Reading Hindutva Builds on Colonial Interpretations of Indian History: Romila Thapar
Historian Romila Thapar speaks at the second Sitaram Yechury Memorial Lecture on “Historiography and Early Indian History” on 25 October 2026 | Photo credit: ANI
Historian Romila Thapar, 96, argued on Sunday (Oct 25, 2026) that colonial historians fundamentally shaped the way Indian history was understood, reducing complex social and political processes to a simplistic religious narrative that continues to influence historical interpretations today and promote Hindutva readings of Indian history.
During the second Sitaram Yechury Memorial Lecture on ‘Historiography and Early Indian History’, Ms Thapar said the topic emerged from a short conversation she once had with the late CPI(M) leader.
Reflecting on her career as a historian of ancient India, Ms. Thapar said she expected a quiet academic life when she entered the profession. “History plays a public role, which it never did in the past,” she said, pointing to growing public disputes over interpretations of the past.
Tracing the origins of many prevailing ideas about Indian history, Ms Thapar said colonial scholars viewed India within the framework of “oriental despotism” and portrayed Asian societies as static and unchanging and ruled by despotic rulers. She argued that the tendency to read Indian history primarily through a religious lens was also inherited from colonial scholarship.
Had more attention been paid to physical evidence such as inscriptions, Indian history could have been interpreted differently, she said. Referring to the post-Gupta era, Ms. Thapar noted the abundance of inscriptions documenting governance practices, caste relations and various aspects of social life that provide a richer understanding of the past than relying solely on religious texts.
“Own Invention”
“Those who wrote the history of the colony were writing their own invention,” she said, pointing to the British historian James Mill, whom she credited with promoting the idea of an India divided into Hindu and Muslim nations permanently hostile to each other.
Ms Thapar said colonial historians had oversimplified a wide range of social and political conflicts by presenting them as expressions of religious antagonism. Such accounts produced “monocausal” explanations that ignored other factors.
Referring to the Battle of Haldighati, she said the conflict was essentially a territorial struggle. She noted that Rana Pratap’s forces included Afghan soldiers, while the Mughal army was led by a Rajput commander. Nevertheless, the battle was now often presented as a defining clash between a Hindu ruler and a Muslim invader.
Ms. Thapar also criticized Mill’s periodization of Indian history into “Hindu”, “Muslim” and “British” periods, arguing that such categorizations impose simplistic divisions on a much more complex historical experience.
In this context, she said that the decolonization of history should depend on the new available evidence, thanks to the progress made in archeology and genetics, instead of continuing to build on a colonial reading of history with an emphasis on religious breaks.
The Hindutva reading of Indian history was “unitary and unchanging”, she said, which did not account for the multiplicity within Hinduism itself, citing the example of Vishnu’s avatar Jagannath in Odisha and Vithala in Maharashtra as two distinct entities. “In this interpretation, the purpose of history is not to explain what happened in the past, but instead to construct statements of contemporary political views. These statements deny the centrality of secularism and democracy as essential components of the new nation,” she said.
Published – 25 Oct 2026 21:52 IST