The Idea of Dissent in the Indian Past and Present

In this conversation, Romila Thapar, Kunal Chakrabarti, Apoorvanand and Suhas Palshikar discuss the wide arc of Dissent from the Vedic times; to the first millennium BC; the emergence of groups that were jointly called the Shramanas—the Jainas, Buddhists, and Ajivikas; to the views of some Bhakti sants and others of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries AD; to a major moment of dissent that helped to establish a free and democratic India: Mahatma Gandhi’s satyagraha and finally to the recent CAA-NRC protests.

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Romila Thapar is Emeritus Professor of History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has been General President of the Indian History Congress. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and holds honorary doctorates from Universities of Calcutta, Oxford and Chicago, among others. She is an Honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and SOAS, London. In 2008 she was awarded the prestigious Kluge Prize of…