Bipan Chandra

Bipan Chandra Biography

Bipan Chandra is an Indian historian who specializes in the political as well as economic history of modern Indian. He is associated with the Marxist School of Indian historiography and is serving as the Chairman of the National Book Trust at New Delhi. He served as the member of the University Grants Commission at New Delhi and as the Chairperson of CHS, JNU.

He was born in 1928 in Kangra Valley in Himachal Pradesh. His original surname is Sud and as his ideologies based on egalitarianism he decided to exclude it from his name. He studied at Forman Christian College at Lahore. Then he continued at Stanford University of USA and at University of Delhi. He completed his Ph.D under the guidance of Professor Bishweshwar Prasad.

He worked as a lecturer at Hindu College at Delhi and as the UGC National lecturer in 1973 to 1974. Before he became the professor of History at Jawaharlal Nehru University at New Delhi, he was the reader in the History Department of Delhi University. He was one of the members of the Centre for Historical Studies, JNU and helped in its establishment. He is the Emeritus professor at the CHS.

He served as the visiting professor of Colegio de Mexico. He was the General President of Indian History Congress in 1985. He started the journal Enquiry and was one of the members of its editorial board for quite a long time. The famous lectures that he chaired are Kosambi Memorial Lecture, K. P. Jayswant Memorial Lecture, V. D. Mahajan Memorial Lecture, Inaugural lecture of the first E. M. S. Namboodiripad Memorial Seminar and Heras Memorial Lecture.

He is serving as the Chairman of the National Book Trust at New Delhi and the member of the University Grants Commission at New Delhi. He spearheaded the pro-communist struggle in India since Indian independence. 

Published: N/A

Updated: August 28, 2011