Department of History

Permanent URI for this communityhttps://ir.nbu.ac.in/handle/123456789/3711

The Department of History was established in the year 1964, just two years after the foundation of this University. The history of this department is indeed decked with the contribution of many academicians, teachers, research scholars, students, non-teaching members, and others. In 1965, with the initiative of Professor Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya, the then Head of the Department, a University level museum, primarily intended for collecting, preserving, and exhibiting objects of Indian art and antiquity, was founded and named after Akshaya Kumar Maitreya, the famous historian of the colonial period. It is one of the very few History departments of our state which in its syllabus has well-delineated specializations pertaining to the ancient, medieval, modern and contemporary periods. For more than five decades, this department has produced able students, researchers, teachers, and a number of academicians who have received acclamation from every nook and corner of the country. Now the department offers Post Graduate, M.Phil. and Ph.D. courses, besides, giving NET/SET coaching, remedial classes. The department also conducts Study Tour every year for the fourth semester Post Graduate students. It also received various seminar and research grants from UGC, ICSSR, etc. time to time. Significantly, it publishes a peer-reviewed and UGC approved journal, known as Karatoya. The Department has organized a number of special lecture programmes by eminent historians and academicians. From the year 2019, the department has also initiated a monthly Faculty Lecture Programme with a view of sharing the research orientations of the in-house faculty members.

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    In Search Of A ‘New Home’: Anglo-Indians In The Darjeeling Hills, 1900-1947
    (University of North Bengal, 2019-03) Mondal, Amrita
    In the second half of the nineteenth century, most Anglo-Indian, being a Kolkata based community in Bengal, started to move out of the city in search of new employment opportunities. Some of their destinations were the newly established tea gardens of Darjeeling hills and Assam. Mostly they were appointed as managers in the tea estates. The Anglo-Indian community, not being accepted by both the British or Indian society, started to reimagine their identity while settling down in the hills. However, education of their children was turned into a severe problem for them. Some of the Christian missions came forward and opened boarding schools cum ‘home’ for the Anglo-Indian children in the Darjeeling hills. Later these mission schools also became a shelter for the orphan Anglo-Indian children of Kolkata and played an important role in their identity formation. The paper highlights whether these initiatives could able to give a new future to the Anglo-Indian community and if the Anglo-Indian community could able to accept Darjeeling Hills as their ‘new home’. Further, the paper also discusses other nuances, like how did the indigenous people of the hills and the British Raj look at this identity formation, and what kind of new developments started in the hills with the coming of the Anglo-Indians. The paper is based on the archival sources, like newspapers, education, finance and home department report, missionary documents and memoirs.
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    Working Class and Politics of Drinking in Bengal (1856-1900)
    (University of North Bengal, 2018-03) Mondal, Amrita
    In colonial Bengal, being the victims of economic exploitation, the working class’s idea of drinking pleasure faced the moral question of the Indian reformists, Europeans and Christian missionaries. These three groups presented three perceptions on the drinking pleasure of the working class; however, all these narratives indicated that excessive drinking led this particular class into the paths of immorality and financial distress. The paper, while revisiting all these narratives, especially colonial excise policies, finds out patterns of drinking practice of the working class and the reasons for changing the perception of the society on working-class drinking and redefining drinking pleasure of the working class in the nineteenth century Bengal.