Professor Romila Thapar’s Rao Bahadur R. Narasimhachar Endowment Lecture, 1977–78, was published by the Mythic Society under the title Exile and the Kingdom: Some Thoughts on the Rāmayaṇa. It was one of a series of essays pointing out the implicit…
Romila Thapar has been an inspiration, an inimitable role model as a scholar, teacher and, more visibly in recent times, as a public intellectual for several generations of students. I have learnt from her for many decades, and we have…
On 15 July 2020, epigraphists working at the Epigraphy Branch of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) protested in front of their office in Mysore. The cause of their anger was the fact that during the recent restructuring of the…
This essay is dedicated to Romila Thapar, who recently turned ninety. As I was writing this article, I recalled my struggle in the initial years of my doctoral research to frame questions for a project centred on text-aided archaeology, one…
In his introductory essay to the volume on ethnographies of archaeological practice, Matt Edgeworth (2006, p. 7) points out how ‘the excavation site itself can be seen as only one of multiple sites\ (overlapping and occupying the same space) .…
Stuti Bhatnagar, India’s Pakistan Policy: How Think Tanks Are Shaping Foreign Relations, Routledge London, 2021, 178 pages, £36 The restructuring of global power, explosion of social media, shifts away from traditional print and oral-based ways of imparting knowledge, and the…
In Defence of History -- Symposium to mark Prof. Irfan Habib's 90th birthday 12 August 2021
For me and countless others Professor Irfan Habib has been a source of great inspiration, not just for his outstanding intellectual output but also because of his unwavering commitment to the Marxist world outlook and to the founding values of…
I should like to begin by conveying birthday greetings to Professor Irfan Habib. All good wishes, Irfan. You have in your wisdom provided us with excellent historical vision and insight, and you have received the extensive admiration and affection of…
Today we have gathered to celebrate the ninetieth birthday of one of the greatest historians of India, if not the whole world. It is both a solemn and a joyous occasion. There is no point in even sketching the awesome…