[5] In 1972, while working on her doctoral thesis, Mukherjee was hired by the Centre for Historical Studies, JNU, as a faculty member,[5] from where she retired as a professor of history.
[6] She argued that despite extensive irrigation works, colonialisation caused agricultural involution, with the number of workers per unit area rising and production dropping.
[9] A common thread running through Mukherjee's work has been a criticism of the Subaltern mode of historical inquiry,[10] which informs her analysis of peasant movements as well as her other major contribution: modern Indian history.
[4][12][13] Supporting Mukherjee, another set of academics, including Irfan Habib and Madhu Kishwar, wrote to the Prime Minister of India protesting her treatment.
Mukherjee herself pointed out that under her tenure, the NMML had completed a ten-volume publication of the selected works of Jayaprakash Narayan, besides initiating a digitisation project.