Sugata Bose is the Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs at Harvard University. He is the author of several books on the economic, social and political history of modern South Asia, and has pioneered work in historical studies emphasizing the centrality of the Indian Ocean. Previously he taught at Tufts University. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge under Eric Stokes.
Sugata Bose is the grandnephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and grandson of Nationalist leader Sarat Chandra Bose. He is the partner of Ayesha Jalal, a prominent Pakistani historian.
Harvard historian and grandnephew of Subhash Chandra Bose on his book A Hundred Horizons and the recently set up Harvard field office in Mumbai
Paromita Mukhopadhyay Interviews Sugata BoseTell us about your book. It's about India's economic, cultural, political connections with the wider Indian Ocean world in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is an interpretation of the historical antecedents of globalisation and shows how there were multiple authors of the globalisation process. I argue that the history of the modern age was characterised by the interplay of multiple and competing universalisms rather than clashing civilisations. The book offers new perspectives on globalisation, empire and nationalism. It is an exercise in comparative and connective history written in a literary vein narrating stories of oceanic voyages of many Indians, elite and subaltern.
You've been on sabbatical from Harvard?Yes, I've been busy with my research on the history of economic and political ideas in India in the late 19th and mid 20th centuries. I am focusing on the creative and innovative ideas that lost out in the battle for state power in 1947 -- imaginative ideas on Indian unity from say Aurobindo Ghosh and Bipin Pal and their ideas of ethical polity.
Is it Bengali intellectuals versus the rest? No. there's also Lala Lajpat Rai and Tilak and many others drawn from a variety of linguistic regions and religious communities. Lala Lajpat Rai, for example, had an internationalist vision and even wrote a book on the US in the second decade of the 20th century.
You were supposed to write the definitive biography of Subhash Chandra Bose. I may do so in the future. I've just completed editing the 12th volume of the Collected works of Netaji. The reason I've been diffident about it is because I'd like to look at him as a historian.
Of all the books on Netaji which is the most authentic? Leonard Gordon's
Brothers Against the Raj.
Which are the areas of India's history that remain unexplored? India's inter-regional connections with its neighbours. We need to creatively trespass across the outer boundaries of India, not just recover its internal fragments. The area studies rubric has been too rigid. A sound historical grasp of both India's global and inter-regional roles is necessary. Secondly, new histories of Indian regions where it's possible to explore both regionally and religiously based identity. The secular-communal dichotomy has to go. Self-avowedly secular historians have been awkward in writing about religion in public life and hence the bigots took over religion. We ought to be able to understand religion sensibly and distinguish between religious sensibility and religious prejudice. And thirdly, a new history of ideas drawing on innovative approaches to intellectual history.
In your work you've barely mentioned Christianity as a factor in shaping Indian culture...The 1857 rebellion I think was in part a response to a perceived threat from evangelical Christianity. But Christianity is an old Indian religion. It has been around from the 3rd-4th century and has been adapted to Indian conditions. Secondly, British policymakers in the mid 19th century did actually think seriously about promoting Christianity. I have written about an interesting debate on this question between Gladstone and Macaulay. The latter believed Christianity might be spread as a secondary end of government but feared that would undermine the primary end of government which was to maintain order.
Your intellectual mentors?Eric Stokes was my supervisor in Cambridge, Amartya Sen has been a tremendous inspiration for more than twenty-five years and with whom I have the good fortune of jointly teach a course now at Harvard. Among other historians of India whose work I admire are C. A. Bayly and Ranajit Guha though I don't belong to the subaltern collective.
India has been around for sometime and so has Harvard. Why a field office now at Mumbai?We are building a powerful South Asia Institute at Harvard and through the field office at Mumbai we intend to facilitate the study and research of students and faculty in areas like History, Economics, Anthropology and other disciplines in India. We have neglected India and South Asia in the past. Most of the funding had gone for studying China and Japan. Now there is new interest in India: South Asia is strategically important, the Indian economy too is attractive and there is great scholarship. There are younger South Asian scholars now whose work is at cutting edge.
Any interesting topic that your students are doing research on? Your next major project? One of my students is working on the intellectual encounters between India and Germany in the late 20th century. Others are working on history of colonial law, history of medicine and public health, and still others on migration and diaspora. My next major project will be on the history of economic and political ideas in India and may be a popular work on Subhas Chandra Bose and/or Rabindranath Tagore. I will also write articles based on materials I did not include in my recent book
Bose's field of specialization is modern South Asian and Indian Ocean history. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. His most recent book is A Hundred Horizons: the Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.) In it Bose crosses area studies and disciplinary frontiers and bridges the domains of political economy and culture. He was a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1997.
Bose dedicates his efforts to “establishing a home for facilitating cutting-edge scholarship on modern South Asia in a global, comparative context.”
“South Asia Without Borders”—SAI’s collaborative research program involving historians, economists, political scientists, anthropologists, and other scholars—identifies South Asia’s most pressing contemporary problems and offers innovative solutions. This year’s research explored current conceptions of sovereignty and citizenship, the migratory consequences of partition, and South Asian “border culture.”
Bose directs growing undergraduate attention to critical regional issues like nationalism, economic development, and religious identities through his course on “The Making of Modern South Asia,” which he coteaches with Nobel Prize–winning economist and Thomas W. Lamont University Professor Amartya Sen. Bose has also developed an array of overseas undergraduate opportunities, including projects in tsunami-affected areas; he has encouraged student-run South Asian organizations; and soon he will launch two pioneering websites—a history of the United Nations and a “polyphonic” chronicle of South Asia that showcases calligraphy and miniatures from India’s Mughal empire.
Like the celebrated ocean that inspires him, Bose’s efforts flow from the belief that borders of every kind “are meant to be crossed.”
Selected Publications
- A Hundred Horizons: the Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire Harvard University Press (2006)
- Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy with Ayesha Jalal (2004)
- Nationalism, Democracy and Development with Ayesha Jalal (1997)
- Credit, Markets and the Agrarian Economy of Colonial India (1994)
- Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital in The New Cambridge History of India series
(1993) - South Asia and World Capitalism (1990)
- Agrarian Bengal: Economy, Social Structure and Politics in Cambridge University Press (1986)
Harvard University History Department - Faculty: Sugata Bose
