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The Present Colonizes the Past
The Future Forsaken?
Series: Points of View
Brief Description
Short, rigorous intervention on history-writing in public life. How does the present reshape what a society chooses to remember as its past? Recent interpretations of India's history have replaced careful inquiry with narratives that mirror contemporary anxieties and ambitions, sidelining the evidence, debate, and plurality that...
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Format: Paperback / softback
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Description
Short, rigorous intervention on history-writing in public life.
How does the present reshape what a society chooses to remember as its past? Recent interpretations of India's history have replaced careful inquiry with narratives that mirror contemporary anxieties and ambitions, sidelining the evidence, debate, and plurality that once characterized India's long intellectual tradition. At stake is a shift from understanding history as a method to treating it as a tool of identity and authority.
In The Present Colonizes the Past, Romila Thapar asks: How have cultural and religious identities evolved through interaction rather than isolation? How have dissent and accommodation shaped social change? How have education and public discourse influenced what is accepted as knowledge? And, most urgently, how might weakened institutions and selective pasts redefine our heritage and citizenship?
Series: Points of View
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Torture and the War on Terror
One of the world's leading intellectuals dismantles the political and ethical justifications for institutional torture. In the aftermath of 9/11, the US government approved interrogation tactics for enemy combatant detainees that could be defined as torture, which was outlawed in Europe in the eighteenth century and forbidden by the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Convention Against Torture. In conjunction...PaperbackSold Out -
The Present Colonizes the Past
Short, rigorous intervention on history-writing in public life. How does the present reshape what a society chooses to remember as its past? Recent interpretations of India's history have replaced careful inquiry with narratives that mirror contemporary anxieties and ambitions, sidelining the evidence, debate, and plurality that once characterized India's long intellectual tradition. At stake is a shift from understanding history...PaperbackSold Out
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781803096612
Publisher: Seagull Books London Ltd
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 05 August 2026
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Seagull Books London Ltd
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Width: 108.0mm
Height: 178.0mm
Weight: 454g
Pages: 96
About the Author
Romila Thapar is emeritus professor of history at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. A former General President of the Indian History Congress, she is a fellow of the British Academy and an honorary fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and SOAS, London. In 2008, she received the Library of Congress’s Kluge Prize.
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