A Marxist scholar and historian, Irfan Habib has been a towering presence in the Indian intellectual scene for over four decades. His formidable intellectual reputation, established in the sixties with the publication of ‘The Agrarian System of Mughal India’, broadened as he became an authority in the entire area of Indian history from ancient to modern. Professor Habib’s undiminished commitment to the cause of socialism is reflected in these highly original and bold analyses of Marxist historiography and theories of socialist construction.

This volume comprises essays from scholars around the world representing the wide variety of Habib’s interests and contributions. Ranging from history to politics and economics, the essays cover both the medieval period and modern India, as well as theories for the future of this emerging superpower. This special edition also features an essay by Irfan Habib, originally published as ‘The Economic History of Medieval India: A Survey’, covering the Delhi Sultanate, the Vijayanagara economy and the economy of Mughal India.

K. N. Panikkar teaches History at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Terence J. Byres teaches Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, London.

Utsa Patnaik teaches Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Preface; Irfan Habib; The Rgveda: Encapsulating Social Change; Aryanization of the Indus Civilization; Feudal Social Formation in Indian History; Muskets in the Mawas: Instruments of Peasant Resistance; Witnessing Transition: Views on the End of the Akbari Dispensation; Levelling or Differentiation? Production and Appropriation Relations in Mughal India; Rural and Urban Caste Structure in Eighteenth-Nineteenth Century India: The Deccan and Gujarat; Palashi: The Inside Story of a Betrayal; Pre-capitalist Economic Formations and Differential Agricultural Productivity: A Tentative Hypothesis; Workers and the Historians’ Burden; The Indian Economic Experience 1600-1900: A Quantitative Study; New Estimates of Eighteenth-Century British Trade and Their Relation to Transfers from Tropical Colonies; Modernity and Its Philosophic Visions; Postmodernism in History; Realism and the Syntax of Difference: Narratives of the Bengal Famine; Archaeology and Nationalism: The Case of Medieval Gaur; The Rural Artist and Secular Culture in the Era of Globalization; Culture, Nationalism and Communal Politics; India’s Partition Revisited; Class, Clientelism and Communal Politics in Contemporary Bangladesh; Ayodhya: A Review of the Archaeological Evidence; State Enterprise Reform and the Political Economy of ‘Transition’; A Simple Model of an Imaginary Socialist Economy; Contributors; Irfan Habib: A List of Publications; Index