The Past as Present: Forging Contemporary Identities Through History

Thapar, Romila

ISBN 10: 0857426443 / ISBN 13: 9780857426444

Published by Seagull Books, 2019

About this Item

Good - Bumped and creased book with tears to the extremities, but not affecting the text block, may have remainder mark or previous owner's name - GOOD Standard-sized.

Seller Inventory # M0857426443Z3

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Past as Present: Forging Contemporary Identities Through History
• Publisher: Seagull Books
• Publication Date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0857426443
• ISBN 13: 9780857426444
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

Nations need identities. These are created from perceptions of how societies have evolved. In this, history plays a central role. Insisting on reliable history is therefore crucial to more than just a pedagogic cause. Delicate relationships between the past and present or an exacting understanding of the past, call for careful analyses.
 
Understanding India’s past is of vital importance to the present. Many popularly held views about the past need to be critically enquired into before they can be taken as historical. Why is it important for Indian society to be secular? When did communalism as an ideology gain a foothold in the country? How and when did the patriarchal system begin to support a culture of violence against women?
 
Historian Romila Thapar has investigated, analyzed, and interpreted the history that underlies such questions throughout her career. Through the incisive essays in The Past as Present, she argues that it is of critical importance for the Indian past to be carefully and rigorously explained if the legitimacy of the present, wherever it derives from the past, is to be portrayed as accurately as possible. This is particularly crucial given the attempts by unscrupulous politicians, religious fundamentalists, and their ilk to wilfully misrepresent and manipulate the past in order to serve their present-day agendas. The Past as Present is an essential and necessary book at a time when sectarianism, false nationalism, and the muddying of historical facts are increasingly becoming a feature of our public, private, and intellectual lives.

About the Author

Romila Thapar is an emeritus professor of history at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and she was previously general president of the Indian History Congress. She is a fellow of the British Academy and holds honorary doctorates from Universities of Calcutta, Oxford University and the University of Chicago, among others. She is an Honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and SOAS, London. In 2008, she was awarded the prestigious Kluge Prize from the Library of Congress.