Romila thapar biography of williams

Romila Thapar

Indian historian (born )

Romila Thapar

Thapar in

Born () 30 November (age&#;93)

Lucknow, United Provinces, British India

Alma&#;materPanjab University
SOAS University of London (PhD)
Occupation(s)Historian, Writer
Known&#;forAuthoring books about Indian history
FatherDaya Ram Thapar
RelativesRomesh Thapar (brother)
Valmik Thapar (nephew)
Pran Nath Thapar (uncle)
Karan Thapar (cousin)
AwardsHonorary doctorates University of Chicago, University of Oxford, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris, University of Edinburgh, the University of Calcutta, University of Hyderabad, Brown University, University of Pretoria.
Inaugural holder, Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the South, US Library of Congress; Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, winner John W Kluge Prize for the Study of Humanity,

Romila Thapar (born 30 November ) is an Indian historian.

Her principal area of study is ancient India, a field in which she is pre-eminent.[1] Thapar is a Professor of Ancient History, Emerita, at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Thapar's special contribution is the use of social-historical methods to understand change in the mid-first millennium BCE in northern India.

As lineage-based Indo-Aryan pastoral groups moved into the Gangetic Plain, they created rudimentary forms of caste-based states. The epics Ramayana and the Mahabharata, in her analysis, offer vignettes of how these groups and others negotiated new, more complex, forms of loyalty in which stratification, purity, and exclusion played a greater if still fluid role.[2]

The author of From Lineage to State, Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, Early India: From Origins to AD , and the popular History of India, Part I, Thapar has received honorary doctorates from the University of Chicago, the University of Oxford, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris, the University of Edinburgh, University of Calcutta, University of Hyderabad, Brown University, and the University of Pretoria.

Thapar is an Honorary Fellow of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, where she also received her Ph.D. in , and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Romila thapar biography of williams Tags : Historian Romila Thapar Romila Thapar books Romila Thapar husband Romila Thapar age Romila Thapar research history married biography wikipedia name age birthday networth wiki bio pilitics Lifestyle controversy favourites pasand hindi English hindi bio english bio knowledge encylopedia famous place sports favourite wife affairs personal life family height weight who is the bio dairy the bio dairy tbd. The formation of the state is, therefore, tried into this change. The tension between the privileged and the underprivileged can either lead to the overthrow of the former by the latter where the existing political structure would have to be overthrown or more often, to attempts by the latter to enter the ranks of the former. Mary's School, Pune.

In , Romila Thapar shared the US Library of Congress's Kluge Prize, for Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities and Social Sciences.[3]

Early life, family and education

Romila is the daughter of Lieutenant-General Daya Ram Thapar, CIE, OBE, who served as the Director-General of the British Indian Armed Forces Medical Services.

The late journalist Romesh Thapar was her brother.[4]

As a child, she attended schools in various cities in India depending on her father's military postings. She is an alumna of the St. Mary's School, Pune.[5] Later she attended intermediate of arts at Wadia College, Pune. After graduating from Panjab University in English literature, Thapar obtained a second bachelor's honours degree and a doctorate in Indian history under A.

L. Basham from the School of Oriental and African Studies, the University of London in [6]

Work

She was a reader in Ancient Indian History at Kurukshetra University in and and held the same position at Delhi University between and Later, she worked as Professor of Ancient Indian History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, South West Delhi, where she is now Professor Emerita.[7]

Thapar's major works are Aśoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, 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 .

Her historical work portrays the origins of Hinduism as an evolving interplay between social forces.[8] Her book on Somnath examines the evolution of the historiographies about the legendary Gujarat temple.[9]

In her first work, Aśoka and the Decline of the Maurya published in , Thapar situates Ashoka's policy of dhamma in its social and political context, as a non-sectarian civic ethic intended to hold together an empire of diverse ethnicities and cultures.

She attributes the decline of the Maurya Empire to its highly centralised administration which called for rulers of exceptional abilities to function well.

Thapar's first volume of A History of India is written for a popular audience and encompasses the period from its early history to the arrival of Europeans in the sixteenth century.

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    • Ancient Indian Social History deals with the period from early times to the end of the first millennium, includes a comparative study of Hindu and Buddhist socio-religious systems, and examines the role of Buddhism in social protest and social mobility in the caste system. From Lineage to State analyses the formation of states in the middle Ganga valley in the first millennium BCE, tracing the process to a change, driven by the use of iron and plough agriculture, from a pastoral and mobile lineage-based society to one of settled peasant holdings, accumulation and increased urbanisation.[10]

    Views on revisionist historiography

    Thapar is critical of what she calls a "communal interpretation" of Indian history, in which events in the last thousand years are interpreted solely in terms of a notional continual conflict between monolithic Hindu and Muslim communities.

    Thapar says this communal history is "extremely selective" in choosing facts, "deliberately partisan" in interpretation and does not follow current methods of analysis using multiple, prioritised causes.[11]

    In , the Indian coalition government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) changed the school textbooks for social sciences and history, on the ground that certain passages offended the sensibilities of some religious and caste groups.[12][13] Romila Thapar, who was the author of the textbook on Ancient India for class VI, objected to the changes made without her permission that, for example, deleted passages on eating of beef in ancient times, and the formulation of the caste system.

    She questioned whether the changes were an, "attempt to replace mainstream history with a Hindutva version of history", with the view to use the resultant controversy as "election propaganda".[14][15] Other historians and commentators, including Bipan Chandra, Sumit Sarkar, Irfan Habib, R.S. Sharma, Vir Sanghvi, Dileep Padgaonkar and Amartya Sen also protested the changes and published their objections in a compilation titled, Communalisation of Education.[14][16]

    Writing about the Californian Hindu textbook controversy, Thapar opposed some of the changes that were proposed by Hindu groups to the coverage of Hinduism and Indian history in school textbooks.

    She contended that while Hindus have a legitimate right to a fair and culturally sensitive representation, some of the proposed changes included material that pushed a political agenda.[17]

    Recognition and honours

    Thapar has been a visiting professor at Cornell University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the College de France in Paris.

    She was elected General President of the Indian History Congress in and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in [18] She was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in

    She was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship in [19] Thapar is an Honorary Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

    She holds honorary doctorates from the University of Chicago, the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales in Paris, the University of Oxford, the University of Edinburgh (), the University of Calcutta ()[20] and recently (in ) from the University of Hyderabad.[21] She was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in [22] She was also elected an Honorary Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, in [23]

    In , the US Library of Congress appointed her as the first holder of the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the South.[21]

    In January , she declined the Padma Bhushan awarded by the Indian Government.

    In a letter to PresidentA 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 declined the Padma Bhushan on an earlier occasion, in 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".[24]

    She is co-winner with Peter Brown of the Kluge Prize for the Study of Humanity for which comes with a US$1 million prize.[25]

    Bibliography

    Books

    • Aśoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, (revision ); Oxford University Press, ISBN&#;X
    • A History of India: Volume 1, ; Penguin, ISBN&#;
    • Ancient India, Medieval India, , sq.; NCERT Textbooks[7]
    • The Past and Prejudice (Sardar Patel Memorial Lectures), National Book Trust, , ISBN&#;
    • Ancient Indian Social History: Some Interpretations, , Orient Blackswan, ISBN&#;
    • Exile and the Kingdom: Some Thoughts on the Rāmāyana, Rao Bahadur R.

      Narasimhachar Endowment lecture, ;[26]

    • Dissent in the Early Indian Tradition, Volume 7 of M.N. Roy memorial lecture, ; Indian Renaissance Institute[27]
    • From Lineage to State: Social Formations of the Mid-First Millennium B.C. in the Ganges Valley, ; Oxford University Press (OUP), ISBN&#;
    • The Mauryas Revisited, Sakharam Ganesh Deuskar lectures on Indian history, ; K.P.

      Bagchi & Co., ISBN&#;

    • Interpreting Early India, (2nd edition ); Oxford University Press , ISBN&#;
    • Cultural Transaction and Early India: Tradition and Patronage, Two Lectures, ; OUP, ISBN&#;
    • Śakuntala: Texts, Readings, Histories, ; Anthem, ISBN&#;
    • History and Beyond, ; OUP, ISBN&#;
    • Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History, ; OUP, ISBN&#;
    • Early India: From Origins to AD , ; Penguin, ISBN&#;
    • Somanatha: The Many Voices of History, ; Verso, ISBN&#;
    • India: Historical Beginnings and the Concept of the Aryan, Essays by Thapar, et al., ; National Book Trust, ISBN&#;
    • The Aryan: Recasting Constructs, Three Essays, ; Delhi, ISBN&#;
    • The Past before Us: Historical Traditions of Early North India, ; Permanent Black, Harvard University Press, ISBN&#;
    • The Past As Present: Forging Contemporary Identities Through History, ; Aleph, ISBN&#;
    • Voices of Dissent: An Essay, ; Seagull Books, ISBN&#;
    • The Future in the Past: Essays and Reflections, ; Aleph Book Company, ISBN&#;
    • Our History, Their History, Whose History?, ; Seagull Books, ISBN&#;

    Editor

    • Communalism and the Writing of Indian History, Romila Thapar, Harbans Mukhia, Bipan Chandra, People's Publishing House[28]
    • Situating Indian History: For Sarvepalli Gopal, ; OUP, ISBN&#;
    • Indian Tales, ; Puffin, ISBN&#;
    • India: Another Millennium? ; Viking, ISBN&#;

    Select papers, articles and chapters

    • "India before and after the Mauryan Empire", in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Archaeology, ; ISBN&#;
    • "Imagined Religious Communities?

      Romila thapar biography of williams sisters Retrieved 11 April Archived from the original PDF on 16 June She tries to establish the institutions of lineage and state. 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".

      Ancient History and the Modern Search for a Hindu Identity", Paper in Modern Asian Studies, ; doi/SX

    • Thapar, Romila (), "The Theory of Aryan Race and India: History and Politics", Social Scientist, 24 (1/3): 3–29, doi/, JSTOR&#;
    • "Somanatha and Mahmud", Frontline, Volume 16 – Issue 8, 10–23 April
    • Perceiving the Forest: Early India, Paper in the journal, Studies in History, ; doi/
    • Role of the Army in the Exercise of Power, Essay in Army and Power in the Ancient World, ; Franz Steiner Verlag, ISBN&#;
    • The Puranas: Heresy and the Vamsanucarita", Essay in Ancient to Modern: Religion, Power and Community in India, ; OUP, ISBN&#;
    • Rāyā Asoko from Kanaganahalli: Some Thoughts, Essay in Airavati, Chennai, ;
    • Was there Historical Writing in Early India?, Essay in Knowing India, ; Yoda Press, ISBN&#;

    References

    1. ^Peterson, Indira Viswanathan (), "Romila Thapar ", in Kelly Boyd (ed.), Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, London: Taylor & Francis: Routledge, pp.&#;–, ISBN&#;, archived from the original on 1 September , retrieved 1 February Quotr: "The pre-eminent interpreter of ancient Indian history today.

      "

    2. ^Peterson, Indira Viswanathan (), "Romila Thapar ", in Kelly Boyd (ed.), Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, London: Taylor & Francis: Routledge, pp.&#;–, ISBN&#;, archived from the original on 1 September , retrieved 1 February Quote: "Among the major historians of ancient India in recent times, Thapar's emphasis on social history differentiates her approach from that of the cultural historian A.

      L. Basham, while her rejection of ideological frames of reference sets her work apart from that of the Marxist scholar D. D. Kosambi."

    3. ^Garreau, Joel (3 December ). "Historians Peter Robert Lamont Brown and Romila Thapar to Share Kluge Prize". . Archived from the original on 11 January Retrieved 1 February
    4. ^Singh, Nandita (2 January ).

    5. Romila thapar husband
    6. Class 7th old ncert romila thapar
    7. Romila thapar history of india
    8. Romila thapar somnath pdf

      9. "Why is Karan Thapar complaining? His dynasty holds a key to Lutyens' Delhi". The Print. Archived from the original on 2 April Retrieved 2 April

    9. ^Suman, Saket (15 August ). "Gandhi's encounter with a young Romila Thapar in Pune that inspired her activism". ThePrint.
    10. ^"Romila Thapar".

      Penguin India. Archived from the original on 25 December Retrieved 12 December

    11. ^ ab"Romila Thapar, Professor Emerita"(PDF). JNU. Archived from the original(PDF) on 16 June Retrieved 7 December
    12. ^"Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History By Romila Thapar - History - Archaeology-Ancient-India".

      Romila thapar biography of williams county: Her historical work portrays the origins of Hinduism as an evolving interplay between social forces. The egalitarian emphasis of the devotees in the eyes of the deity has rightly been viewed as the assertion of those lower down the social scale in favour of a more egalitarian society. She holds honorary doctorates from the University of Chicago , the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales in Paris, the University of Oxford , the University of Edinburgh , the University of Calcutta [ 20 ] and recently in from the University of Hyderabad. Sacral kingship is an aspect of this distance and is in turn tied to beliefs concerning the welfare and prosperity of a society being symbolized in that of the individual regarded as the chief.

      3 February Archived from the original on 4 June Retrieved 18 August

    13. ^Perspectives of a historyArchived 26 June at the Wayback Machine – a review of Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History
    14. ^E. Sreedharan (). A Textbook of Historiography, B.C. to A.D. . Orient Longman.

      pp.&#;– ISBN&#;.

    15. ^"The Rediff Interview/ Romila Thapar". Rediff. 4 February Archived from the original on 3 July Retrieved 28 November
    16. ^Chaudhry, D.R. (28 April ). "Critiques galore!".

      Romila thapar biography of williams college The display, consumption and distribution of wealth at the major rituals, such as the reajsauya and the asvamedha, was in turn a stimulus to production, for the ritual was also seen as a communication with and sanction from the supernatural. Dynastic chronology has been treated largely as a framework in time. Archived from the original on 1 September Taxation the quantity of prestations and became the more substantial part of what was taken from the peasant, but prestations were not terminated.

      The Tribune. Archived from the original on 14 April Retrieved 7 April

    17. ^"Hating Romila Thapar". Archived from the original on 3 September Retrieved 3 September
    18. ^ abMukherji, Mridula; Mukherji, Aditya, eds. (). Communalisation of Education: The history textbook controversy(PDF).

      New Delhi: Delhi Historians' Group. Archived(PDF) from the original on 16 September Retrieved 6 March

    19. ^Thapar, Romila (9 December ). "Propaganda as history won't sell". Hindustan Times.
    20. ^"Communalisation of Education: Fighting history's textbook war". Indian Express.

      28 January Archived from the original on 13 May Retrieved 7 April

    21. ^Thapar, Romila (9 June ). "Creationism By Any Other Name&#;" Outlook. Archived from the original on 11 April Retrieved 11 April
    22. ^"Romila Thapar".

      Romila thapar biography of williams brothers She contended that while Hindus have a legitimate right to a fair and culturally sensitive representation, some of the proposed changes included material that pushed a political agenda. In this sense, the emergence of the four varnas is closely related to the notions of a lineage-based society. The epics Ramayana and the Mahabharata, in her analysis, offer vignettes of how these groups and others negotiated new, more complex, forms of loyalty in which stratification, purity, and exclusion played a greater if still fluid role. The privileged group, in addition to controlling resources, is often one, which is either the favour of the king or else a following of kinsmen, clients or professionals, makes the group important.

      . Archived from the original on 19 December Retrieved 12 December

    23. ^"Official list of Jawaharlal Nehru Fellows (present)". Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund. Archived from the original on 18 July Retrieved 25 July
    24. ^Honoris CausaArchived 8 August at the Wayback Machine
    25. ^ ab"Romila Thapar Named as First Holder of the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the South at Library of Congress".

      Library of Congress. 17 April Archived from the original on 30 March Retrieved 4 April

    26. ^"Book of Members, – Chapter T"(PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Archived(PDF) from the original on 5 October Retrieved 21 June
    27. ^"New Honorary Fellows &#; St Antony's College".

      Archived from the original on 19 June Retrieved 19 June

    28. ^"Romila rejects Padma award" – Times of India article dated 27 January
    29. ^"Historians Peter Robert Lamont Brown and Romila Thapar to Share Kluge Prize". . Archived from the original on 11 January Retrieved 11 September
    30. ^Exile and the Kingdom: Some Thoughts on the Rāmāyana.

      OCLC&#;

    31. ^Thapar, Romila (). "Dissent in the Early Indian Tradition". Google Books. Archived from the original on 1 September Retrieved 11 December
    32. ^Thapar, Romila; Mukhia, Harbans; Chandra, Bipan (). Communalism and the Writing of Indian History.

      ISBN&#;. Archived from the original on 1 September Retrieved 11 December

    External links