Бипан Чандра: Үнді тарихшысының өмірі мен еңбектері

Indian historian (1928–2014)

Bipan Chandra (24 May 1928 – 30 August 2014) was an Indian historian, specialising in economic and political history of modern India. An emeritus professor of modern history at Jawaharlal Nehru University, he specialized on the Indian independence movement and is considered a leading scholar on Mahatma Gandhi. He authored several books, including The Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism.

Chandra was born in Kangra in Punjab, British India (now in Himachal Pradesh). As used to be the case in old Punjab, his early education was in Urdu, he was best at home in his early years with an Urdu novel by his side. He graduated from Forman Christian College, Lahore in 1946 after which the Partition forced him to leave. Thereafter he went to the United States where he studied at the Stanford University, California, United States, to complete his graduation and post graduation. He established contact with Communists there, and, caught in the net cast under Senator McCarthy's anti Communist crusade, he was deported to India. Back in Delhi in the early 1950s, Bipan Chandra was appointed lecturer in history at the Hindu College, Delhi. Later he completed his Ph. D. from Delhi University in 1963.

Chandra taught for many years as lecturer and then as reader at Hindu College, Delhi. He became professor of History at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, soon after the university was founded and after retirement was appointed as an emeritus professor there. He founded the journal Enquiry and was a member of its editorial board for a long time. He was chairperson of the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He became a member of the University Grants Commission in 1993. As Chairman of National Book Trust, India, he started many new series such as Popular Social Science, Autobiography, Afro Asian Countries series, Indian Diaspora Studies etc. In his retirement years he was appointed as a national research professor in 2007. His co authored book, Freedom Struggle, was censored by the new central government that came to power in India in 1977. He collaborated with historians such Nurul Hasan, Ram Sharan Sharma, Sarvapalli Gopal, Satish Chandra, Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, Barun De and Arjun Dev and some of his students, such as Mridula Mukherjee, Aditya Mukherjee, Sucheta Mahajan and Vishalakshi Menon, some of whose textbooks have previously been prescribed in the history syllabi of schools in India.

In April 2016, right wing activist Dinanath Batra sought a ban on Chandra's India's Struggle for Independence because of a misunderstanding of the terminology used in it.

Chandra died on 30 August 2014, at his home in Gurgaon, after prolonged illness, aged 86. JNU organised a commemorative event on his birth anniversary.