Representing the Past as History - Early North India

We were privileged to have Dr. Romila Thapar, arguably the most prominent contemporary historian of ancient India and a model of courage in the face of devastating attacks on academic history in India over the past two decades, in residence as the Indo-American Community Lecturer at the Institute for South Asia Studies in April 2014.

About the Speaker
Romila Thapar was born in India in 1931 and comes from a Punjabi family, spending her early years in various parts of India. She took her first degree from Punjab University and her doctorate from London University. She was appointed to a Readership at Delhi University and subsequently to the Chair in Ancient Indian History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi where she is now Emeritus Professor in History.

Romila Thapar is also an Honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and has been a Visiting Professor at Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania as well as the College de France in Paris. In 1983 she was elected General President of the Indian History Congress and in 1999 a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. She was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009. In 2004 the U.S. Library of Congress appointed her as the first holder of the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the South.

She is co-winner with Peter Brown of the prestigious Kluge Prize for the Study of Humanity for 2008 which comes with a US$1 million prize. In 2005 she was awarded the Padma Bhushan which she refused to accept. Thapar had declined 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".

Prof. Thapar's most recent publication is The Past Before Us: Historical Traditions of Early North India, Harvard University Press, 2013. A link to an excerpt from this new book may be viewed here.

Among her other publications are Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, Ancient Indian Social History: Some Interpretations, From Lineage to State, History and Beyond, Sakuntala: Texts, Readings, Histories and Cultural Pasts, Essays on Indian History, as well as a children's book, Indian Tales.

About the Lecture Series
The Indo-American Community Lectureship in India Studies is a part of UC Berkeley's Indo-American Community Chair in India Studies, a chair endowed in 1990-91 with the support of the CG of India in San Francisco, the Hon. Satinder K. Lambah and hundreds of members of the Indo-American community. This lectureship enables CSAS, with the support of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), to bring prominent individuals from India to Berkeley to deliver a lecture and interact with campus and community members during a two-week stay. Past Lectureship holders include Upendra Baxi, Andre Beteille, Madhav Gadgil, Ramachandra Guha, Meenakshi Mukherjee, Narendra Panjwani, Anuradha Kapur, Ashis Nandy, and Amita Baviskar.