Abhijit Gupta is one of the leading practitioners of book history in twenty-first century India. He looks back at the work done in the past twenty years and considers the challenges ahead in a conversation with Murali Ranganathan
When did you realise that you had evolved into a book historian from a professor of English literature? How did the evolution happen?
It happened the other way around. I started teaching in an English department in 1999 and prior to that I had completed a PhD during 1994-96 on the publishing histories of some women novelists in late 19th-century England. But when I started my doctoral research in 1994, I was not even aware that a discipline called book history existed. So you could say that this was a classic instance of speaking prose without knowing it.
Eight-temple complex awaits due attention
The Pancho Mondir in Naldanga of Jhenidah’s Kaliganj upazila is slowly getting its splendour back during the ongoing renovation work. Photo: Star
On an average day, more than 1,500 people visit the scenic site in Naldanga area of Kaliganj upazila, where the Begboti river flows by eight spectacular Hindu temples, built several centuries ago, on over 20 acres of land.
But the visitors have to rush back home with the fall of darkness at dusk when the compound turns into a safe haven for drug dealers, addicts and other antisocial elements of the area.
Construction of the temples was first initiated by the then zamindar in the area in 1656 and successive heirs of the zamindar family carried out the work throughout the following centuries. After the death of Promotho Bhushan Deb Roy, the last zamindar of the family, in 1941, the estate eventually became property of the Pakistan government in 1955.