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Romila Thapar Quotes

born 1931 India

Romila Thapar (born 30 November 1931) is an Indian historian. Her principal area of study is ancient India.

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Random Romila Thapar quote

21 quotes

Nationalism seeks legitimacy from the past and history therefore becomes a sensitive subject.

Some forms of Indian asceticism, although not all, have a socio-political dimension and these cannot be marginalized as merely the wish to negate life.

All history is contemporary history; you can't get away from the politics around you.

The fundamental sanity in Indian civilization has been due to an absence of Satan.

Epic literature is not history but is again a way of looking at the past.

In fact, when one looks for them, there are evidence for migration.

Romila Thapar quoted in Vishal Agarwal (2005)

That every civilization emerges out of interactions with others, but nevertheless creates its own miracle, was not yet recognized by either European or Indian historians.

The brahmins settled in Tamilnadu saw themselves as keepers of what they now regarded as sacrosanct Vedic tradition.

The Hindutva version of the theory became a mechanism for excluding some sections of Indian society, specifically Indian Muslims and Christians, by insisting that they are alien.

Strangely, Indians travelling outside the subcontinent do not seem to have left itineraries of where they went or descriptions of what they saw. Distant places enter the narratives of storytelling only very occasionally.

Nations are not easily forged since many identities have to be coalesced.

Political ideologies focusing in particular on what they call ‘cultural nationalism’—and this is common to many societies apart from the Indian—blatantly exploit history.

The destruction of temples even by Hindu rulers was not unknown, but Mahmud’s was a regulated activity and inaugurated an increase in temple destruction compared to earlier times

The discovery of Harappan sites on the Indian side of the border between India and Pakistan is viewed as compensating for the loss of the cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa which are located in Pakistan.

Intolerance of the views of others and anti-intellectualism are on the rise. In this confrontation, universities and the educational system are, and will continue to be, obvious targets. Education can easily be converted into indoctrination.

The history of India was constructed in accordance with nineteenth century European views on what history should be and what was thought to be Indian history.

The political ideologues of the Hindu Right endorse a history rooted in colonial interpretations and are anxious to make that period of history a Hindu utopia.

The majority of current politicians are characterised by little, if any, vision of the kind of society they wish to construct, barring those that come with the limited concept of extreme religious nationalism.

To categorize some people as indigenous and others as alien, to argue about the identity of the first inhabitants of the subcontinent, and to try and sort out these categories for the remote past, is to attempt the impossible.

The late arrival of the horse in India is not surprising since the horse is not an animal indigenous to India. Even on the west Asian scene, its presence is not registered until the second millennium BC. The horse was unimportant, ritually and functionally, to the Indus civilization.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Romila Thapar (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.