"My research on the history of economic ideas was heavily inspired by Guha's first work," said Chakrabarti. Sociology assistant professor Upal Chakrabarti talked about how Guha's work influenced every sphere of academic thinking and beyond. The event was organised in collaboration with the students' circle, Bhabuk Sabha, and the sociology department. Co-faculty members and academic collaborators of Guha, including Gayatri Spivak and keynote speaker Partha Chatterjee, had recalled anecdotes about the historian. To commemorate his centenary year, the university organised a two-day symposium on his life and works in December. Guha is perhaps most fondly remembered by students and faculty of his alma mater, Presidency University. Born at Backerganj in present-day Bangladesh, on May 23, 1923, and having studied history at the University of Sussex from 1959, Guha's work was exported across borders and applied to discussions of historically oppressed communities globally. I was lucky that later in life I had the privilege to interact with him intellectually," she said. "In childhood, I knew him in a familial way. Based in Bonn, Debarati said reading her uncle's works inspired her MPhil dissertation and PhD. There may be a funeral service and last rites in Vienna after Wednesday. His niece Debarati Guha said over the past decade, her correspondence with Guha was usually redirected through her aunt in written form since Guha became less coherent as his health failed. Having retired from academics for more than 15 years due to his health, he was living with his German wife Mechthild in Purkersdorf at the time of his death. In the last leg of Guha's research, he wrote exclusively in Bengali and lived isolated with his Bengali books, as he did not learn much German while living in Austria. While his speech was slower and he was forgetting recent incidents, it was remarkable how accurately he recalled anecdotes from 50 to 70 years ago," said Chatterjee. It was very unusual that he agreed to an interview at that time. ![]() ![]() "Towards the end of his life, he increasingly withdrew from academics and did not like to do interviews. Political scientist and member of the Subaltern Studies Group Partha Chatterjee recalled the last time he met Guha at his Vienna home for an interview in 2018. As one of the founders of Subaltern Studies School, Guha and his colleagues looked at the cross-sections of caste-, class- and gender-based subordination, the voices of which were largely under-represented by mainstream elitist history writers before his time. Guha's influence was not limited to any school of history but revolutionized every diverse stream of social sciences with his approach to highlighting the lives of the marginalised. KOLKATA: Historian Ranajit Guha's death at his Austria home on Saturday, a month before his 100th birthday, has left the academic community in Kolkata and across the world remembering the icon's enormous influence in shaping of study of post-colonial history in South Asia.
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