Women Writing History: Three Generations

Three historians. Three generations. Spanning nearly a century of work, Romila Thapar, Kumkum Roy and Preeti Gulati, reflect on their lives and their engagement with one of the most demanding, and most crucial, disciplines of our times. Personal narratives of growing up—learning about history, charting new and distinct paths as researchers, the challenges of teaching—meld effortlessly into a larger and complex changing context: the emergence of an independent nation, of movements that have helped shape the process, and of resistance. To what extent, the authors ask, have feminisms made a difference? Can these interventions lead to redefining or rejuvenating the discipline, transforming it into a more inclusive space where diverse voices can be acknowledged and heard with respect and understanding? These and other questions inform this accessible and lucid text.

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ROMILA THAPAR is Professor Emerita, Ancient History, at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her special contribution to history is the use of social-historical methods to understand change in the mid-first millennium BCE in northern India. Among her many publications are Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas (1961), From Lineage to State (1984), and Early India: From Origins to AD 1300 (2002). She has been honoured with doctorates from the Universities of Chicago, Oxford, Edinburgh, Calcutta, Hyderabad, Pretoria, Brown University and the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales. She is an Honorary Fellow of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London from where she also received her PhD, and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2008, she shared the US Library of Congress’s Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities and social sciences.

KUMKUM ROY did her PhD in Ancient Indian History from the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She taught at Satyawati Co-educational College, Delhi University, and at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. With a specialisation in ancient Indian history, her areas of interest include histories of political institutions and processes and issues of gender. Among her publications are The Emergence of Monarchy in North India (1994), A Historical Dictionary of Ancient India (2009) and The Power of Gender and the Gender of Power (2010). She is also interested in issues of pedagogy at various levels.

PREETI GULATI teaches History at Krea University. Her research interests lie in early Indian texts, everyday practices, and the history of institutions. She is currently working on a monograph on food and power in early India, which is based on her PhD thesis.