Historian Romila Thapar said on Thursday that over-centralisation of religion may not be conducive to inner faith. She was speaking at a public interaction programme organised by the Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities, a constituent of Manipal University, here.
Prof. Thapar listened to everyone at the public interaction and spoke of how, according to her, religion was the best when it was amalgamative, multiple, local and regional, and how the over-centralisation of religion may not be the form most conducive to inner faith.
She spoke on the history of Hinduism. She traced its origin from Vedic Brahminism, through the Upanishads, the epics, the Puranas, the early emergence of Bhakti in the South, and then the emergence of Bhakti, perhaps independently, in many different parts of India, and later, the Tantric undercurrent that began around the seventh century.
She said that it had been the strength of Hinduism to learn from other faiths, including Buddhism, Jainism, Islam, and later, the West. She also spoke of how demanding and rigorous the field of History had become — unlike the public realm where everyone had an opinion. She held that serious history writing required deep familiarity with the tools of archaeology, inscriptions, linguistics, social anthropology, and even the science of DNA.
In the colloquium held earlier, Prof. Thapar had accepted that history had much to learn from (as well as give to) allied disciplines such as literature, Philosophy and Sociology.
Over-centralisation of religion may not be the form conducive to inner fait
Over-centralisation of religion may not be the form conducive to inner faith, says Romila Thapar
