A brief, and sharply posed, exchange between Dipesh Chakrabarty and Ranajit Das Gupta on working class consciousness in Bengal, this book posits that this consciousness is not a mechanical outcome of the capitalist mode of production, it is not a thing but a process; that even failure must be taken on board in order to flesh out that process; that not only was the working class present (and therefore conscious) of its own making, but drew from rich pre-capitalistcultural traditions of dissent, rebellion and republicanism.
A brief, and sharply posed, exchange between Dipesh Chakrabarty and Ranajit Das Gupta on working class consciousness in Bengal, this book posits that this consciousness is not a mechanical outcome of the capitalist mode of production, it is not a thing but a process; that even failure must be taken on board in order to flesh out that process; that not only was the working class present (and therefore conscious) of its own making, but drew from rich pre-capitalistcultural traditions of dissent, rebellion and republicanism.
Dipesh Chakrabarty (born 1948) studied Physics at Presidency College, Calcutta, and Management at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. He received a PhD in History from Australian National University, Canberra. After having taught for several years at the University of Melbourne, he is now the Lawrence A. Klimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History and South Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Chicago. He has held visiting appointments at several institutions around the world. He is the author of Rethinking Working Class History: Bengal 1890-1940 (1989), Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (2000), Habitations of Modernity (2002) and The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and his Empire of Truth (2015). He has also published two volumes of essays in Bengali. The paper reprinted in this volume was written when he was a visiting fellow at CSSSC. Ranajit Das Gupta (1932-1998) studied Economics at the University of Calcutta. In his youth, he was closely involved with the labour movement and the Communist Party of India. After teaching for several years at Ananda Mohan College, Calcutta, he was a Fellow at CSSSC in the 1970s, before joining the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, as a member of its faculty. His books include Problems of Economic Transition: Indian Case Study (1970), Economy, Society and Politics in Bengal: Jalpaiguri 1869-1947 (1992), and Labour and Working Class in Eastern India (1994).
