The Academic Activities and Programmes of the CAS Department of History between March 2018 and March 2019

Carrying forward from the previous session when we were able to hold two Seminars, one International and the other national, apart from Symposiums and Workshops as well as producing Six books ( of which two were important primary sources), the academic activities and programmes of the CAS Department of History between March 2018 and March 2019 have been as follows:

1) The Centre organised two National Seminars:

(a) Indian Business Class Past and Present

[In Collaboration with Aligarh Historians Society]

(b) Conflict and Cooperation in Medieval India

2) Two Symposiums, viz

(a) Our Heritage at Risk: The Problem of Managing our National Monuments

(b) Akbar and His India

3) We also tried to organise a Workshop for the students of Aligarh Colleges. We invited 20 students each from DS College, Tika Ram Girls College and Sri Varshney College. Unfortunately at the last minute they all declined to come to AMU and their Principals gave various excuses

4) The Centre also commemorated Gandhiji on his Jayanti and organised an Exhibition and a Symposium on Commemorating the Mahatma: Relevance of Gandhi in Today’s India’ in which scholars like Irfan Habib were invited to deliver lectures.

True to the spirit of Gandhiji’s teachings the Exhibition was inaugurated by our Safai karamchari, Mr Suresh.

5) A two and a half month long Exhibition on Akbar and His India was held by the Centre at the Musa Dakri Museum (17 October to 31 December 2018)

6) Weekly Seminars of the Sultania Historical Society were held in which PG students, Research Scholars and Faculty members delivered lectures and presented papers

7) Publications:

This academic year also saw a number of publications by the Centre:

(a) Two issues of the Bulletin of the Sultania Historical Society were published and printed. We were also able to get an ISBN number for the last issue. One of these issues is devoted to the theme of Myth and History, and the other to Aurangzeb.

(b) Two Monographs:

i) Iqtidar Alam Khan, Exploring Archaeological Remains From Medieval Times.

ii)Zahoor Ali Khan, Studies in Indian Historical Geography.

(i) Journal of the Aligarh Historian Research Institute, Vol.1, No.1.

(ii) Journal of the Aligarh Historian Research Institute, Vol.1, No.2-3.

8 ) Digitisation of Resources: We have digitised all our photographs of various sites excavated and / or explored. We also have digitised a number of rotographs and transcripts held by our library

9) A number of Visiting Fellows were called and they delivered lectures. Thus we had Professor Najaf Haidar, Professor Farhat Hasan and Dr Audrey Truchke. Dr Truchke delivered two lectures. She was interviewed by the Sultania Historical Society editors for its bulletin.

10) The First Mushirul Hasan Lecture was organised on 11th March 2019. Professor Purshottam Agarwal delivered the lecture on the theme ‘Gandhi Today’

11) Project to Digitally Photograph all the archaeological remains and monuments of Agra Region has been initiated. We will be digitally recording all the monuments and sites in detail. This would form a part of the Digital Archives to be maintained by the Centre.

12) The Centre’s Project on recording archaeological sites related to Indigo production launched last year continued.

13) The Centre also initiated a project on Mapping the Archaeological Remains and Monuments of Medieval Period in Meerut. The project is being conducted on the Centre’s behalf by Professor Manvendra Kumar Pundhir who presented his first preliminary report in a Seminar held on 6th April 2019

14) The Catalogue of the holdings of the Archaeological Section has almost been completed and more than 10,000 artefacts have been accounted for. The process of cataloging continues

15) The renovation and re-wiring of the Building of Archaeological Section has almost been completed and within a few months the Section would be inaugurated formally.

16) An exploratory and Study Tour of those who are offering/ offered Archaeology, Historical Archaeology and or Medieval Archaeology with on site lectures was organised. The Historical sites where the students were taken and on site lectures delivered were the various archaeological sites and monuments at Fathpur Sikri and Bagh-i Nur Afshan at Agra.