Historical hindsight

An encyclopaedic work capturing the breathless changes in Assam’s recent history as well as its struggle for identity and modernity

- SANJOY HAZARIKA

A RUPJYOTI SAIKIA is undoubtedly contemporary Assam’s finest historian and, by that measure, one of India’s most accomplished. He does not believe in half measures or over-reliance on the writings of others, no matter how reliable. He dives deep into archives and libraries, in Assam as well as in Delhi, London and Yale, scouring for evidence.

In The Quest for Modern Assam, Saikia does not disappoint. The book’s size and scope are daunting: it covers 58 years in more than 800 pages, of which 298 pages comprise bibliography, timeline and references, giving readers an understanding of the attention that he pays to detail. His major works have been focused on his home state of Assam where he is a professor of history at the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati.

Saikia brings a consistent scholarship to his telling of tales. He avoids jargon and the trademark haste of some of the new self-styled historians of the state and the region. His formidable tome acknowledges the challenges in writing "complex biographies of Indian states in the post-colonial period" and points out the need for the passage of time to reflect not just on events but also on the development of historical processes, trends and circumstances-political, economic and environmental.