Historian Raychaudhuri passes away

Tapan Raychaudhuri, a distinguished historian of modern India’s economic and intellectual history, passed away at his home in Oxford on November 26. He was 90 and had suffered a stroke a year ago from which he never fully recovered.

Professor Raychaudhuri was Reader in Modern South Asian History at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, from 1973 to 1992, when he was given an Ad Hominem Chair as Professor of Indian History and Civilisation.

He retired from Oxford in 1993, but continued to lecture, travel and write till a year before his death.

Among his many publications are Bengal Under Akbar and Jahangir (1969), Jan Company in Coromandel (1962), Europe Reconsidered: Perceptions of the West in Nineteenth Century Bengal (1988), and The Cambridge Economic History of India (co-edited with Irfan Habib).

After his retirement, Professor Raychaudhuri wrote his memoirs Bangal Nama in Bengali. He later wrote his memoirs again, this time in English, calling it The World in Our Time (2012).

Professor Raychaudhuri leaves behind his wife Pratima Raychaudhuri and daughter Sukanya Wignaraja.

“Tapan had a huge range,” said David Washbrook, Senior Research Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge. “From the Mughals and economic history to colonial India and cultural history, to post-colonial society and autobiography. He made major contributions in all these fields but his Europe Rediscovered will be marked as particularly path-breaking. He will be deeply missed.”