Meet Our New Faculty | Dr. Samyak Ghosh

Can you tell us more about yourself/your background?

I grew up in a small frontier town in the northern part of present day West Bengal (commonly referred to as North Bengal). I say this because parts of North Bengal are culturally and historically contingent with Assam, present day northern Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal. The region shares multiple international boundaries and therefore its cultures, its languages, and its pasts are different from other parts of West Bengal. My interest in history began during the early years when I encountered the multiple forts, monasteries, and temples that are scattered in this forested and mountainous frontier region of present-day India. However, only much later in my life was I able to appreciate the region, not just as a frontier (from the perspective of the nation-state), but as a contact zone where cultures clash and grapple, cohabit and flourish, over long historical time frames.

Apart from my life as a historian, I enjoy being a culinary nerd. I collect, replicate, and preserve recipes that are on the verge of being lost due to changes in culinary practices over generations. Being from a family of partition refugees, my interest in preserving recipes is deeply personal. It is a way to establish some kind of a connection with a past and a tradition that has been severed multiple times. My other interests include creative writing and translation. I am also passionate about learning new languages and currently I am working on Kannada and Spanish, apart from those that I am already fluent in or have a working knowledge of (i.e. Assamese, Bengali, Brajbhasha, Urdu, Pali, Persian, and Sanskrit).

What are your main areas of interest and teaching? How did your interest in these areas begin?

I am a historian of pre-modern South Asia. Thus far, my work has been broadly within the disciplines of Cultural and Intellectual History. My research interests include, empire and borderlands, law and sovereignty, gender and sexuality, anti-caste political thought, histories of medicine and illness, and visual and literary cultures of South Asia. I have taught classes on histories of political institutions (royal courts and monasteries) in pre-modern South Asia (350-1750 AD), Islam in South Asia, historical methods and writing, histories of sexuality and medicine, populism and populist politics, law and lawlessness in South Asia, and decolonial political thought. My teaching interests, thus, encompass both the premodern past and the contemporary present. As a historian of pre-modern South Asia, I am deeply invested in understanding the ways in which the past is shaped in the crucible of the present, and the changes that it undergoes in the process.

What will you be teaching at NLS?

I will be teaching History I and History II apart from elective courses that are aligned to my ongoing research work and interests. Since History I and II are core courses for the 5-year B.A. LLB students, these courses are foundational towards shaping critical thinking and analytical reading and interpretation skills. The aim is to situate the interpretation of Law as a discipline that is in conversation with socio-economic analysis of the progression of human societies from the earliest to the contemporary. History, therefore, allows us to understand how legal ideas, practices, and interpretations operate within particular social, economic, cultural, and intellectual contexts and not take shape in a vacuum.

Further, I wish to foster historical thinking amongst students of Law towards exploring the ways in which legal and historical methods of interpretation are often inter-linked rather than being separate. This will also ground law school graduates in a fuller understanding of the history of the profession, i.e. law as practice (and not just theory).

Finally, the aim is to work towards a historical understanding of law in South Asia, especially at a time when comparative studies of legal frameworks and interpretations across regions have expanded as a field of research (e.g. comparative constitutionalism). During my first year here at NLS, I will also be teaching one elective tentatively titled “History in the Present”. The elective is directed towards students across Law and Public Policy programmes.

Your thoughts on starting your teaching journey at NLS?

I am excited to start my teaching career at NLSIU. The institution has a stellar record and is known internationally for its academic excellence. I am fortunate to have the opportunity to teach History to undergraduate, and graduate students, as well as public policy professionals. It is a challenge that will expand my historical thinking and will allow me to develop a practice-based pedagogy that takes history to a larger audience without compromising on the values of meticulous research. I look forward to learning from my colleagues at the law school and developing methods of teaching history that does not compromise on the complexities of the past in its interpretations in the present.

Which one book / podcast / published piece would you recommend to our students and why?

Anyone interested in my work can listen to this podcast:

TCN Podcast – Culture. Politics & History of Early Modern Brahmaputra Valley  – Samyak Ghosh

Could you highlight some of your key projects or publications?

I am currently working on my monograph tentatively titled, “Formations of the Kings: Politics, Pleasure, and Law in the Contact Zones of Hindustan”. I am also finishing a book chapter for an edited volume on Textual Histories of Caste in India (Bloomsbury UK) and an article on the interpretations of Mughal Persianate cultural forms within local literary-cultural systems situated at a distance from the imperial centers of learning. Apart from these projects, I have begun working on a project that studies medical thought amongst indigenous intellectual groups in 18th century highland Asia and the interpretations of illness and medicine therein.

To view more of his upcoming work, follow Samyak’s faculty page.