The India Initiative Lunch with the Professors Series was a semester-long speaker series launched in December 2016 that convened students and faculty with expertise on India for conversations about India and its relationship to the United States and the world. For the inaugural lunch, the India Initiative hosted an interactive discussion with Professor Ananya Chakravarti about the study of history in South Asia.
Professor Chakravarti discussed the challenges and opportunities associated with writing about South Asian history, such as the difficulty historians face in preserving and studying historical records and the controversies that can arise when writing history textbooks. She also examined some of the parallel and divergent narratives that shape our understanding of South Asian history, such as Hindutva and Nehruvian perspectives in India, Sinhalese nationalism and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, and Maoism and monarchism in Nepal. Additionally, Professor Chakravarti's presentation touched on the politicization of history taught in public schools, and she discussed the critical skills that can be acquired through the study of history.
Ananya Chakravarti is an assistant professor in Georgetown University’s Department of History whose work focuses primarily on the intersection of religion and empire in South Asia and South America.