Quotes from Romila Thapar

Historiography therefore becomes a prelude to understanding history as a form of knowledge.

State intervention to try and control incidents of widow immolation begins during the time of the Sultans and the Mughals.

By "patriotism" I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people…

Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his individuality.

A fundamental sanity in Indian civilization has been due to an absence of Satan.

The discarding of the icon by both the Brahmo and Arya Samaj was almost a knee-jerk reaction. It was seen as a pollution of the original religion but possibly the jibe of idol worship may have enhanced this reaction.

We understood nationalism to be Indian nationalism and not Hindu or Muslim or any other kind of religious or other nationalism,

The absence of conversion accounted for the absence of the distinction between the true follower and the infidel or pagan.

Nationalism meant differentiating between the nation and the state, and it was clear that no government could take upon itself the rights of a nation.

If large numbers of Hindus converted then the majority of Muslims were indigenous Hindus and cannot be regarded as alien.

What is of interest in the history of the term Hindu, is that its origin lies in its being a geographical name.

Religious violence is not alien to Hinduism despite the modern myth that the Hindus are by instinct and religion a non-violent people.

One is often struck by how different the message of the Gita would have been and how very much closer to non-violence if Gautama Buddha had been the charioteer of Arjuna instead of Krishna.

In the same Mahabharata where the protagonists go variously to heaven or hell, Krishna preaches the centrality of rebirth and the system of justice associated with

Expanding urbanization often trapped people at the margins of settlements into becoming landless and unable to use their skills and thus gradually forced them into performing lowly tasks.

In the same Mahabharata where the protagonists go variously to heaven or hell, Krishna preaches the centrality of rebirth and the system of justice associated with it. The

In the same Mahabharata where the protagonists go variously to heaven or hell, Krishna preaches the centrality of rebirth and the system of justice associated with it.

Religiosity is generally a characteristic of situations when there is a fear that the dominant position held by the followers of a religion is beginning to decline, and therefore has to be publicized where possible.

For the next few centuries, brahmans who migrated from Kanauj to seek employment elsewhere were highly respected for their knowledge of ritual and their learning.

But among the more widely used eras are the Vikrama era of 58-57 BC and the Shaka era of AD 78. The Vikrama era was known earlier as the Krita or the Malava era. Others include the Gupta era of AD 319-20, the Harsha era of AD 606, the Vikrama-Chalukya era of AD 1075 and a variety of others.

The destruction of temples even by Hindu rulers was not unknown, but Mahmud's was a regulated activity and inaugurated an increase in temple destruction com-pared to earlier times.

This would suggest that the destruction of temples by Hindu rulers was known and recorded, but such acts were viewed as more characteristic of the Turushkas.

Social and economic inequality was accepted as normal by Vedic Brahmanism and whether one approves or disapproves of it, it was an established point of view. To propagate the texts associated with this assumption and yet insist that they are appropriate to modern values of democracy and secularism is hardly acceptable.

questioning existing knowledge through a critical inquiry into evidence and its reading.