21 Facts About Romila Thapar

Romila Thapar was born on 30 November 1931 and is an Indian historian.

The author of From Lineage to State, Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, Early India: From Origins to AD 1300, and the popular History of India, Part I, Romila Thapar has received honorary doctorates from the University of Chicago, the University of Oxford, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris, the University of Edinburgh, University of Calcutta, University of Hyderabad, Brown University, and the University of Pretoria.

Romila Thapar is an Honorary Fellow of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, where she received her Ph.

In 2008, Romila Thapar shared the US Library of Congress's Kluge Prize, for Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Romila Thapar is an alumna of the St Mary's School, Pune.

Romila Thapar was a reader in Ancient Indian History at Kurukshetra University in 1961 and 1962 and held the same position at Delhi University between 1963 and 1970.

Romila Thapar is critical of what she calls a "communal interpretation" of Indian history, in which events in the last thousand years are interpreted solely in terms of a notional continual conflict between monolithic Hindu and Muslim communities.

Romila Thapar says this communal history is "extremely selective" in choosing facts, "deliberately partisan" in interpretation and does not follow current methods of analysis using multiple, prioritised causes.

Romila Thapar, who was the author of the textbook on Ancient India for class VI, objected to the changes made without her permission that, for example, deleted passages on eating of beef in ancient times, and the formulation of the caste system.

Romila Thapar questioned whether the changes were an, "attempt to replace mainstream history with a Hindutva version of history", with the view to use the resultant controversy as "election propaganda".

Romila Thapar contended that while Hindus have a legitimate right to a fair and culturally sensitive representation, some of the proposed changes included material that pushed a political agenda.

Romila Thapar has been a visiting professor at Cornell University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the College de France in Paris.

Romila Thapar was elected General President of the Indian History Congress in 1983 and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 1999.

Romila Thapar was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019.

Romila Thapar was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship in 1976.

Romila Thapar is an Honorary Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Romila Thapar holds honorary doctorates from the University of Chicago, the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales in Paris, the University of Oxford, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Calcutta and recently from the University of Hyderabad.

Romila Thapar was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009.

Romila Thapar was elected an Honorary Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, in 2017.

Romila Thapar had declined the Padma Bhushan on an earlier occasion, in 1992.

Romila Thapar is co-winner with Peter Brown of the Kluge Prize for the Study of Humanity for 2008 which comes with a 1 million prize.