Professor Sushil Chaudhury

Raziuddin Aquil 

Some distinguished senior historians have passed away in recent months. Known for their formidable scholarship in their respective fields of expertise with a wider historiographical, theoretical and, sometimes, ideological frameworks in which they anchored their work, they commanded much respect.

I didn't know Professor Sushil Chaudhury personally, but have valued his rigorous and critical stance on new scholarship which must establish itself on the strength of solid empirical research, no matter where it was conducted. An approach like this will elicit respect even from people who might disagree with his interpretation - a quality lacking in the chaukidars of different little schools of historiography. For the chaukidars might be able to protect the boundary, academic or fake, but they can't take us forward.

In months leading to his demise, Professor Chaudhury brought together some of his voluminous writings in collections such as these two:

Trade, Politics and Society: The Indian Milieu in the Early Modern Era

Companies, Commerce and Merchants: Bengal in the Pre-Colonial Era

The two volumes recently published by Manohar comprise as many as thirty-three essays spread over thickly-composed 700 pages! Friends interested in trade and commerce in Bengal in the eighteenth century, and in early modern era generally, must check out the awe-inspiring tables of contents for their range of themes the late historian worked at an industrial scale. And, these are mere samples, as he has published a number of other well-known books from his institutional location in the historic, University of Calcutta.

Salam to Sushil Chaudhury!