Dr Shonaleeka Kaul’s lectures will investigate and analyse the political and intellectual conditions that gave birth to the misconception in the 19th century that early Indians did not and could not write history
Gandhinagar: The next set of lectures in the Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) semester course at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN) will provide an interpretation of the ‘Historical Methods/Traditions in Early India’. Dr Shonaleeka Kaul, a cultural and intellectual historian of early South Asia, will deliver two lectures on February 19 and 20, 2020 at IITGN campus, AB 1/102, from 3:30 to 5 pm. These lectures are a part of the fourth edition of the IKS semester course being conducted at IITGN on the theme of ‘The Ancient Idea of India’.
Dr Shonaleeka Kaul is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She has also been the Malathy Singh Distinguished Lecturer in South Asian Studies at Yale University, USA; the Jan Gonda Fellow in Indology at Leiden University, The Netherlands; and the DAAD Visiting Professor at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany. Besides, she has penned several books and articles on the cultural history of India and South Asia region.
In these lectures, Dr Kaul will critique the tenacious misconception from the 19th century that early Indians did not and could not write history. She will describe the fundamental necessity and logic of allowing for alternative, culture-specific, pre-modern notions, methods, purposes and visions of history from the non-European world. It will illustrate a representative survey of historical traditions that originated and flourished in early India across a host of texts and inscriptions, regions and genres, concepts and forms.The course is open to students from other institutions in Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar and anyone who is truly interested in studying and understanding Indian knowledge systems. They can join the course for free by filling out an online registration form on the website: http://iks.iitgn.ac.in/. Classes will be held on most Wednesdays and Thursdays from 3:30 to 5 pm.
