Events

A talk by Sucheta Mahajan (Jawaharlal Nehru University)

“Revising History, Revisioning the Nation: Erasures/Distortions in History Writing in India”

Time:  4:15pm – 5:45pm

Location:  Knox Hall, Room 208, 606 West 122nd Street

Abstract:  The terrain of the talk is a much traversed one, that of the rewriting of history in India today. Within this broad area, the sharper focus is on the school textbooks produced, revised, rewritten under the umbrella of the National Council for Educational Research and Training.  The so-called revisions are deletions and distortions. Inconvenient truths are glossed over, and a glorious past sought to be constructed. The secular and democratic foundations of the Indian nation are undermined in this revision of history. The nation is envisioned in the mirror of a singular homogenous identity with the construction of a teleology from ancient to modern times, erasing significant sections of the medieval past.

Sucheta Mahajan was formerly Professor at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Chairperson, Archives of Contemporary History, JNU. Her fields of interest span the short and long history of the twentieth century, its politics, political economy and social change, and the oral history of independence and partition. She has been Gillespie Visiting Professor at the College of Wooster, Ohio, and at at the Maison des Sciences de l' homme, Paris.  Dr. Mahajan has been a  Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center and at Trinity College Dublin.

Dr.Mahajan's books include Independence and Partition: The Erosion of Colonial Power in India (2000); India's Struggle for Independence (1988; with Bipan Chandra et al); RSS, School Texts and the Murder of Mahatma Gandhi - The Hindu Communal Project (2008; with Aditya and Mridula Mukherjee) and Education and Social Change: MVF and Child Labour (2008). She has edited Rites of Passage, A Civil Servant Remembers: H.M. Patel (2005); Composite Culture in a Multi-Cultural Society (co-edited with Bipan Chandra), and most recently, Towards Freedom 1947: Documents on India's Freedom Struggle (2013 and 2015).  Dr. Mahajan is presently writing a book on Gandhi's Last Years, leading up to his assassination, and the elaborate web of lies and myths that continue to surround the Mahatma and his legacy.