History was once a subject we studied in school, then it became a topic of fierce debates, and now it’s a bruising street brawl. Facts are flung around like brickbats, feats answered by counterfeits, and propaganda by improperganda. Unfazed amid this din and drivel, stands a towering, glowering figure – Romila Thapar. The contrarian historian has just come out with her memoirs – the story of her life and unstoppable rise to prominence. At 700 plus pages, the book demands of you an unflagging interest in times past, a good deal of patience and wrists of steel. If you have all of the above, the book will provide an insight into the twists and turns that history has taken across the arc of independent India. Side by side, you will get to know how an individual, when suitably armour-plated with erudition, evolves into an icon.
As a prefect in a school in Pune, young Romila was the one selected to give a speech on the country’s first Independence Day. She duly delivered the address, standing apart from her schoolmates. Since then, it’s become something of a habit - standing apart from her cohorts and ploughing the lonely furrow. In Just Being, Thapar looks back at the long road she has walked and is uncharacteristically dismissive. She says: "This book has no pattern. It is a lazy ramble through my life, narrated chronologically; otherwise, it would be too scattered and even shapeless". It’s an interesting ramble nevertheless, not least because India at that time was "on the cusp of a historical change of immense magnitude".
Thapar learned history from the legendary A.L. Basham (of ‘The Wonder That Was India’ fame) and followed it up with assignments at prestigious universities around the world. From an early age, it appears that she has always been in a natural position of command – the shepherd chosen to tend to the flock rather than be part of the herd. Her stint at the Kurukshetra University was underwhelming—it lacked the intellectual vigour she was looking for. Her big break, if historians are allowed to have ‘breaks’ like film stars, came at Jawaharlal Nehru University. She joined in 1970 on a propitious date – November 14th, Nehru’s birthday. It would almost appear as if she and JNU were made for each other—both were articulate, unaccepting of the status quo and fashionably left-leaning. She served JNU for over half a century, and her signature is all over the institution. She has written over 24 history books and a clutch of textbooks. Before she knew it, she had become an institution.
But it’s not been roses all the way. Every change in the central government spawned a crop of critics. Fools who came to mock remained to blaspheme, claiming that Thapar’s contract for professor emerita at JNU had expired. Their mission fell flat on its face when someone pointed out that the title of emerita is for life, and doesn’t carry a ‘Best Before’ date.
As a critical thinker, Thapar is very much in the Nehruvian mould. Our first prime minister, paranoid at the thought that scholarship in the newly independent nation could be hijacked by Hindu revivalists, had encouraged independent thinkers. Thapar and her team, independent thinkers all, swept key posts in major universities and formed a kind of franchise model of marketing Marxism to young minds. They belonged to the school, which said that history should be more than a chronological narrative of who did what to whom. Instead, it should peel the layers and explore social structures and motivations. Well, to each his own.
Thapar is unquestionably the most famous living historian in India today. But even the GOAT can have nay-sayers – people who question her methods and point to the lack of verifiable evidence for some of her theories. But such critics find no echoes across her autobiography. That is surprising considering that Thapar sees herself as an evangelist of enquiry and is supposed to encourage informed dissent. Arun Shourie gets the briefest of mentions with a vulgar quote uncharacteristic of the research-driven journalist and writer. There seems to be no place for young challengers like Vikram Sampath. One also wonders why the Somnath Temple episode is blanked out. Two decades back, Thapar had turned conventional thought on its head by pointing out that Hindu and Jain texts made no mention of the repeated plunder by the infamous Mohammad of Ghazni. Then, whodunit, who reduced the temple to ruins? Thapar blames the Brits—useful fall guys when events can get communal overtones. It was, Thapar told us, the Brits who made a song and dance over an episode that the Hindus may well have forgotten if left to themselves. So, where does this explanation leave us? Well, nowhere! I remember the tabloids saying of the slain socialite—Nobody Killed Jessica. On the same lines, we conclude—nobody destroyed Somnath.
Thapar is all of 94 and currently not the toast of the establishment. She is its intellectual antithesis. Moral of the story: rebels don’t age well. But her aura of authority, almost of infallibility, sits well. With her stately bearing, measured diction and the kind of accent you would hear in a cathedral, she will continue to draw admirers to her original perspective on history. Like the prefect in her Pune school decades ago, Romila Thapar stands apart from all the rest, and this memoir tells us why she always will.
Title: Just Being
Author: Romila Thapar
Publisher: Seagull Books
Pages: 710
Price: Rs 1,499
