurtured scores of historians of South Asia across ideological and political positions, giving them the ammunition to argue against him, while lightly wearing his generosity. Rajat Kanta Ray was an individual, not the individual of capitalism as a vessel of consumption, but an individual with the courage to stand against the pressure and tides of consensus. Yet, it was this very individualism of courage that built the collective I imagine being part of. He taught us the rigours of historical work but insisted on the act of imagination required to organise the labour. As a professional historian, the sheer range of his work is a testament to his curiosity and erudition. His monograph, Industrialisation in India: Growth and Conflict in the Corporate Sector, first published in 1979, remains a classic. Later in his life, he moved to histories of emotions and intimacies. This welding of the economies of capital and desire is perhaps typical of an effort to reach out for a profundity of the human condition through the minutiae of archival labour. This is for me the legacy of Rajat babu's work. Others, better minds will comment on the complexities of his work and I will not detain the reader with that but I do remember the moment I finished reading his long essay on Indian Ocean trade titled 'Asian Capital in the Age of European Domination: The Rise of the Bazaar 1800-1914' (published in Modern Asian Studies in 1995) at Jawaharlal Nehru University; I marvelled at the expertise, the ambition and the breadth. But most of all, I was drawn in by its sensuousness. It was as if parts of the Indian Ocean had washed into my tiny Sutlej hostel room. Rajat babu was a guardian of a disappearing world. A world where there was value in sharing knowledge without an agenda of self-enrichment, a world where custodianship is not gatekeeping but a measure of care; his care for his craft, pedagogy and students were a single thread running across what we knew of him as a person. A guardian and a custodian who generated excellence in and around him, not through the bark of orders and aggression, but with calmness laced with a sense of humour that sparkled and made light of the enormous intellectual labour. And there was a basic weirdness to him as a person that I found delightful. Everybody appreciated the wisdom, but the element of strangeness was wonderful. I remember we were at a book launch at Oxford Bookshop in Kolkata's Park Street. Drinks were served after the launch. One of the organisers came to him and asked Rajat babu, 'Sir, can I get you anything to drink?' He took a moment and then asked, 'Do you have sherry?' Now, who would have a steady supply of sherry on an autumn evening in Calcutta, or, for that matter, who drank sherry outside the chambers of late Victorian England was beyond us. The organiser certainly did not have an answer and left mumbling his apologies. Rajat babu smiled and said it was all right. In the 'Asian Capital' article, Rajat babu wrote extensively about the Arab dhow, boats with their triangular sails, traversing the surface of the Indian Ocean; how these were still the lifeblood of Indian Ocean trade in the 19th and early 20th centuries, not engulfed by European capitalism. As he drifts closer to our memories while sailing away from our world, I hope Rajat babu has now found his dhow. The writer is senior lecturer, Historical Studies, University of Cape Town
Indian Express
4 days ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
Renowned historian Rajat Kanta Ray passes away at 79
Eminent historian Prof Rajat Kanta Ray, the former head of the Department of History at Kolkata's Presidency University (earlier College), passed away in Kolkata on Wednesday at the age of 79. Ray was one of the longest-serving faculty members at Presidency College (it became a university in 2010), teaching there from 1975 to 2006 when he was appointed the Vice-Chancellor of Visva-Bharati. He remained in the post till 2011. A scholar of exceptional academic output, Ray was a historian of modern Indian history, with a focus on colonial Bengal, and also wrote a book on Rabindranath Tagore. Among the books he authored are India: Growth and Conflict in the Private Corporate Sector, 1914-47 (1979), Mind, Body and Society: Life and Mentality in Colonial Bengal (1996), Exploring Emotional History: Gender, Mentality, and Literature in the Indian Awakening (2001), The Felt Community: Commonality and Mentality Before the Emergence of Indian Nationalism (2007), and Behind the Veil: Paintings of Rabindranath Tagore Reminiscent of Jivanadevata (2010). He was so popular a teacher that Gopalkrishna Gandhi, who was the Governor at the time, once went to Presidency to attend his class. Ray was born in 1946 to Kumud Kanta Ray who became the Home Secretary of West Bengal in the 1960s. After completing his schooling at Ballygunge Government High School, he enrolled in BA (Honours) in History at Presidency College, where he was taught by Ashin Dasgupta, a leading historian of modern India. Ray completed his PhD from the University of Cambridge. He taught at IIM Kolkata for a time before moving on to Presidency. Expressing condolences, State Education Minister Bratya Basu wrote on X, 'I am deeply saddened by the passing of respected and beloved professor and historian Rajat Kanta Ray. He taught at Presidency College for more than three decades and nurtured many internationally renowned students. His contribution to the socio-economic history of Bengal plays an important role in understanding our past.' Atri Mitra is a Special Correspondent of The Indian Express with more than 20 years of experience in reporting from West Bengal, Bihar and the North-East. He has been covering administration and political news for more than ten years and has a keen interest in political development in West Bengal. Atri holds a Master degree in Economics from Rabindrabharati University and Bachelor's degree from Calcutta University. He is also an alumnus of St. Xavier's, Kolkata and Ramakrishna Mission Asrama, Narendrapur. He started his career with leading vernacular daily the Anandabazar Patrika, and worked there for more than fifteen years. He worked as Bihar correspondent for more than three years for Anandabazar Patrika. He covered the 2009 Lok Sabha election and 2010 assembly elections. He also worked with News18-Bangla and covered the Bihar Lok Sabha election in 2019. ... Read More
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Business Standard
4 days ago
- Business
- Business Standard
Historian and former BS columnist Rajat Kanta Ray passes away in Kolkata
He taught in Presidency College for more than 30 years and in 2005 then governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi went to the college to attend his class BS Reporter Historian Rajat Kanta Ray, whose works include Industrialisation in India: Growth and Conflict in the Private Corporate Sector, 1914-47 and Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal 1875-1927, passed away in Kolkata on Wednesday. He taught in Presidency College for more than 30 years and in 2005 then governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi went to the college to attend his class. He became vice-chancellor of Visva Bharati University in 2006. He was a columnist with Business Standard.
