Nations need identities. These are created from perceptions of how
societies have evolved. In this, history plays a central role. Insisting
on reliable history is therefore crucial to more than just a pedagogic
cause. Delicate relationships between the past and present or an
exacting understanding of the past, call for careful analyses.
Understanding India's past is of vital importance to the present. Many
popularly held views about the past need to be critically enquired into
before they can be taken as historical. Why is it important for Indian
society to be secular? When did communalism as an ideology gain a
foothold in the country? How and when did the patriarchal system begin
to support a culture of violence against women?
Historian Romila Thapar has investigated, analyzed, and interpreted the
history that underlies such questions throughout her career. Through the
incisive essays in The Past as Present, she argues that it is of
critical importance for the Indian past to be carefully and rigorously
explained if the legitimacy of the present, wherever it derives from the
past, is to be portrayed as accurately as possible. This is particularly
crucial given the attempts by unscrupulous politicians, religious
fundamentalists, and their ilk to wilfully misrepresent and manipulate
the past in order to serve their present-day agendas. The Past as
Present is an essential and necessary book at a time when sectarianism,
false nationalism, and the muddying of historical facts are increasingly
becoming a feature of our public, private, and intellectual lives.
