Who’s Romila Thapar?

> Romila Thapar (born on November 30, 1931) is an Indian historian and the author of several books including the popular volume, A History of

India, and is currently Professor Emeritus at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. She has twice been offered the Padma Bhushan award, but has declined both times > After graduating from Panjab

University, Thapar earned her doctorate under A. L. Basham at the School of Oriental and African Studies, the University

of London in 1958. She was a reader in Ancient Indian History at Kurukshetra University between 1961 and 1962 and held the same position at Delhi University between 1963 and 1970. Later, she worked as Professor of Ancient Indian History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University > Thapar’s major works are Aśoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, Ancient Indian Social History: Some Interpretations, Recent Perspectives of Early Indian History (editor), A History of India Volume One, and Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300. > Thapar is critical of what she calls a ‘communal interpretation’ of Indian history, in which events in the last thousand years are interpreted solely in terms of a notional continual conflict between monolithic Hindu and Muslim communities. Thapar says this communal history is “extremely selective” in choosing facts, “deliberately partisan” in interpretation and does not follow current methods of analysis using multiple, prioritised causes.