In January 2014, Jawhar Sircar delivered the Annual Address to the Asiatic Society of Kolkata. He spoke before a packed audience of senior scholars, on ‘The Role of Brahmanical Class in the Unification of India’.
This monograph presents an unusual postulate, that the sum total of Brahmanical interventions on the Indian sub-continent, for two and a half millennia, reveals some traces of a ‘grand design.’ It is fairly balanced and well researched, though it is still to be completed.
He has listed out the ‘tactics’, that may have been used, but the end result has been to forge ‘cultural’ unity amongst disparate nationalities and ethno-linguistic groups, which the British intervention only helped catalyse further.
Published by:
Institute of Development Studies Kolkata
Calcutta University Alipore Campus, Kolkata
First version published in 2005
Final version published in 2016
Comments on the book
"What he (Jawhar Sircar) has given us shows his exceptional analytical power and depth of knowledge in diverse fields. None of us has yet been able to complete what Prof. Niharranjan Ray had intended and started to do — that is, to anthologize the social history of the Bengalis. Jawhar Sircar has the power to do so and take up this monumental task. This monograph has proved it. We hope he will not disappoint us. "
— Tapan Raychaudhuri, Oxford University
[Desh, Kolkata, February 2, 2006].
"He (Jawhar Sircar) has published a monograph based on his research (Sircar 2005) but the main body of his work remains to be published. He is an outstanding historical and interpretive anthropologist, with a brilliant career in administration standing in the way of his scholarly work. He has wide ranging intellectual engagement in the history of Bengali religion and culture."
— Ralph W Nicholas, Prof. Emeritus Anthropology, Chicago University
[Preface to ‘Rites of Spring: Gajan in Village Bengal, Chronicle Books, New Delhi, 2008]
"Your IDSK monograph’s scholarship should be the envy of any university professor and your commitment to both asking a fresh set of questions and exploring the problematic in all its depth is just magnificent. I had heard of you as a fine scholar, but hadn’t an occasion to read any of your writings. I am glad that I started with this one. This marvellous piece and its depth and originality truly overwhelms. What a loss to the academia! "
— Harbans Mukhia, Professor of History, JNU