Dr Prachi Deshpande, Associate Professor of History in 'Centre for Studies in Social Sciences', Calcutta delivered the fourth annual Nandita Prasad Sahai memorial lecture 2017 held in Jawahar lal University on Friday.
Tripti Deo, a PhD scholar and distinguished lecturer, spoke about the history of the memorial lecture series initiated in 2014 and narrated how Professor Nandita Sahai left her indelible mark on her chosen field of State formation, politics, and gender research in history at a rather young age.
She further recalled how the earlier talks delivered by the eminent historians - Prof. Romila Thapar (2016), Dr. Rosalind O'Hanlon from Oxford University (2015), and Professor Sunil Kumar (2014) - under the aegis of the series, engendered inspiration for fresh research initiatives in research issues that were dear to Prof Nandita Sahai before her untimely demise in 2013.
Professor Nandita Prasad Sahai, a scholar and teacher of South Asian history, received her PhD from the University of Delhi in 2001, where she also taught at the renowned Hindu College from 1998 until 2006. From an early stage in her career as a historian Professor Sahai was engaged in understanding aspects of early modern Indian society through a wide range of sources including oral traditions and written records. She was particularly interested in issues related to marginalized groups, politics of protest as well as women and gender in history, which she addressed through extensive research on Rajasthan, western India.
More recently, Professor Sahai's combined interest in people on the margins as well as gender were reflected in a series of important articles on legal disputes involving families of artisans, particularly the Sunars or goldsmiths from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.