Indian Council of Historical Research


The Indian Council of Historical Research is an autonomous body of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, which had been established by an Administrative Order of the then Ministry of Education. The body, over many years, has provided financial assistance to the historians and direction to the research scholars in their multifarious topics of historical research through established historians and scholars of the country for fellowships, grants, and symposia, made to the Indian Council of Historical Research or through the Ministry of Human Resource Development.
The source of the funds at the disposal of the ICHR is grants-in-aid received from the Department of Higher Education in the Ministry of Human Resource Development, grants-in-aid from various Indian states, private donations from individuals and other countries, and the proceeds of revenues from the sale of publications of the ICHR.
The ICHR is based in Delhi, with regional centres in Pune, Bengaluru and Guwahati.
The Government of India has entered into cultural exchange programmes with many countries of the world for an exchange of historians and exchange of views between them.
The ICHR was formed as a literary and charitable society, a fully funded autonomous body of the Ministry of Education with the historians R.S. Sharma the then Head Department of History, Delhi University, nominated as its first chairman, ICHR, Satish Chandra, J.S. Garewal and M.N. Prasad, the then the Director of the National Archives of India at the helm. The present Chairman of ICHR Professor Sudershan Rao is an eminent historian and member secretary is Dr. Anand Shanker Singh
Some of the notable historian members/functionaries of the Indian Council have been Irfan Habib, Sushil Kumar, Tapan Raychaudhuri, and Barun De.

Review of the functioning of ICHR

Since the ICHR has continued to be fully funded by the government of India, and all the administrative and fiscal policies of the government are applicable to its affairs, the government of India carries out a periodical review of the functioning of ICHR.
The first review of the ICHR was ordered in 1981, the second in 1999, and the third in March 2011.

Objectives

The objectives of the ICHR, as enunciated in the initial pamphlet published by the Department of Education, Government of India in 1972, are as under:
ICHR is funded by grants-in-aid received from the Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development. It also receives funds from the various state governments of India and from other Ministries of the government of India.

Office building

The ICHR, unlike its sister research body, the Indian Council of Social Science Research, which had been formed by an Act of the Parliament, has no office building of its own. It has continued to be housed in a building belonging to the Jawaharlal Nehru University, at 35 Ferozeshah Road, New Delhi, since 1972.

Organization

The ICHR is headed by an Honorary Chairman. The Member Secretary functions as the Secretary of the Governing Council during its General Body and special meetings and as the day-to-day Head of the Department in ICHR.
The Members of the Council of ICHR are nominated for a period of three years. The Chairman of the Council of ICHR is nominated by the Department of Education in an honorary capacity and his term is not co-terminus with that of the members of the Constituted Council. The day-to-day functioning of the ICHR is looked after the Director who acts as ex officio Member Secretary of the Council. In 1991, a trend was started to have a separate post of Member Secretary of the ICHR, with Professor MGS Narayanan being selected as the First Member Secretary of ICHR. The institution has been continually embroiled in intra-rivalries between the Chairmen, Member Secretaries and the Directors, at the cost of historical research. The main reason, as per many, has been the deputing of persons from here and there as the Member Secretaries and the undermining the office of the Chairman and the Director of the institution.

Chairmen

The ICHR Council consists of the following members:
The ICHR publishes online as well as on print media. It publishes two journals: the Indian Historical Review and Itihas. It also provides publication subsidies to seminars, books, congress proceedings and journals. The editing and publication has been outsourced to certain publishing houses.