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
Born and brought up in Santiniketan, Suranjan Basu graduated from Kala Bhavana, Visva Bharati, in 1980 and then attended Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara, for his post diploma in 1982. Deeply engaged in printmaking—especially woodcuts—since the late 1970s, he participated in numerous collaborative experiments with artists in Kolkata until a Lalit Kala Akademi Research Grant (1983-84) led him to New Delhi’s Garhi studios where he integrated mural concepts into printmaking. After teaching at Gyan Bharati School for a few years, in 1990 he returned to his roots at Kala Bhavana and taught there for the rest of his life at the same time as he curated exhibitions and introduced digital media into the curriculum.
Basu played a key role in forming ‘The Realists’—an artists’ collective focused on socially engaged art practices. He also participated in numerous art camps and exhibitions across the country as well as exhibited abroad, in London, Bradford and Amsterdam
He passed away after a brief illness on 3 April 2002 in Santiniketan.
A posthumous retrospective was organised by the Realists in 2002 at Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan, and by Seagull Foundation for the Arts in 2008 in Calcutta.
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.