Calcutta University V-C remembers the historian
Historians and students in Kolkata remembered Tapan Raychaudhari as a man who had all the qualities of a ‘Renaissance man’. The eminent economic and social historian Tapan Raychaudhari breathed his last on Wednesday in Oxford. He was 90 and had not fully recovered from a stroke he suffered last year.
Professor Raychaudhuri was a Reader in Modern South Asian History at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, from 1973 to 1992. An alumni of Presidency University, he completed his second D. Phil. in Oxford University in the late 1950s, and was the Emeritus Fellow of St. Antony’s College until his death. The winner of a Padma Bhushan in 2007 for his contribution to the study of history, Professor Raychaudhari authored several books on colonial India.
Among his many publications are Bengal Under Akbar and Jahangir, Jan Company in Coromandel, Europe Reconsidered: Perceptions of the West in Nineteenth Century Bengal, and The Cambridge Economic History of India (co-edited with Irfan Habib). He had also penned two autobiographies — Bangal Nama in Bengali and The World in Our Time in English.
Remembering his teacher at Oxford University, Vice-Chancellor of the Calcutta University Suranjan Das said Professor Raychaudhuri took equal interest in both academic as well as personal concerns of the student, a quality which is rarely found in a teacher.
Recalling an incident when his foodie professor personally accompanied him and another student to the dining hall to help shed their inhibitions in a new environment, Professor Das told The Hindu: “Professor Raychaudhuri never imposed his ideologies on us. Even if he differed with our arguments, he would think from our point of view and accordingly assist us to arrive at a logical decision. He treated criticism for his own work in an intellectual way.”
Although Professor Raychaudhuri migrated to the U.K. in 1970’s, he was passionate about research on Indian studies and helped establish the Centre for Indian Studies at Oxford University to encourage research on Indian studies to help dispel commonly-held stereotypes about India and Indian pluralism. Instead of focusing purely on research and analysis, the Centre would take a cultural approach on Indian studies to help understand Indian culture.
Professor Raychaudhuri was a strong critic of post-modernism and believed in empirical studies, the Vice-Chancellor said adding that his wife Pratima Raychaudhuri had played a critical role in supporting him in the domestic front.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Kolkata / by Staff Reporter / Kolkata – December 01st, 2014