Rudrangshu Mukherjee

Rudrangshu Mukherjee is a historian and author of several history books. He was formerly the Opinions Editor for The Telegraph newspaper, Kolkata and the Chancellor for Ashoka University, where he also serves as Professor of History. He was the founding Vice-Chancellor of Ashoka when the University began in 2014 and was succeeded in 2017 by Pratap Bhanu Mehta.

Academics

He studied at Calcutta Boys' School, Presidency College, Kolkata, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and St Edmund Hall, Oxford.

His 1980 D.Phil thesis at the University of Oxford was titled "The rebellion in Awadh, 1857-1858: a study in popular resistance". He has revisited his view of the revolt from the native perspective in books including Awadh in Revolt 1857-58: A Study of Popular Resistance (Delhi, 1984, repr. 2002), Spectre of Violence: The 1857 Kanpur Massacres (Delhi, 1988), and Mangal Pandey: Brave Martyr or Accidental Hero? (Penguin India).

Career He has taught history at the University of Calcutta and held visiting appointments at Princeton University, the University of Manchester, the University of California, Santa Cruz and the Young India Fellowship, New Delhi. At the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC), which he had joined as a Junior Research Fellow in 1975, he was involved in issues concerning the ascendancy of the North in the production of knowledge. After the 2007 Nandigram episode, he was among those leftist intellectuals in Kolkata who protested the violent policies of the left.