Eminent historian Dwijendra Narayan Jha died on Thursday. He was 81. Jha retired from Delhi University and was a reputed scholar of ancien...
Eminent historian Dwijendra Narayan Jha died on Thursday. He was 81.
Jha retired from Delhi University and was a reputed scholar of ancient Indian history. Of his many books, the one on beef eating in ancient Indian dietary traditions earned him a firestorm of threats and abuses, while his expansive research, on what he would call “the distortions of Indian history” often made him the centre of political controversies.
“He was a stickler for historical facts, for empirical evidence,” historian Harbans Mukhia, who taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University, told The Indian Express. “He wouldn’t make any statement without sound empirical basis.”
Jha graduated in history from Presidency College in Kolkata, and did his post graduation from Patna University. In a career spanning over three decades, he constantly worked to dispel communal readings of ancient and medieval history.
In an interview with Scroll.in in 2015, Jha spoke about the obsession of right-wing historians with the Rigveda and how it had “much to do with their anti-Muslim stance”. “Since Islam came from outside they demonise Muslims as the other,” he had said. “And if they are the other the Hindus have to be the original habitants of the land. From this it follows that the authors of the Harappan culture, the oldest culture of the...
