Quotes from Romila Thapar

The use of the plough goes back to pre-Harappan times and one of the words frequently used for the plough – langala – is from Munda, a non-Aryan language.

The worship of the Buddha by non-Buddhists remained largely formal and deferential.

These passes were used so frequently that it is incorrect to project the north-western mountains as barriers. They were corridors of communication.

Adivasi societies are not fossilized societies.

Religious nationalism takes an extreme form in communal historical writing.

The change from the categories of hunter-gatherers to pastoralism to agriculture involved using a decreasing area of land, but an increasingly more intensive use of the land.

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.

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.

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

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

Organized religion, however, is different from the religion of the individual.

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.

The secular critique of communalism is not an opposition to religion but to the abuse of religion.

Religious nationalism, or communalism as some prefer to call it, both Muslim and Hindu, was marginal to the anti-colonial movement.

Communalism is the political exploitation of a religious ideology.

Insistence on the subservience of women did not dull male ardour in worshipping female deities, encapsulating the quintessential female force.

The decline of Buddhism in the Ganges heartland and the peninsula occurred before the Turkish conquest.

The period from the ninth century in the subcontinent, far from being 'dark', was a period of illumination as it was germane to many later institutions.

Putting wives through fire has continued since ancient times, from Sita to sati to dowry deaths. It is a curious aspect of our social culture.

The Gita, for example, speaks of shudras, vaishyas and women as one category, all being papa-yoni, born of sinful wombs.

To categorize some people as indigenous and others as alien, to argue about the identity of the first inhabitants of the subcontinent, and to try and sort out these categories for the remote past, is to attempt the impossible.

The act of immolation is first described in Greek texts, quoting from earlier accounts referring to incidents of the fourth century BC. Widows are burnt on the funeral pyres of their dead husbands among the Katheae (Kshatriya or khattiya) in the Punjab. Unable to explain this practice the author remarks that it was an attempt to prevent wives from poisoning their husbands!

Aryan' and 'Dravidian' used as terms for peoples confuses language and race since these are language labels, and should correctly be used as, 'Aryan-speaking people' and 'Dravidian-speaking people'.

Adivasi societies are not fossilized societies. The historical legitimacy of groups such as forest tribes lies in recognizing their way of life and in analysing the signifi-cance of their contribution to the creation of Indian culture since early times. Given that the precise meaning of the term 'tribe' remains controversial and is not uniformly defined, it becomes even more difficult to deduce an authentic history.