Journal of Indian Social Transformation Historical and Contemporary Studies

Aims and scope

The journal publishes research on India — its society, environment, economy, education, history, texts and heritage — in any period, from the earliest evidence to the present day.

What we are particularly interested in

Work that begins with a question about India today and looks for its answer in the historical record. The questions worth asking are the ones whose answers are not already settled: why vegetarian diet spread as widely as it did and what in the evidence accounts for it; why a district's water is governed the way it is; why one community sends its daughters to school and its neighbour does not.

Papers of that kind are read first and lead each issue.

What we also publish

Rigorous work at either end on its own. A study of manuscript transmission, an excavation report, an evaluation of a present-day programme. It does not have to reach across time to be welcome here. It has to be about India, and it has to be sound.

What we do not publish

  • Work with no Indian material in it.
  • Description that asks no question and has no before and after.
  • Anything already published elsewhere, including in conference proceedings.

The one test

Does the paper have a before and an after? Twenty years apart or two thousand, it makes no difference to us. A study comparing a district in 1920 and 2020 is a study of transformation exactly as much as one that reaches back to the third century BCE. What is excluded is the snapshot with no dimension of change.

Periods

All of them. Ancient, early medieval, Sultanate, Mughal, colonial, post-independence and contemporary. The century a paper works in is not a criterion; whether it explains something is.

Subject areas

Education and learning · Society, community and welfare · Health and wellbeing · Governance, economy and livelihoods · Environment and natural resources · Languages and textual traditions · History, archaeology and heritage.

Language

English. All articles, reviews and correspondence are in English.

Frequency

At least two issues a year and at most twelve. An issue is published when five or more accepted articles are ready and the volume is of a sensible length — not on a calendar date with whatever happens to be in hand.