Fellow historians remember Chandra: ‘He ushered in a new school of thought’

Elaborating on his legacy, historian and JNU Professor Aditya Mukherjee said, “Very rarely do you have a school of thought associated with one person — the Cambridge school or the Annales school. Among modern Indian historians, Bipan Chandra built a huge team and he could form a school of thought which came to be known as the Bipan Chandra school and many historians associate themselves with it.” Chandra, Aditya Mukherjee and Mridula Mukherjee co-authored India Since Independence which was published in 1999.

Born in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh, in 1928, Chandra studied at Forman Christian College, Lahore, before going to Stanford University where he received his graduate and postgraduate degrees. On his return, Chandra taught history at DU’s Hindu College. In 1963, Chandra received a PhD from DU and seven years later he moved to JNU where another noted historian Satish Chandra taught history.
Historian Satish Chandra said, “He will be remembered for his fiercely independent anti-imperialist position. His research and scholarship was not of an arm-chair kind. While he was critiquing colonialism, he was also helping in formulating policies for the government to overcome the effects of the same.”

Historian Sabyasachi Bhattacharya who was Chandra’s colleague at JNU for 25 years said, “In his later works, he developed an interpretation of the Indian National Movement and also contributed a good deal in the area of the Indian National Congress, especially in the period between 1919 and 1942.”

Bipan Chandra also held many honorary positions such as the president of the Indian History Congress, member of the UGC and the chairman of the NBT.

After his last book Making of Modern India: From Marx to Gandhi was published in 2012, Chandra had been working on two books — a biography of Bhagat Singh and an autobiography, Mukherjee said.

He is survived by his wife and two sons.