Just out! The second video interview featuring Romila Thapar and me (recorded on 24 March). Shoaib Daniyal, Scroll’s political editor, understandably focused more on the interface between history and modern politics that we explore in Speaking of History.

“Very few things are as controversial in today’s India as its history. The academic discipline now sits at the heart of popular politics, with the Bharatiya Janata Party and its Hindutva supporters using India’s medieval past to power its politics. Into this battlefield rush in writer Namit Arora and India’s most famous historian, Romila Thapar. In their new book “Speaking of History”, Thapar and Arora deconstruct what the discipline means in India today, the role of popular history and why ideas such as perpetual Hindu-Muslim conflict say more about the present than the past.” (more)