Centre for the Study of Social Systems
School of Social Sciences
Invites you to a talk by
Pankaj Jha
(LSR College, Delhi University)
on
Identity Formations in Sanskrit, Persian and Vernacular Literatures: A View from the Middle Ages
Date & Time: April 20, 2017 (Thursday), 3.00 pm
Venue: CSSS Committee Room (Room No: 13), SSS-II
Abstract : Identity politics and history of identities have acquired a certain urgency in both popular media as well as scholarly circles in the last two and a half decades or so. It is correct but inadequate to say that people in the pre-modern times in the subcontinent had multiple identities. But it does not address the fundamental historical question: what were the ways in which people during the medieval period thought of, if at all, the question of identity? This paper is an elementary attempt to explore this basic question and to observe certain patterns and hierarchies in the way specific 'identities' were ascertained and represented. The primary focus of the paper will be the period of the so-called 'Muslim' rule. But the aim is also to think in terms of the limitations of thinking about identity in all of the pre-modern period.
Bionote : Pankaj Jha did his M. Phil and Ph.D in history from the University of Delhi. Part of his doctoral work was done at the University of Texas when he was there as a Fulbright Fellow for about a year. For M. Phil, he worked with Persian materials. For Ph.D., he worked closely with Sanskrit and north Indian 'vernacular' texts, thus becoming one of the very few historians trained in Medieval India to focus on non-Persian sources as well. As a medievalist, his primary area of interest is languages and literary cultures of north India and their linkages with 'mainstream' history. An area of special interest for him is knowledge formations of north India in the fifteenth century. His book on A Political History of Literature is expected to be out soon by Oxford University Press, Delhi
