Romila Thapar Quotes

• “The fundamental sanity of Indian civilization has been due to an absence of Satan.”

  Romila Thapar

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• “Some have argued that as language is the medium of knowledge, that which comes in the form of language constitutes a text; since language is interpreted by the individual, the reading by the individual gives meaning to the text; therefore each time a text is read by a different individual it acquires a fresh meaning. Taken to its logical conclusion, this denies any generally accepted meaning of a text and is implicitly a denial of attempts at historical representation or claims to relative objectivity, since the meaning would change with each reading. However, the prevalent views are more subtle.”

  Romila Thapar

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

  Romila Thapar

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• “Nations have to be built on an inclusive identity.”

  Romila Thapar

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• “Democracy ceases to be so if it is governed by permanent majoritarian identities of any kind.”

  Romila Thapar

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• “National-ism seeks legitimacy from the past and history therefore becomes a sensitive subject”

  Romila Thapar

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• “Intensely devotional poetry was written by poets, some of whom were born Muslim but worshipped Hindu deities. One of the best known among them was Sayyad Ibrahim, popularly referred to as Raskhan, whose dohas and bhajans dedicated to the deity Krishna were widely recited in the sixteenth century and are still remembered by devotees of Krishna and others.”

  Romila Thapar

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• “The eating of beef was reserved for specific occasions, such as rituals or when welcoming a guest or a person of high status. This is a common practice in other cattle-keeping cultures as well.”

  Romila Thapar

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• “The occasional woman philosopher such as Gargi, who is often quoted to prove the high status of women in ancient times, is actually the proverbial swallow and does not make a summer.”

  Romila Thapar

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

  Romila Thapar

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• “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. Notions”

  Romila Thapar

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• “It is said that the Hindus must have been upset at seeing Turkish and Mongol soldiers in their heavy boots trampling the floors of the temples. The question is, which Hindus? For, the same temple if it was now entered by mleccha soldiers was open only to upper-caste Hindus and its sanctum was in any case barred to the majority of the population who were regarded as the indigenous mleccha. The trauma was therefore more in the notion of the temple being polluted rather than the confrontation of one religion with another.”

  Romila Thapar

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• “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.”

  Romila Thapar

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• “The second trial for sedition was in 1908 before Justice D. D. Davar, who had been his counsel in the first trial, and a jury of which seven Europeans returned a verdict of guilty while the two Indians, both Parsis, returned a verdict of not guilty. Justice Davar sentenced Tilak to six years’ transportation. At his third and last trial for sedition in 1916, he was successfully defended by Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Tilak had been ordered to execute a bond for Rs 20,000 ‘for good behaviour’ for ‘disseminating seditious matter’. Justices Batchelor and Shah quashed the order.”

  Romila Thapar

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• “One could well ask if there is some subconscious link in the patriarchal mind between the agni-pariksha, fire-ordeal of Sita; the encouraging of women to become satis, the practice of entering the fire jointly in a jauhar when a Rajput raja was defeated in a campaign; and the frequency of dowry deaths in recent times.”

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• “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.”

  Romila Thapar

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• “A number of families constituted a grama, a word used later for village, suggesting that the families in the early settlements were related. Another view holds that grama was the formation made up of wagons used by the mobile pastoralists”

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• “A society has many pasts from which it chooses those that go into the creation of its history. The choice is made by those in authority—the authority being of various kinds—although occasionally the voice of others may be heard.”

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• “Nationalism may begin with ideas among the elite but its propagation involves having mass support. Initially, anti-colonial”

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• “The flesh of the ox was medically prescribed to enhance vigour.”

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• “Organized religion, however, is different from the religion of the individual.”

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• “Historically the interesting question is when and why did the prohibition on eating beef become the requirement of a good Hindu.”

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• “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 notion of the osmosis of cultures shaping histories was still to come.”

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• “A later age looks back with nostalgia at an earlier one and depicts it in terms of ideals and activities now receding.”

  Romila Thapar

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• “Three arguments were foundational to the colonial view of Indian history. The first was periodization. James Mill in The History of British India published in 1818-1823, almost two hundred years ago, argued for three periods: Hindu civilization, Muslim civilization and the British period.”

  Romila Thapar

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