Rudrangshu Mukherjee is an India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

n historian and author who is presently Opinions Editor for The Telegraph

The Telegraph (Kolkata)

The Telegraph is an Indian daily newspaper founded and continuously published in Kolkata since 1982. It is published by the ABP Group and the newspaper vies with the Times of India for the position of having the widest widest circulation of any newspaper in Eastern India.According to the Audit...

newspaper, Kolkata

Kolkata

Kolkata , formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River, it was the commercial capital of East India...

.

Academics

Rudrangshu Mukherjee studied at Calcutta Boys' School

Calcutta Boys' School

Calcutta Boys' School was founded by the Rev. James Mills Thoburn , and was opened in 1877...

, Presidency College, Kolkata

Presidency College, Kolkata

Presidency University, Kolkata, formerly Hindu College and Presidency College, is a unitary, state aided university, located in Kolkata, West Bengal. and one of the premier institutes of learning of liberal arts and sciences in India. In 2002 it was ranked number one by the weekly news magazine...

, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Jawaharlal Nehru University

Jawaharlal Nehru University, also known as JNU, is located in New Delhi, the capital of India. It is mainly a research oriented postgraduate University with approximately 5,500 students and a faculty strength of around 550.-History:...

, New Delhi

New Delhi

New Delhi is the capital city of India. It serves as the centre of the Government of India and the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. New Delhi is situated within the metropolis of Delhi. It is one of the nine districts of Delhi Union Territory. The total area of the city is...

, and St Edmund Hall, Oxford

St Edmund Hall, Oxford

St Edmund Hall is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Better known within the University by its nickname, "Teddy Hall", the college has a claim to being "the oldest academical society for the education of undergraduates in any university"...

.

His D.Phil in Modern History at the University of Oxford in 1981 was
based on his acclaimed thesis on the revolt of
1857, which presented
a view of the revolt from the native perspective. The cover illustration of his book was drawn by Satyajit Ray

Satyajit Ray

Satyajit Ray was an Indian Bengali filmmaker. He is regarded as one of the greatest auteurs of 20th century cinema. Ray was born in the city of Kolkata into a Bengali family prominent in the world of arts and literature...

. He has
revisited this theme in his books including Awadh in Revolt 1857-58: A Study of
Popular Resistance (Delhi, 1984, repr. 2002), Spectre of Violence: The
1857 Kanpur Massacres (Delhi, 1988), which tries to re-frame the popular
colonial image of the massacres, and Mangal Pandey: Brave Martyr or Accidental Hero? (Penguin India). The last book
reflects on the theme of how hero-formation feeds into irrational nationalist
frenzy.

Public life

Mukherjee has taught history at the University of Calcutta

University of Calcutta

The University of Calcutta is a public university located in the city of Kolkata , India, founded on 24 January 1857...

 and held visiting appointments at Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

, the University of Manchester

University of Manchester

The University of Manchester is a public research university located in Manchester, United Kingdom. It is a "red brick" university and a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive British universities and the N8 Group...

 and the University of California, Santa Cruz

University of California, Santa Cruz

The University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university; one of ten campuses in the University of California...

. At the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta

Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta

The Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta is an autonomous research centre devoted to the research and advancement of the social sciences in South Asia...

 (CSSSC), which he had joined as a Junior Research Fellow in 1975, he became involved in several aspects of historiography, especially the issues concerning the ascendancy of the North in the production of knowledge. He has edited The Penguin Gandhi Reader (Delhi, 1993) and is the author of the Art of Bengal: A Vision Defined, 1955-75 (Kolkata, 2003), and co-edited Trade and Politics and the Indian Ocean World: Essays in Honour of Ashin Das Gupta (Delhi, 1998).

He has also worked on the history of the leftist movement in India.
After the 2007 Nandigram

Nandigram

Nandigram is a rural area with two commuunity development blocks in Haldia subdivision of Purba Medinipur district of the Indian state of West Bengal. It is located about 70 km south-west of Kolkata, on the south bank of the Haldi River, opposite the industrial city of Haldia...

 episode where the Communist Party of India (Marxist)

Communist Party of India (Marxist)

The Communist Party of India is a political party in India. It has a strong presence in the states of Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura. As of 2011, CPI is leading the state government in Tripura. It leads the Left Front coalition of leftist parties in various states and the national parliament of...

 (CPI(M)) government of West Bengal

West Bengal

West Bengal is a state in the eastern region of India and is the nation's fourth-most populous. It is also the seventh-most populous sub-national entity in the world, with over 91 million inhabitants. A major agricultural producer, West Bengal is the sixth-largest contributor to India's GDP...

attempted to forcibly annex some farm lands for an industrial zone, Rudrangshu was among the more vociferous of the leftist intellectuals in Kolkata who protested the violent policies of the left.
though he, and the ABP group, keep shifting their opinion from time to time and tend to more or less favour land acquisition, SEZs and the CPI(M)'s model of development.