Romila Thapar

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Romila Thapar, ca.2004

Romila Thapar (born November 30, 1931 in Lucknow ) is an Indian historian.

Romila Thapar 2016

Career

Thapar studied at Panjab University and received his PhD in 1958 under AL Basham at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London. She was a reader for ancient Indian history at Kurukshetra University (1961/62) and from 1963 to 1970 at Delhi University . From 1970 to 1991 she was Professor of Ancient Indian History at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi , where she has been Professor Emerita since 1993.

She was visiting professor at Cornell University (Distinguished Visiting Professor 1979), the University of Pennsylvania and the Collège de France in Paris. In 1983 she was President of the Indian History Congress .

Honors and memberships

She has multiple honorary doctorates (Oxford, Chicago, University of London, Edinburgh, Calcutta, Hyderabad, Peradeniya University in Sri Lanka, Brown University) and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2009) and the American Philosophical Society . She is an Honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall at the University of Oxford . In 1997 she became a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy . In 2009 she gave a keynote address at the 14th World Sanskrit Congress in Kyoto. In 1976/77 she was a Jawarhalal Nehru Fellow in New Delhi .

In 2008 she received the Kluge Prize . In 2003 she became a Kluge Professor at the Library of Congress .

Act

She deals with ancient Indian history and especially social history in early India, for example in the era of Ashoka and the Maurya Empire , the fall of which she attributed to the strongly centralized administration. She is best known to the wider public through her first volume of the History of India , published by Penguin Books in 1966, which gives an overview of the beginnings of Indian history up to 1300. The focus was on ancient Indian history according to its focus area, but it also dealt with the time up to the 16th century, since the second volume of Percival Spear with the Mughal Empire began in the 16th century. The updated and edited new edition of Early India from the Origins to AD 1300 from 2002 was part of a three-volume story (with the period from 1300 to 1800 as a separate volume).

In 2002 she protested with other Indian historians against changes in Indian textbooks (in the elaboration of which she was previously involved with regard to Indian prehistory) in order to take Hindu religious sensitivities into account (formulations on the emergence of the caste system, references to beef consumption in ancient India ). In 2006 she took a similar position in California against attempts by Hindu groups to enforce changes in school books.

Because of her theses, she was criticized by radical Hinduists. Jawaharlal Nehru University, where she taught, is described by supporters of the nationalist Hindutva ideology as a “bastion of Marxism”. Thapar and her related researchers are a "cabal" that wants to rewrite the history of India.

Romila Thapar criticizes the Hindutva historiography propagated by the Indian ruling party BJP . Hindutva define Hinduism as the sole basis of Indian culture and civilization. The marginalization of minorities such as Christians, Parsees, Sikhs and Muslims would thus be historically legitimized. In On nationalism , Thapar contrasts her youth with contemporary India: “We understood by nationalism to be Indian and not Hindu or Muslim or any other form of religion or nationalism.” Hindu nationalists accuse Thapar of following a Marxist agenda and being unclean To deal with sources. Kalavai Venkat accuses Thapar of using "lies" and "hate speech" in her book Perceptions of the Past to achieve her political goal. In Perceptions, Thapar represents the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT), according to which the Aryans immigrated to India from the northwest. Kalavai Venkat points out that AIT has now been refuted by archaeological finds. Instead, “Marxist historians like Thapar would continue to propagate the myth of the AIT”. In contrast, Kalavai Venkat advocates the Out-of-India Theory (OIT). The OIT states that the Aryans were originally native to India and were the forefathers of the Indians and Hinduism. Contrary to Venkat's assertion, the majority of Indologists continue to represent the AIT.

She also wrote a children's book (Indian Tales).

Fonts

  • Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas , Oxford University Press, 1961, reprinted 2012
  • A History of India , Volume 1, Penguin 1966 (revised new edition 2002 as Early India: From Origins to AD 1300 )
  • (with Thomas George Spencer Spear ) India. From the beginnings to colonialism , Kindler's cultural history 1966
  • Ancient India, Medieval India, NCERT Textbooks, Delhi, 1966, 1968
  • The Past and Prejudice (Sardar Patel Memorial Lectures), NBT Delhi, 1975, 2010
  • Ancient Indian Social History: Some Interpretations , OL Delhi 1978, 2010
  • The Mauryas Revisited , Center for Studies in Social Sciences, KP Babchi 1987
  • (Editor) Indian Tales , Puffin 1991
  • Early India: From Origins to AD 1300 , Penguin Books (London, Delhi) / University of California Press 2002
  • Exile and the Kingdom: Some Thoughts on the Rāmāyana (Rao Bahadur R. Narasimhachar endowment lecture), Mythic Society, 1978
  • From Lineage to State: Social Formations of the Mid-First Millennium BC in the Ganges Valley , Oxford University Press 1984, 2006
  • History and Beyond , Oxford University Press, Delhi 2000
  • Interpreting Early India , Oxford University Press 1993, 1999
  • Sakuntala: Texts, Readings, Histories , Kali for Women, Delhi / Anthem London 1999
  • Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History , Oxford University Press, Delhi 2000 (collection of their essays)
  • as editor: India: Another Millennium? Viking 2000
  • as editor: India: Historical Beginnings and the Concept of the Aryan , National Book Trust 2006
  • Somanatha: The Many Voices of History , Penguin Delhi, Verso London 2004, 2008
  • The Aryan: Recasting Constructs. Three Essays , New Delhi 2008
  • The Past Before Us: Historical Traditions of Early North India , Permanent Black, Ranikhet / Harvard UP 2013

Some essays:

  • Interpretations of Ancient Indian History. In: History and Theory. Volume 7, Heft 3, 1968, pp. 318-335, doi : 10.2307 / 2504471 .
  • Imagined Religious Communities? Ancient History and the Modern Search for a Hindu Identity. In: Modern Asian Studies. Volume 23, Issue 2, 1989, pp. 209-231, doi : 10.1017 / S0026749X00001049 .
  • Epic and History: Tradition, Dissent and Politics in India. In: Past & Present. Volume 125, Issue 1, 1989, pp. 3-26, doi : 10.1093 / past / 125.1.3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thapar's curriculum vitae at Jawarhalal Nehru University and Leftword
  2. ↑ Short biography at Penguin
  3. ^ Ludo Rocher, Review of Early India from the Origins to AD 1300 , Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 125, No. 4, 2005, pp. 557-560
  4. ↑ a b Kalavai Venkat: A Critical Review of Romila Thapar ?? 's "Early India - From The Origins to AD 1300". In: Hindu Review. July 21, 2003, archived from the original ; accessed on August 22, 2019 (English).
  5. ^ Romila Thapar: On nationalism . Aleph Book Company, New Delhi 2016, ISBN 978-93-8406775-5 , pp. 12 .
  6. ↑ Kaveree Bamzai: Why Right-wingers and liberals hate lapsed Romila Thapar, the mother of history in India. In: The Print. May 22, 2019, accessed on August 23, 2019 .
  7. ^ Koenraad Elst: The Indo-Aryan controversy is a real debate. A reply to Nicholas Kazanas . Ed .: Quadri di Semantica. Bologna June 2012 ( academia.edu ).
personal data
SURNAME Thapar, Romila
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Indian historian
DATE OF BIRTH November 30, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Lucknow