A WORLD APART FROM 'SUBALTERN STUDIES'

Mechthild Guha

Danube, Ganges,
and Other Life Streams

Mechthild Guha, née Jungwirth, was born in 1943 in Germany and grew up in Austria. After a PhD in anthropology at Vienna she journeyed to Sussex for postdoctoral research. England was meant to be a staging point for her return to West Africa, where she had spent several months, and about which she published a book—on the history of Benin. Meeting Ranajit Guha at the University of Sussex changed all her plans. They married, lived for a time in England, then moved to Delhi, and then went to Canberra. Now retired, they live close to the Vienna woods.

Of this short but deeply thoughtful memoir Mechthild Guha says: “It had never occurred to me that it would be possible to pack the memory of seventy years into a few pages. Nevertheless, out of an eventful and varied life, I have tried to select those aspects which not only speak of me but also the many people and places that make up my memories.”

A lover of nature, cats, and solitude, Mechthild Guha’s sensitivity, humanity, and curiosity also make her an insightful observer. Among the many fine things about her account is her refusal to defer to reputation: in her observations and assessments there is always the assumption that social status is irrelevant, and she relates well only to those she likes as human beings.

Best of all, she does not offer a fresh perspective on Subaltern Studies, but merely a superb counterpoint to it.

Hardback / 118pp + 8 pages of b/w photos / Rs 395.00 / World rights / end December 2013

Comments

The Unfamiliarity of the Past

Joya Chatterji's most recent book is PARTITION’S LEGACIES . It was published by Permanent Black in June 2019. In this wide-ranging conversation about her books and her career as a teacher, she begins with talking about what drew her to history in the first place. She answers questions put to her by Uttara Shahani (a research scholar at Cambridge University) and Sohini Chattopadhyay (a history researcher at Columbia University) 1. Why did you become a historian? Let’s start at the very beginning . . . . . . A very good place to start. But before I launch into my answer, I want to thank you both for such excellent questions. They all force (or encourage) me to reflect on a lifetime of work. From a personal standpoint, this is a great moment for me to think backwards and ask myself: what did it all add up to? So I am grateful for your critical but generous-spirited questions. Why History? Why indeed. My relationship with the subject is best likened to a love affair. I was introduce...

Romila Thapar remembers an old friend

A few weeks before he passed away, Eric Hobsbawm and his wife invited Romila Thapar to the historian’s 95 th birthday party in London. John Williams played the guitar. The gathered companions drank to the great man’s health. He was convivial and had all his wits about him—as seems evident in the pictures below. A century seemed possible ... In her obituary below, Romila Thapar recounts what Hobsbawm’s work meant to her, and its intellectual legacy more broadly. REMEMBERING ERIC HOBSBAWM Romila Thapar Eric Hobsbawm was the kind of historian whose work, although largely on the last three centuries of European history, was relevant even to those of us who work on a different space and time. The process of historical investigation for him was not restricted to a narrow engagement with a specific subject, but with having to situate it in an extensive ...

UNSETTLING THE PAST: D.D. KOSAMBI AND ROMILA THAPAR

In the Permanent Black pipeline for next year (2013) are two wonderfully interesting books by two great historians of ancient India, D.D. Kosambi and Romila Thapar. Romila Thapar toasting Eric Hobsbawm at his 95th birthday celebration in London, July 2012 The book by Kosambi (actually, two parts of it are by him and one part is on him) is called UNSETTLING THE PAST. The book by Thapar is called THE PAST BEFORE US. UNSETTLING THE PAST Unknown Aspects and Scholarly Assessments of D.D. Kosambi The Kosambi book is a collection of obscure and pretty unknown writings by D.D. Kosambi alongside assessments of his contribution to various areas of scholarship -- ancient history, mathematics, Sanskrit literature, numismatics, and marxism as a method for understanding the past. An array of the great man's unpublished letters, unearthed from the Harvard and TIFR archives by his daughter Meera Kosambi, will comprise one section of the book. Kosambi's corresponden...

Permanent Black

Search This Blog