Conveners: Indra Sengupta (GHIL) and Neeladri Bhattacharya (Ashoka University)

Conference to be held at ICAS:MP, New Delhi

The conference will focus on the world of popular histories that circulate in the public sphere, outside the domain of academic history, and will seek to examine the ways in which they constitute people’s historical consciousness of people. Our premise is that the common sense of the general public is far less influenced by what academic historians write than by conceptions of the past that such ‘popular’ histories help produce. The historical consciousness constituted in this way then defines how people act, how they think about themselves and others, their social vision, and their political being. The objective of the conference is to explore how such narratives work, and the way they are mediated by and constitute the political. The conference will bring together scholars from India, Germany, the UK, and other countries to discuss the topic in a transnational perspective.

For further information please contact Indra Sengupta: i.sengupta@ghil.ac.uk