Dissent that takes off from anticolonial nationalism

Anyone even moderately interested in Indian history has to be aware of Romila Thapar’s oeuvre. Her intellectual stature possesses an uncanny dimension, as though she has always been around and always will be. To be sure, this isn’t just an impression, but also plain fact because the 89-year-old historian remains at the height of her powers in an extraordinary innings. Her new Voices of Dissent: An Essay is a delightful surprise. This is meticulous history writing, and brilliantly well-timed because it arrives in the heat of the majoritarian battle to usurp the idea of India. There is tremendous moral authority in this book, part of which derives from the fact that Thapar has witnessed the entire lifespan of our nation state. As a teenager, she had an encounter with Gandhi: “In a curious way, it seemed to touch a latent inclination on my part to go beyond the obvious, to search for what I like to call the context of thought and action.” Thapar’s excursion to the Shaheen Bagh protests provides Voices of Dissent with its emotional core. I found this passage to be particularly moving: “I felt after many years that I was witnessing a form of dissent that was somehow taking off from the roots of anti-colonial nationalism. There was no mistaking its all-inclusive character. It took me back to the 1940s and to my very youthful participation in anti-colonial nationalism… The future can only lie in the state and citizen being in effective dialogue to ensure the rights and duties each have to the other.”

Vivek Menezes is a photographer, writer, and co-founder of the Goa Arts and Literature Festival