REGISTRATIONS OPEN NOW
Speakers:
Romila Thapar, Krishna Kumar, Meera Visvanathan, Naveen Kishore, Avinash Kumar, Rakhshanda Jalil, Rosy Singh, Sarmistha Dutta Gupta, Omair Ahmed, KB Veio Pou, Parvati Sharma, Kavita Panjabi
Workshop Facilitators:
Debarati Bagchi, Anwesha Sengupta, Samata Biswas, Sunita Biswas . . .
Full programme and registration here:
historyforpeace.pw/post/on-histor
SPEAKERS:
Tanika Sarkar
Keynote Address
Naina Dayal
India before Islam: Notes from Teaching the History of Religion in Early India
Angana Chatterji
Erasure/Counter-Memory: De-racializing Kashmir in India’s Historical Present
Janaki Nair
Should Indian school children develop ‘National Pride’ or ‘Historical Understanding’ Questions of a Teacher reading textbooks
On History and Literature
Annual Conference 2025
Calcutta
24, 25, 26 July 2025
Historians face the daunting task of weaving narratives from scattered fragments, crumbling ruins, dusty archives and bulky manuscripts. Does their craft make them storytellers?
The sources they consult—be they archival or oral—often contain narratives of their own, refracted through the motivations of their authors. As Hannah Arendt noted, the ability to tell stories is how we become historical. It is perhaps time, then, to reimagine the traditional dichotomy between literature and history, or art and science, and to question the empire of history.
Traditional history textbooks often present a sterile chronicle of events—a dry, factual record that flattens human civilization into a single authoritative narrative. In contrast, literature provides a deeply personal, immersive perspective on the past, capturing the values, ideas, struggles and transformations of societies. Stories create spaces that have possibilities of sanctifying the truth of experience.
This conference seeks to explore a crucial question: Can literature serve as a legitimate and effective source for teaching history? If so, how should it be approached, and what are its advantages and limitations?
By bringing together educators, historians, writers and literary scholars, this conference will ask: Why is narrative crucial to history? And how can literature be used in the classroom to teach histories that humanize?
FULL PROGRAMME AND REGISTRATION DETAILS COMING SOON
Celebrating 100 years of K. G. Subramanyan
Glimpse from 2024
The celebrated artist, teacher and public intellectual Kalpathi Ganpathi Subramanyan (KGS) was born in Kerala a hundred years ago. At a deeper level, his journey from Palghat to Vadodara, via Chennai, Santiniketan, Baroda and again, Santiniketan, exemplifies the best of the idea of India. From the 1997 book by academic Sunil Khilnani to the erudite dialogue between historian Romila Thapar and theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, we have a framework to understand the contours of the idea of India. While these scholars articulate it in words, the visual language of KGS provides a graphic and pictorial reading of a nation that went through the excesses of both colonial and post-colonial regimes.