History At Cross Roads

The present volume entitled History at Crossroads is a collection of papers presented at three national seminars organized by the department of history, faculty of social sciences, Banaras Hindu University in the years 2004 to 2006. The topics were 'History and the Changing Paradigms', 'Impact of Modern Science and Technology on Society, Culture and Environment', and 'History in the 21st Century: Problems and Prospects' respectively. The basic thought behind organizing seminars on such themes was sensitizing laymen as well as those practicing reserach and teaching in history towards-newer issues and themes which only apparently seem unrelated to the our discipline History, as it has been conventionally defined and understood. The reason is not very far to seek because each discipline owes its genesis and growth to a particular socio-political, economic and cultural context and if we appreciate that context, perhaps we shall see why it is thought that history is 'scissors and paste'- an account of battles, kings, queens, rise and fall of dynasties, different protest movements, such as the tribal revolts, peasant movement - so on and so forth. In a more sophisticated language we use the words 'nationalism', 'colonialism', 'capitalism', 'feudalism' and the like. In recent times, we find the scope of history ever widening, so as to include a wide variety of subjects affecting human soceties (of course the latest of it being the environmental history, on which we know even UGC has put great emphasis). To a great extent we do find historical researches being informed by a great deal of theoretical sophistication in recent times.

The point of emphasis, however, is that all its theoretical sophistication notwithstanding, it provides us hardly any understanding of the actual world and its realities (and I think that is true with most of the disciplines). Take a very evident example of the actual world and its realities (not to talk of other ills of social life). I quote "Excessive technological growth has created an environment in which life has become physically and mentally unhealthy.

**Contents and Sample Pages**