Romila Thapar

Romila Thapar
Romila Thapar (born 30 November 1931) is a distinguished Indian historian whose principal area of study is ancient India. She is the author of numerous substantial books including the popular classic, A History of India, and is currently Professor Emerita at Jawaharlal Nehru University(JNU) in New Delhi.
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, New Delhi, where she is now Professor Emerita.
Thapar's major works are Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, Ancient Indian Social History: Some Interpretations, Recent Perspectives of Early Indian History (ed.), A History of India Volume One, and Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300.
Debating the Ancient and Present
Conversations on/for South Asia is an open-ended publications series launched by the Department of Sociology, South Asian University as an intellectual forum that would allow for inventing and re-i...
Indian Society and the Secular
Romila Thapar‘s new book of essays, Indian Society and the Secular, arrives at a time when India is facing its greatest challenges since Independence in 1947. With ultra right in power and fo...
The importance of ÅšakuntalÄ as personifying Indian womanhood in Indian literature and culture is undisputed. This book attempts to explore some of the links between culture, history and gende...
People have disagreed since time immemorial. They have argued or agreed to disagree, or eventually arrived at agreement. All that is part of life, of living. But we live in times when any form of d...
Drawing on textual and archaeological sources, most of the essays in this edition are on the early history of India upto the end of the first millennium A.D., suggesting some fresh interpretations ...
It has so often been said that Indian civilization lacks historical writing—and therefore a sense of history—that this notion passes for a truism. There has been little attempt to show up the f...

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