Articles by Romila Thapar

The assault on students and faculty of Jawaharlal Nehru University has raised a number of questions about politics on the campuses of universities. When students protest the massive hike in fees and other recently formulated regressive procedures of university functioning, it cannot be dismissed as student politics. It is as much a protest against a prime university being systematically dismantled. JNU is now being reduced to a teaching shop because supporting the advancement of knowledge that it pursued, is not on the agenda of those in authority, nor is it a characteristic of the ideology that is being sought to be imposed.

The ideology central to the Bharatiya Janata Party-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has no space or use for liberal thought and values. Education for such organisations means only what can be called a kind of catechism. This is a memorisation of a narrow set of questions rooted in faith and belief and an equally narrow set of answers that prohibit any doubt or deviation. Therefore, educational centres that allow questioning and discussion are anathema and have to be dismantled.

Would the Hindutva historians, who claim that the Puranas, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are true historical records needing no further interpretation, be able to tell us which of their versions are we to read? This response to Rajan Gurukkal's article, "A Blindness about India" (EPW, 6 December 2014), argues that not only is this an impossible claim to make on our ancient texts, such "historiography" will lead to the destruction of the social sciences in India.

Public intellectuals are not absent in Indian society, nor are they alien imports. But where there should be voices, there is now often silence. Are we all being co-opted too easily by the comforts of conforming? Are we fearful of the retribution that questioning may and often does bring?

We are appalled at the police repression unleashed on the people protesting peacefully against the Koodan­kulam nuclear plant. The repression has forced them to take to a jal satyagraha . Their legitimate, and as yet unaddres­sed, concerns about the plant’s safety were heightened by the Atomic...