Romila
Thapar's Appointment to
Library of Congress Opposed by Hindutwa
Rediff.com
25 April, 2003
A petition is circulating
on the Internet against the appointment of Professor Romila Thapar as
First Holder of the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the South
at the Library of Congress.
The petitioners allege that
she is a Marxist and anti-Hindu and it is a waste of US money to support
a Leftist.
The Librarian of Congress,
James H Billington, appointed Thapar last week and she has already started
work, Robert Saladini, a spokesperson for the library, said. He said
he has no information on the petition.
The petition can be viewed
at: http://www.petitiononline.com/108india/petition.html
The holder of the chair,
which is located in the John W Kluge Center of the Library of Congress,
pursues research on the regions of Africa, Latin America, West Asia,
South and Southeast Asia, or the islands of the Pacific including Australia
and New Zealand, using the immense foreign language collections in the
specialised reading rooms of the Library of Congress.
Thapar will spend ten months
at the John W Kluge Center pursuing 'Historical Consciousness in Early
India' as her area of research.
Thapar, emeritus professor
of Ancient Indian History at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi,
who has served as visiting professor at Cornell University and the University
of Pennsylvania, is an authority on Indian history.
The author of many seminal
works on the history of ancient India, her volume of the 'Penguin History
of India' has been continuously in print since 1966. Her latest publication
is 'Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300'. Other recent works are
'History and Beyond' and 'Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History'.
She has held many visiting
posts in Europe, the United States and Japan. She is an Honorary Fellow
at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and at the School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London. She has honorary doctorates from the
University of Chicago, the Institute National des Langues et Civilisations
Orientales in Paris, the University of Oxford and the University of
Calcutta.
Through a generous endowment
from John W Kluge, the Library of Congress established the center in
2000 to bring together the world's best thinkers to stimulate, energise,
and distil wisdom from the library's rich resources and to interact
with policy makers in Washington, DC.
The center houses five senior
Kluge Chairs.
The petitioners say: "It
is a great travesty that Romila Thapar has been appointed the first
holder of the Kluge Chair.
"In regards to India,
she is an avowed antagonist of India's Hindu civilization as a well-known
Marxist. She represents a completely Euro-centric worldview. I fail
to see how she can be the correct choice to represent India's ancient
history and civilization.
"She completely disavows
that India ever had a history. The ongoing campaign by Romila Thapar
and others to discredit Hindu civilization is a war of cultural genocide.
By your unfortunate selection of Thapar, America is now aiding and abetting
this effort."
The petition has 133 signatures
already. One of the signatories, Hari Singh, said: "The comments
from Ms Thapar are disgusting and are reflection of her ignorance of
Indian History."
Venkatesh, another signatory,
commented, "It's a shame to the USA & Indian govt. that a Communist
like Romila Thapar is having a free run."