Romila Thapar on history and politics of India
Zaman Khan
The News on Sunday - January 25, 2015
Professor Romila Thapar, 83, needs no introduction. She is known among intellectuals of the world for her path-breaking work on Indian ancient history. She has memories of old Lahore where her grandfather used to live at Lawrence Road. It was her father, a doctor in the Indian army, who made her go through old manuscripts, thus developing in her an interest for history.
More recently, Prof. Thapar has been in the news for her third Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial Lecture “To question or not to question: That is the question” where she said that and experts shied away from questioning the powers of the day” and that they must question more.
When she was young, her father offered her to choose between dowry or money for a degree from London University; she chose degree over dowry and did not look back. Although her writings don’t reflect feminism, she calls herself a feminist and pleads that history written by feminist historians should be taken seriously.
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