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(Tradition, Dissent and Ideology: Essays in Honour of Romila Thapar Edited by S.
Gopal and R. Champakalakshmi, Oxford, Rs 495)
The volume meant as a tribute to the eminent historian, Romila Thapar, by the
faculty and alumni of the history department of Jawaharlal Nehru University, has
been appropriately titled. It was Thapar who pioneered the trend of breaking out
of the tradition of studying history as a dreary litany of names, dates and places
in India. From the days of her earliest research on Asoka and the Decline of the
Mauryas, through the National Council of Educational Research and Training text
books on ancient and medieval India to her latest work, Time as a Metaphor of
History, Thapar has interpreted the past by exploring how traditions are made and
whether what has come to be seen as "tradition" deserves to be so accepted.
For her radical approach, Thapar has often earned the ire of the more conservative
and obscurantist set of Indian historians. But that has never deterred her from
questioning persistently the essentialist and unhistorical notions of traditions,
the shifting nature and functions of rituals and practices, the changing meanings
of texts and oral cultures, the links between cultural practices and questions of
power, the dialectic between heterodoxy and orthodoxy as also between dissent and
conformism, and the role that specific constructions of the past play in the
politics of the present.
The volume is arranged around several sub-themes: remaking of traditions during
periods of change; the processes of accommodation and marginalization involved in
the fashioning of dominant traditions; the creation of dominant discourse in
conflictual situations; the resources of tradition and their resilience in the
face of change; question of continuities in the evolution of states and social
formations.
In the first set of essays, Kumkum Roy and Niladri Bhattacharya focus on
transformative processes at work in the remaking of traditions. Through a
discussion of Vedic cosmogony Roy shows how sacral traditions were subjected to
reworkings in the later Vedic period. The cosmic significance of certain myths
was whittled down while their social significance was highlighted. The purpose, as
Roy explains, was to valorize rituals, enforce social stratification, resolve
conflicts amongst kinsmen and ensure priestly domination. Bhattacharya analyzes
how British efforts to understand, interpret and codify customs in colonial Punjab
subjected indigenous traditions to transformative processes and gave rise to a new
language of power and domination.
Kunal Chakrabarti explores the process of formation of regional traditions by
tracing how the authority of the Vedas got transformed in areas peripheral to the
brahminical sphere of interest, like Bengal in the middle ages. The Bengal
Puranas enshrined the essential wisdom of the Vedas, but simplified, condensed or
enlarged it, depending on the necessity of the common people.
K. Meenakshi, R. Champakalakshmi and Muzaffar Alam show how alternative religious
traditions which posed challenge to mainstream orthodoxy were ultimately
incorporated into the dominant traditions. Instead of displacing the power of
dominant ideals, these cults affirmed the very basis of the system against which
they evolved.
Resources of tradition are explored by S. Gopal and Satish Saberwal. Gopal
focuses on the trajectory of Nehruvian secularism and shows that despite his early
impatience with tradition and religion, Jawaharlal Nehru later became sensitive to
the binding strength of Indian culture. Nehru, Gopal argues, tried to formulate
the modern Indian state within this framework.
The last set of essays focusses on the evolution of states and social formations.
Shereen Ratnagar seeks to explore the relationship between the earliest states
known in history, in the southern Mesopotamian plains, and the society of that
region. Despite the emergence of a ruling elite, Ratnagar argues, social
institutions typical of classless societies continued to exist.
While temple estates and community wealth in the earlier periods had become the de
facto property of the ruler and his family, yet communal land tenure prevailed and
the populace at large retained effective control over its basic resources
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