She Recovered Many Histories – A Tribute To Aparna Basu

She Recovered Many Histories – A Tribute To Aparna Basu

The meticulousness and brilliance of Aparna’s scholarly works can be evinced from the fact that her doctoral thesis grew into a published and significant book called The Growth of Education and Political Development in India, 1898–1920. The book, which is the scholarly production of her lively and enthusiastic mind, is thoroughly documented in both unpublished and published primary sources, and is buttressed with maps and tables based on the public and private papers of the administrators, and four important leaders of the national movement.

Aparna Basu Books And Research

• It has two major themes: the Government of India’s attempted control of education, and the development of education under the social pressures of the time. Arising from these two are the effect of will, or the lack of it, upon governmental projects, and the deadening effect of bureaucracy upon all creative activity.
• Her thesis and the book are significant contributions to the study of the links between education and politics in India about which there are far too many myths, and too little systematic research.
• She was also the author of another dozen books, biographies as well as anthologies. Some of her significant books were Mridula Sarabhai: Rebel with a Cause, Women’s Struggle: A History of the All India Women’s Conference, 1927–1990, Breaking Out of Invisibility: Women in Indian History, etc.
• In Mridula Sarabhai: Rebel with a Cause, Aparna has skilfully presented the life of the revolutionary heroine of the independence movement, who was born into the Sarabhai family of Ahmedabad in 1911.
• A non-conformist and a rebel championing unpopular causes, she spurned offers of high office in the political arena of national government.

Educational History Of India

• Women’s Struggle: A History of the All India Women’s Conference, 1927–1990 narrates in detail the history and the changing nature of activities undertaken by the All India Women’s Conference (AIWC) during its long career from 1927 to the present.
• Along with Anup Taneja, Aparna utilised some of the rare sources such as the AIWC files, private papers of Muthulakshmi Reddy as well as some hitherto unknown women’s journals.
• A large number of interviews that she conducted among women threw new facts about women’s activities in the public sphere.
• Breaking Out of Invisibility: Women in Indian History marks a welcome recognition of the importance of situating women’s history within the broader perspective of social history, and illustrates the wide variety of themes in women’s history on which historians have been working over the last few decades.

Generous Scholarly Guide

• The 14 essays by leading specialists are a rich insight for the readers into the gendered history of India. But aparna had another credential which is not common amongst high flying scholars, and that was the willingness, the generosity to “bend down” to assist other more action-oriented projects.
• She responded to so many requests for her guidance and contribution without assessing whether they would add to her credentials or were worthy of her status—just due to the generosity of her spirit. Aparna undertook the leadership of the AIWC at a critical time in its history, causing the organisation to reinvent through newer activities.
• Even after her term as president was over, she continued to mentor it. Her involvement with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s work was another area she traversed, no longer really the fashion amongst academics.

History Of Women’s Rights In India

• Undaunted, Aparna took up the chairpersonship of the National Gandhi Museum in 2013 (and held it until her death), changed its character, made it lively by holding meetings, conferences and exhibitions and publishing tracts, all of which brought the institution and its legacy into prominence.
• The extraordinary fact is that Aparna engaged in all this governance and direction while simultaneously writing well-researched books and informally guiding scholars and academic friends and colleagues. She guided researchers not only on where to look, but how to organise the material.
• In 2016, she pulled together an outstanding exhibition on Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay’s life at the India International Centre. In 2018, she did the same for an exhibition on the Ahmedabad millworkers’ strike of 1918.
• Her absence has created a serious gap in the working of many institutions, as well as the recovery of many histories.