Neeladri Bhattacharya is professor at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nerhru University. His research and publications have been on the making of the colonial rural order, on custom, law, and colonialism, and on colonial power and discourse. He was coeditor of the Oxford University Press series Themes in Indian History and the journal Studies in History and editor of Tracts for the Times, an Orient Longman series on issues of contemporary concern. He has participated in public controversies in India on the writing of history and interpretations of the past and in debates on the politics of communal histories.