Home > 2025 > Remembering Asghar Ali Engineer | Arup Kumar Sen26th Asghar Ali Engineer Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Uma Chakravarti, the eminent feminist historian, on October 3, 2025. The occasion reminds us of the sincerity and commitment with which Asghar documented and analysed the communal riots and violence in postcolonial India. In the sixties the curve of communal violence took a sharp upward turn, and this continued throughout the decade ending in a violent convulsion at Ahmedabad.”Asghar raised a fundamental question, and stated his doubts regarding a general theory of “communal violence before and after partition”. The “nature, degree and scope” of communal violence have been magnified/transformed under the new political regime. The documentation done by Asghar Ali Engineer and his team provide us insights to trace the genealogy of communal violence in postcolonial India.