AUTHOR :  Romila Thapar

GENRE : NON-FICTION

QUICK TAKE:  

Written by one of India’s best-known public intellectuals, Voices of Dissent:
An Essay has immense relevance. It is essential reading for anyone who
contemplates not only the Indian past but also the direction in which the
society and nation is headed. 

SYNOPSIS:

People have disagreed since time immemorial. They have argued or agreed
to disagree, or eventually arrived at an agreement. But we live in times when
any form of dissent in India is marked as anti-Indian, suggesting that the
very concept of dissent has been imported to India from the West—an
argument made by those who visualize the Indian past as free of blemishes
and therefore not requiring dissenting opinions. But, as Romila Thapar
explores in this timely historical essay, dissent has a long history in the subcontinent,
even if its forms have evolved through the centuries.
Thapar looks at the articulation of dissent—focusing on non-violent
forms—that which is so essential to all societies, and relates it to various moments
of time and in varying contexts as part of the Indian historical experience.
Beginning with Vedic times, she takes us from the second to the first
millennium BC, to the emergence of groups that were jointly called the
Shramanas—the Jainas, Buddhists, and Ajivikas. Going forward in time she
explores the views of the Bhakti sants and others of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries AD, and brings us to a major moment of dissent that helped
to establish a free and democratic India: Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha.
Throughout her argument she emphasizes the use of the idiom of religion
as reflecting social change, ending with the eventual politicization of
religion in the present. She places in context the recent peaceful protests
against CAA and NPR in places such as Shaheen Bagh, Delhi. Implicit in this
is the question of whether or not the idiom of religion is necessary. Thapar
maintains that dissent in our time must be audible, distinct, opposed to
injustice and supportive of democratic rights. The articulation of dissent and
debate through dialogue is what makes of it a movement that changes society for the better

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: 

ROMILA THAPAR is Emeritus Professor of History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has been General President of the Indian History Congress. She is a fellow of the British Academy and holds honorary doctorates from Universities of Calcutta, Oxford and Chicago, among others. She is an Honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and SOAS, London. 

PRE-ORDER : Book will be released ~ 15th October

BINDING: Hardback 

PAGES: 164