Romila Thapar

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Romila Thapar (born 1931) is an Indian historian whose principal area of study is Ancient India. She secured her doctorate under A. L. Basham at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University in 1958. Later she worked as Professor of Ancient Indian History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, where she is Professor Emeritus today. She has been a visiting professor at Cornell University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the College de France in Paris.^[1]

1 Work
2 Controversies
3 Bibliography
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Work

Thapar's major works are Asoka and the Decline of the Maurya, Ancient Indian Social History: Some Interpretations, Recent Perspectives of Early Indian History (editor), A History of India Volume One, and Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300. Her historical work is critical of elites^[2] and portrays the origins of Hinduism as an evolving interplay between social forces. Her historiography^[3]^{[Quotation from source requested on talk page to verify interpretation of source]} has been sharply criticized by Hindu nationalists. She has taken a strong stance against communalism and the communalisation of history textbooks.^[4] Her recent work on Somnath examines the evolution of the historiographies about the legendary Gujarat temple.^[5]

[edit] Controversies

In April 2003, she was named as First Holder of the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the South at Library of Congress, the USA's oldest federal cultural institution and the research arm of Congress. This appointment raised the ire of Hindu nationalists.^[6]

In January 2005, she refused to accept the Padma Bhushan awarded by the Indian Government. In a letter to President A P J Abdul Kalam, she said she was "astonished to see her name in the list of awardees because three months ago when I was contacted by the HRD ministry and asked if I would accept an award, I made my position very clear and explained my reason for declining it". Thapar had refused the Padma Bhushan on an earlier occasion, in 1992. To the President, she explained the reason for turning down the award thus: "I only accept awards from academic institutions or those associated with my professional work, and not state awards".^[7]

In 2006, she was an active supporter of Michael Witzel of Harvard in the Californian Hindu textbook controversy.

One high profile critic of Thapar is journalist, politician, and writer Arun Shourie, whose book Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud accuses her and other historians of white-washing the records of Muslim rulers such as Mahmud of Ghazni and Aurangzeb and of tampering with history.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Books

Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, 1961 (revision 1998); Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-564445-X
A History of India: Volume 1, 1966; Penguin, ISBN 0-14-013835-8
The Past and Prejudice (Patel Memorial Lectures), 1971
Ancient Indian Social History: Some Interpretations, 1978
From Lineage to State: Social Formations of the Mid-First Millennium B.C. in the Ganges Valley, 1985; Oxford University Press
Interpreting Early India, 1993 (2nd edition 1999); Oxford University Press 1999, ISBN 0-19-563342-3
Early India: From Origins to AD 1300, 2002; Penguin, ISBN 0-520-23899-0
Sakuntala: Texts, Readings, Histories, 2002; Anthem, ISBN 1-84331-026-0
Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History, 2003; Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-566487-6
Somanatha: The Many Voices of History, 2005; Verso, ISBN 1-84467-020-1

[edit] Edited Anthologies

Situating Indian History: For Sarvepalli Gopal
Indian Tales, 1991; Puffin, ISBN 0-14-034811-5
India: Another Millennium?

[edit] Select papers, articles and chapters

"India before and after the Mauryan Empire", in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Archaeology, 1980.
"Imagined Religious Communities? Ancient History and the Modern Search for a Hindu Identity", Modern Asian Studies 1989 23(2): 209-231.
"Somanatha and Mahmud", Frontline, Volume 16 - Issue 8, Apr. 10 - 23, 1999

[edit] References

^ Penguin publicity page
^ Ronald Inden, 1990, Imagining India, pp. 154-156, 197
^ A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, Tom Bottomore et al, 1983, Harvard University Press, p. 204, entry "Hinduism"
^ Rediff interview, 1999
^ Perspectives of a history - a review of Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History
^ "Romila Thapar's appointment to Library of Congress opposed"- Rediff article dated April 25, 2003
^ "Romila rejects Padma award" - Times of India article dated January 27, 2005