The Calling of History

A leading scholar in early 20th-century India, Sir Jadunath Sarkar (1870-1958) was knighted in 1929 and became the first Indian historian to gain honorary membership in the American Historical Association. By the end of his lifetime, however, he had been marginalised by the Indian history establishment, as postcolonial historians embraced alternative approaches in the name of democracy and anti-colonialism. 'The Calling of History' examines Sarkar's career, and poignant obsolescence, as a way in to larger questions about the discipline of history and its public life.