Photo courtesy of The Indian Express
New Delhi: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Monday honoured historian Romila Thapar with PG National Award 2024 in New Delhi for her contribution to the field of ancient Indian history, The Indian Express reported.
Calling her an ardent critic of ‘distortion’ of history for ‘communal’ motives, Pinarayi Vijayan pointed to Thapar’s ‘fearless criticism of the Sangh Parivar’, which led to Sangh Parivar ‘severely’ disliking her.
The chief minister further said that the right wing outfit disliked Thapar mainly because the historian in her works distinguished between Hindutva, the political ideology, and Hinduism, the religion.
Applauding Thapar for opposing the attempt to rewrite history, he said the historian called out segmenting Indian history into ‘Hindu, Islamic and British periods’, alongside disagreeing with the view of tracing origins of Hindus back to ‘the Aryans and the Indus Valley Civilisation’.
The previous recipients of the award, constituted as a tribute to Marxist philosopher and writer P Govinda Pillai who died in 2012, include writer and social activist Arundhati Roy Advocate Prashant Bhushan and journalist N Ram. The award was presented by PG Sanskriti Kendra established in 2019.
Romila Thapar, who retired from JNU in 1991 and taught ancient Indian history in Delhi University as well, began writing since the 1960s on the social and cultural history of early India.
Born in 1931, Thapar graduated from Panjab University and had her PhD from the University of London.