Public Life of History

Recently I came across "Public Life of History", an issue of the journal Public Culture guest edited by Dipesh Chakrabarty, Ben Attwood and Claudio Lomnitz. In the core of the discussion lies an anxiety on the status of disciplinary history in the wider intellectual setting. How to understand the practice of history in changing multicultural milieu. This broad concern has been further focused by looking at the politics of multi-cultural society around the question of identity and the demands of an academic discipline that claims its lineages in endeavours to unravel universal truth in scientific manner. Dipesh Chakrabarty following insights from Charles Tyler propounds the notion of historical wound and distinguishes it from the historical truth. http://publicculture.org/articles/view/20/1/the-public-life-of-history
In his own article, he looks at the history of the discipline of history in India and its relation with the identity politics (primarily non-Brahman in the case of Maharashtra and dalit bahujan in north Indian context). Entire issue is quite provocative and insightful. There are various threads that I wish to take up but not now. For those interested in Indian history articles by Dipesh and Neeladri Bhattacharya( he is not a prolific writer so this piece is doubly significant) are important contributions.   All the articles including introduction can be downloaded.   
Sadan Jha