The library at Raj Bhavan's south-east Professor S. Nurul Hasan's is the wing is being restored. As is its largest 'Governor's Shelf' in the Raj Bhavan and it is a privilege to have Record Room. Both are modest of been able to set it in a semblance of size. But they hold in niches of order. surprise, volumes and papers that This first issue in the series of reflect a certain grace-in-age. It has Occasional Papers coincides with the been our special privilege to restore 20th anniversary of his assumption on 12.8.1986, of the office of Governor from the dust of neglect several books of West Bengal. It offers to the reader that belonged to the Governor of the a glimpse into that historian- Governor's mind, his varied career, day and were contributed to the his panoramic scholarship, his library or just 'left behind'. Often generous table, his gift of time to callers and friends. And behind all bearing their signatures and that, a core of privacy. We bring in inscriptions, they tell us something of this first issue, five appreciations of Professor Nurul Hasan and a list of his the Governors' range of reading books in our library. interests and concerns. And also, of course, of the diversity of their Librarian visitors who brought books as gifts. PROF. S. NURUL HASAN asymptotic, has shown increasingly common points of focus on policies. A MEMOIR My connections with him Barun De deepened in those years, though his affection for me went back for at least thirty years before. I first met him at On August 12th 1986, Saiyid the end of 1958. I had accompanied Nurul Hasan joined at Raj Bhavan, my teacher, Prof. Susobhan Sarkar of Kolkata, as Governor of West Bengal. Presidency College (then in Jadavpur With a brief interval of a year in 1990, University) and his family to the when he was transferred to Trivandrum Session of the Indian Bhubaneshwar as Governor of Orissa, History Congress. The first he was to stay here till he passed away Communist state government had just in the Presidency General (SSKM) been formed. Many people like us Hospital on 16th June 1993. Among journeyed to marvel at the pioneering the many Governors who have come efforts to present alternatives to one- to West Bengal, he was one who party rule, if necessary by coalition gained great respect from common with like-minded forces, as much as to people. His mortal remains lay in state attend the somewhat boring paper- in the lower hall of Raj Bhavan from reading. The Sarkar family took me the early hours of the 17th June before with them to call on their old being taken in a cortege down acquaintance, the Chief Minister, Dharamtala Street towards the Airport E.M.S.Namboodiripad. He was for interment near other national preoccupied and formal: they also leaders in the Jamia Milia cemetery in visited their friend, the next in the Delhi. Mourners lined the path up to cabinet hierarchy, C.Achutha Menon, the North Gate of Raj Bhavan and all who would much later become the the way to the suburbs. CPI Chief Minister and originator of The secret of this respect lay some understanding of Congress in his capacity to combine a policies at the turn of the 70s. Among international reputation as secularist his suggestions to the Sarkars was that teacher and erudite scholar of they take the lead in developing mediaeval and modern history with a understanding of the method of Marx remarkable diplomatic capacity to among the professionals in higher encourage Left Front rulers of this education and that we could meet the state to steer closer to some elements head of the Party group concerned of the Congress, indeed those who with such matters, Comrade now hold power in the United Damodaran. My friend from Oxford Progressive Alliance in New Delhi. days who had just come back with his This was a sort of convergence for brilliant D.Phil on the agrarian system national progress, which though of Mughal India, Irfan Habib, had also 2 come to the session with Professor in eastern UP, grieving over the Nurul Hasan and his student Iqtidar departure to war of their Purbiya Alam Khan. It was decided that along Sipahi young men. In short, we should with them we would have this small not be restricted only to administrative get together. The three of them, policies of the state (in which I told Prof.Sarkar, his daughter Sipra and him I had just begun my thesis) but son Sumit, then a M.A student, should research into the social and Prof.Bimalaprasad Mukherjee of economic system and political culture, Jadavpur and his son Saugata, and of which policy was only the myself were present. It was felt that regulatory element. Times would such meetings of like-minded people change rapidly, he said. It would be should be held in subsequent sessions. our responsibility to change and This has been done in the History mould the outlook, and to give newer Congress till this day and Irfan Habib and more interesting dimensions to remains the one constant factor in the year after year of new students. If we group. Professor Nurul Hasan had were to build a new movement in been quiet and not been very historical thinking, we should not communicative, but at the end said to remain bogged down even in the latest me that he would like to have a chat shibboleths. Our windows should be when I was free from the sessions. open to the ever-blowing winds of change. What he did not say was that This we did later in a we should be ready to go past even corridor of the University. That the fascination of current Marxist meeting was inspirational for me. He ideas, though we should not shy away was then a slim, very good looking from its very penetrating insights into and elegant man, built small and with the relations and forces of production. a sparkle in his eyes. What he said to me was very new in the country at It is possible to discern in that time, though I could recognize this much of the avant-garde thinking much of it from the social history about the social sciences that has thinking of Oxford in the 1950s of rolled in over our outlook in the last Asa Briggs, Trevor-Roper or fifty years - the premises of 'history Christopher Hill. He thought that new from below' that men like teachers of my generation should look E.P.Thompson pioneered at least a at the society and culture of the decade later, of 'cultural studies' common people, that we should whether of the variety begun by Stuart interest ourselves in the mass appeal Hall, or varied by Barney Cohn and of the folk literature related to the Subaltern Studies group two religious practices, in the poetry and decades later, or the re-fashioning of romance surrounding the ballads of Marxism away from Soviet regulation the sort which were sung by lovers into open-ended and firmly academic and brides in his Ghazipur homeland discourse related to the specificities of 3 the lives of all classes, rich as well as Unlike M.A.Jinnah or the Raja of poor. Mulling over the details, largely Mahmudabad, Sir Wazir Hasan's un-chronicled, of Dr. Nurul Hasan's associates of those days, he remained achievements, from his youth through averse to political communalism. His his teaching career, his own research, sons S.Husain Zaheer, S.Ali Zaheer his widespread reading, and on the and the communist Sajjad Zaheer, other hand his public life, as an MP, a were staunch nationalists, the former a Minister for Education, Social Vice Chairman of the CSIR and Dr, Welfare and Culture in Indira Nurul Hasan's ideal, the second a Gandhi's cabinet in the 1970s, as Vice Minister in the Congress Government Chairman of the Council for Scientific in UP. and Industrial Research and then as The young Nurul Hasan read Ambassador to the Soviet Union in History at the nationalist fountainhead the 1980s, and as Governor, it seems of Allahabad University. His teachers that his greatest achievement was of included Dr.Tara Chand, whose book encouragement to keep our windows on the interrelation of Islam and open to the prospects of change and Hindu civilization in Mediaeval India improvement, to plan for the future had led Jawaharlal Nehru, also an without losing hope in the present, Allahabadi, and Maulana Azad, to and to steer clear of dogma. entrust him with writing the first He was born on the 26th history of the Indian freedom December 1921, the son of Saiyid movement. Others were Dr.Ishwari Abdul Hasan, who rose to the rank of Prasad, a specialist on international Chairman of the Court of Wards in the relations as well as mediaeval India, old UP. His father's revenue and and Dr.R.P.Tripathi, an eminent agrarian experience influenced his systematic thinker on "Muslim knowledge of Persian and Hindustani Administration in India", whom Dr. documents that are the archives of Nurul Hasan greatly admired. Their rural life in the transition during early presuppositions about the non- modern times from Later Mughal to conflictual character of traditional Early Colonial India. His social origin composite culture in India and the was among the scholar-gentry, Shia need to go beyond the facts of state and petty aristocratic without rural policy to the structure and logic of its Sunni orthodoxy, and with affinity to own premises, basing this analysis on cultural roots in the vilayet that was only the original language source not Britain but rather the 'western material, seems to have influenced his authority' of Iran and Turan.