Asiatic Society to enter digital space with e-book release

KOLKATA: The 236-year-old Asiatic Society will make a bold statement on August 15, when it digitally releases its first e-book that had originally been planned as a printed volume, which got stalled due to the Covid situation.
The ministry of culture has been behind the choice of the release date. Interestingly, even as the strings are being tied up for the release, the key person behind the initiative is fighting Covid at a city nursing home, but coordinating the process from there.
‘Prabuddha Bharat — Understanding Ambedkar in the passage of time’ was put together as a digital book in the months of the lockdown.Several scholars have written on different aspects of Ambedkar and these were at different stages of completion when the lockdown was announced.
“So right from getting the manuscripts from the writers for the editor to work upon, composing them at the residences of the editorial team of the Society and then getting the production of the book done, everything was done from different locations because everyone worked from home. This was a completely new experience for all the scholars because we are from the paper and pen generation, but we decided to adapt fast,” said Ramkrishna Chatterjee, historian and publications secretary of the society, who is recuperating from Covid.
The book has been edited by historian Arun Bandyopadhyay, who is the history and archeology secretary of the society. Among the scholars (historians, sociologists and political scientists), who contributed to the book are, Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Umesh Bagade, Swapan Pramanick, Raj Shekhar Basu, Biswajit Ghosh, Siddhartha Guha Ray, Adapa Satyanarayana, Maidul Islam, Basudeb Barman and Raj Kumar.