Acknowledgements


 We are indebted to everybody who had encouraged us, in days when JSHC was merely an idea. But then ideas cannot be killed. This is the product of more than a year’s work conceptualizing, tracing the way forward and setting out the contours.

Our editorial advisors couldn’t be thanked enough. They were there when this was still on the drawing board.

All our peer reviewers and members of the editorial team, our editorial assistants, worked tirelessly to help us come this far. It has been a collective effort without which none of this could have been possible. With the inception of JSHC we finally hope to contribute in a little way towards re-conceptualizing disciplinary practices in India and aiding in the dialogic process between disciplines, still pretty much in a nascent stage.

We are most grateful to Subhadi (Professor Subha Chakraborty Dasgupta) without whom none of this would have been possible. Her magnanimity was one of the reasons why we never gave up. She has been a source of encouragement and support.

We would like to thank Malinidi (Malini Bhattacharya) without whose constant support our first issue might never have taken off. Both the special article section and interview were possible due to her. She has been kind enough in even writing the first JSHC special article, taking time out from her prior commitments.

We are grateful that Dr. Ashok Mitra agreed to sit through an interview, even when he rarely does so nowadays. Many of his views and opinions would seem to be a timely interjection today.

Tariq Ali made himself available for the two sessions which were required for the interview and we are thankful to him. Without it our attempt at addressing the issues threads to which we had only but picked up in our CFP, would have remained incomplete.

 The purpose behind re-printing Rabindranath Tagore’s “A Vision of India’s History” is to provide scholars of Modern Indian History or its intellectual traditions, insight into the historical outlook of one the greatest of Indian polymaths. One who towered over others both during India’s nationalist phase and its shift to a much more flexible inwardness and internationalism, during the early decades of the twentieth century. We are indebted to Visva Bharati for having preserved much of Rabindranath’s writings, without which it would not have been possible to publish the essay, out in the public domain now. While Umadi (Professor Uma Das Gupta) very kindly allowed us to reprint her essay “The Poet on the Past” and has egged us on throughout the process.

Without her much of the reprint section wouldn’t have been possible. Her essay would shed a more uniform light on Rabindranath’s historical outlook, given that she has consulted Rabindranath’s entire corpus in building up on her motif. Thanks are also due to the Visva Bharati Granthana Vibhaga and Dr. Ramkumar Mukhopadhyay for their kind consent in allowing us to publish the essay.

We are also indebted to our friend Bipratim Saha; without his aesthetic and technical support the journal would not look or function as it does today. We would also like to thank our colleagues Malepati Chandrasekhar and Rohith Reddy, for their vital contributions to the technical process of actually getting the journal online. 

The cover photo is from Washington Area Spark's collection on Flikr.com licensed under the Creative Commons license to Reading/Simpson. We are indebted to him for the photograph which expresses all that we would have liked to in a concept note.

The Editorial Team

 

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