Trafalgar Square – Borderless

Book Review by Meenakshi Malhotra

Title: Just Being: A Memoir

Author: Romila Thapar

Publisher: Seagull Books

The title of Romila Thapar’s memoirs is deceptive and deceptively simple. It is not ‘just being’ but that being Romila Thapar is also a story of becoming, of mapping out borders and boundaries of what a woman from a liberal, progressive and well to do family could achieve in newly independent India. Her achievements are many and varied and her persona redoubtable. There is tremendous breadth of scholarship and Thapar’s is undoubtedly a remarkable journey which details the trajectory of her growing up years-family, background, physical and social location.

As a historian, Thapar is acutely aware and interested in the way memory works and it is this abiding interest which is perhaps reflected in her use of the following lines: “Times present and time past/Are both perhaps present in time future/And time future contained in time past”, lines from “Four Quartets” by TS Eliot.

This encapsulation of time reminds us of a common feature of autobiography — memoirs and autobiographies measure the gap between two temporal loci — the time of a past event and the time of its narration. In this case, the beginning of the story goes back nine decades. Prof Thapar regales us with stories of growing up in pre-Independence India. Born in Lucknow, she grew up in the North Western Frontier Provinces, moving from place to place as her father was a doctor in the Army.

In a way, the seeds of autonomy and independent thinking were sown very early in her life in myriad ways. She was influenced by her maternal grandmother and her mother. The latter was a graduate in the India of the 1920s, creditable for a woman since it was at a time when women’s education received mixed responses. She was competent in reading and writing three languages — Hindi, Urdu and English. Thapar narrates that “my maternal grandmother had insisted on two conditions before the marriage: that my mother never be asked to observe purdah– take the veil — when there were men around: and that she never be asked to cook meals for the family. These conditions were met.”

One finds it surprising even from the vantage point of the present time where entrenched patriarchal attitudes completely normalise the double burden carried by women and mythify cooking not only as part of women’s household duties and responsibilities, but as an act of maternal care and a labour of love. Many such instances stand out which provide a glimpse of a progressive, educated and liberal family, among whom are to be found many intellectuals who played their role in public life.

Underlying this memoir is a certain imagination of India. Thapar stands in the vanguard of those invoking, protecting and saving the idea of an India which is secular, multilingual, diverse and heterogenous. Thapar’s narrative warns us time and again of the dangers of a single narrative , a single story. Thus, she calls out the crises of democracy both during the Emergency[1] and in the present time. Is the failure of democracy attributable to the pervasive atmosphere of fear where citizens were/are cowed into silence? Or is it the failure of the education system within capitalism which has oriented individuals to fulfilling privatised desires rather than their duties as citizens? Or is it a comment on our civilisational failure that we have been reduced to acting as echo chambers for ruling elites?

In Just Being, historian par excellence Romila Thapar reflects on a rich, variegated, path-breaking life ― along with the people, relationships, ideas and journeys that made her who she is. In this compelling memoir, she invites us into her illustrious world ― a rich, testimony from a scholar who has profoundly shaped and moulded our understanding of India’s past and present. From her childhood growing up in British India, through her years of education in London, her extensive travels to archaeological sites across Asia and beyond, and her trailblazing role in shaping the Centre for Historical Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Thapar reflects on a life lived in the service of education and research. Written over the past few years, Just Being is ample proof of Thapar’s ability to view herself within the larger flow of history, and to give a splendid account of it with a scholar’s depth, a storyteller’s sensitivity and an artist’s luminosity. It reveals not only an extraordinary, boundary-defying life but courage, integrity and a profound conviction that understanding our past in the light of undeniable evidence is essential to understanding the present and shaping a more thoughtful future.

She completed her doctorate in 1958 and was offered a temporary job at School of Oriental and African Studies to teach a course in ancient history in London. Thapar’s father had set aside funds – it could be used for either marriage or education. She chose the latter and proceeded to educate herself in myriad ways. From attending the lectures of Eric Hobsbawm on European political thought, reading Ismat Chughtai, Simone de Beauvoir, enrolling herself in evening courses on Chinese art (she did Chinese landscape painting) and archaeology, learning italic calligraphy, playing table tennis with monks, holding the stepladder for friends in libraries while the other reached for books in upper shelves, her discovery of Africa, to making posters and going for marches at Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park, hers is a rich and variegated life.

One is enthralled by her narratives of the people she met, the places she visited, illumined by the rays of her razor-sharp wit and comprehensive intelligence. What also dazzles is her knowledge of jazz, her cosmopolitanism and her capacity to engage with politics and culture, art and music. She narrates about her experiences in both white and coloured jazz bars, among musicians across the racial divide, in the immediate aftermath of Martin Luther King’s assassination in January 1968. She writes about her meeting with the writer Nelson Algren, who had previously shared an intense relationship with Simone Beauvoir and featured in her work, both fictional and non-fictional. Undoubtedly and confidently cosmopolitan, she is able to make a place for herself and earn respect in widely varying contexts, including many international fora and platforms.

Professor Thapar’s feistiness is evident throughout this absorbing memoir. So is her impeccable scholarship. In the chapters on “History Rocks” and “Textbooks in the Fray,” she calls out the ideologically motivated peddlers of popular histories prevalent on Whatsapp groups and contrasts them with professional historians and historiographers. She is a stickler for honing the historian’s craft through the discipline of method and process and sharply critiques the ideologically motivated peddling of history at the cost of professionalism. Two points are made very clearly by her: first that history is and should be based on scientific evidence and there should be no mixing up or conflation of mythology and history. “Mythology is the other kind of literature that is often quoted in public discussion and confused with history.’’ Another distinction is made with equal precision: following a Weberian or Marxist methodology is not necessarily a sign of ideological persuasion as much as a methodological preference for a certain rational process of historical analysis.

Thapar is one of the world’s foremost authorities on ancient Indian history, celebrated for transforming how ancient Indian history is studied. Rather than treating history as a sequence of kings and battles, her structural, sociological, and text-critical approach shifts focus on social formations, economic shifts, and the evolution of cultural identities. Her definitive research has fundamentally challenged both nineteenth-century colonial stereotypes and reductive nationalist narratives.

Her contribution to Indian history is immeasurable.She meticulously dismantled the Eurocentric colonial claim that ancient Indians lacked a “sense of history”. In works like The Past Before Us, she showed how early Indian society embedded its historical memory through distinct traditions — such as the Itihasa-Purana literature, Buddhist/Jain monastic chronicles, and royal biographies (charitas).

Her chapter “Textbooks in the Fray” traces the ideological warfare being waged over school textbooks, some of which she had written along with other well-known historians. Her interrogation and contestation of monolithic and singular identities pave the way for a layered reading of history.

Thapar argues that modern conceptions of a singular, monolithic “Hindu” or “Muslim” community are modern constructs. Her study of the historical narratives surrounding the Somnath Temple in Dwarka illustrated how a single historical event was interpreted in profoundly different, multifaceted ways by varying social groups over centuries. Similarly, her study of Sakuntala’s contrasting depictions in the famous Indian epic Mahabharata (around 4th century BC) and Kalidas’s play “Abhijnanashakuntalam” (4^th-5th century AD) point out different conceptualisations and representation of women from a chronological perspective.

Prof Romila Thapar’s skills as a memoirist are perhaps comparable to her skill as a historian. Her endeavours have both decolonised history as well as given the discipline the status of a social science. The book gives an insight into her life, her beliefs and reflects on our times with an unbiased perspective of an adroit historian. It is a prized and rare read.

[1] 1975-77: Period of curtailment of civil liberties in India due to internal unrest.

Meenakshi Malhotra is Professor of English Literature at Hansraj College, University of Delhi, and has been involved in teaching and curriculum development in several universities. She has edited two books on Women and Lifewriting, Representing the Self and Claiming the I, in addition to numerous published articles on gender, literature and feminist theory. Her most recent publication is The Gendered Body: Negotiation, Resistance, Struggle.

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By Luke P.G. Draper

GUILTY!

The word echoed like shotgun fire through Trafalgar Square.

Pigeons scattered. Most quietened back to the ground, some flew to the domed roof of the National Gallery or away into the low and oystery clouds that folded in the morning sky.

The old man stood at the foot of the Gallery’s steps, a frayed square of cardboard and scratchy blanket at his feet a dog may have lain on before, though he stood alone and crooked, his lucid eyes betraying his wilted frame.

He clenched his fists by his side, closed his eyes and bellowed again.

GUILTY!

I was sat at the eastern fountain, soothed by the sound of sluicing water and the pulsing rumble of traffic from The Strand, but the word pealed through the square like a sudden toll of a faulty clock. I’m unsure how long I sat on the fountain wall watching him. He ignored me as if it was all part of street act, and perhaps I convinced myself it was to justify my voyeurism. We were invisible to each other and ourselves.

The square was quiet save litter pickers and the occasional businessperson crossing the square toward the office buildings, oblivious as the old man gradually lifted his arm in the air as if raising a starting pistol and roared the word once more.

GUILTY!

A smartly dressed woman walking alone toward Pall Mall vaulted like a frightened horse at the noise.

Guilty! He hissed behind her canter.

After she turned a corner, he stood to as upright a posture he could like an abandoned soldier, taking a moment to uncoil his wiry beard with his yellowed fingers, straighten his mariner cap and wipe his eyes.

Still, he didn’t look at me.

I began walking in the early mornings half a year ago. Four mornings after London came together to celebrate hosting the 2012 Olympics, three mornings after it was torn apart by bombs under and over ground. After days of self-confinement, my flat no longer felt like sanctuary. The view from my window of rows of shops and diners that often disappeared behind the type of bus that exploded in two filled me with dread. The bus would wait at the stop outside the drug store. And wait.

After a vivid dream of being chased by a bus and waking up at the pneumatic hiss of the first number 32 pulling in, I got out of bed, got dressed and left my flat to walk with no particular destination in mind. I walked all the way to Hackney Marshes and sat on the banks of the River Lea with a bottle of wine and a plastic cup. Usually, families would paddle in the water, but nobody swam that day.

The walks would last most of the day. I would circle Cricklewood to start, then walk through Maida Vale and Hyde or Regent’s Park and sometimes past the Thames toward Battersea. Every walk was navigated only by my awareness of London’s streets. I began stopping at pubs but felt too anxious to settle, even after drinking my fill.

A week later, my strolls brought me to Trafalgar Square. Small cuts of paper streamers floated on the paving and bobbed on the fountain’s water. The party was over before it began. The smoke and the ashes had dispersed, and the streets were cleansed of the mechanical — and other — remains, but something still hung in the air, like anger and fear had evaporated into an electrostatic force. It tasted blood-coppery and drifted consciously like lost ghosts.

The wound still gaped and would continue to as London silently endured.

Together, said the news, but London was shattered into grains that refused to rebind.

GUILTY!

But of what, precisely? Pride? Greed? Complacency? I took my battered tobacco tin from my pocket and picked out a pre-rolled cigarette. The bite of the first morning cigarette lingered and faded. I found myself drifting into the fountain’s chant and closed my eyes, my mind empty of all thought and memory. I remained in this mesmerised state until my cigarette burned down to my knuckle. When I reopened my eyes, the man had gone.

I checked my watch. Eight twenty-four. More people were passing through the square. Soon, groups would gather and loiter. I had no intention of being among them, so I rolled the remaining paper and tobacco between my fingers and scattered the dust on the ground, stepped off the fountain wall and headed east to the river.

Walking down Duncannon Street reminded me why I preferred the openness of the square. Cars passed closer, and the narrow pavement guided people to cross in tighter herds. While before I would walk with my head down, I now mark in every face I meet the city’s burdens. Though today, fewer people walked toward me. From the offices and the bistros, people exited and headed instead for the river until we were all like knots in the same rope being pulled toward the turbid waters.

Around Embankment Station, the line dispersed. People headed to the footbridge or the pier to get a closer look at the river. I headed to an elevated walkway that granted a view down the river all the way to the Vauxhall curve.

“There, I see it!” Cried out a man on the bridge, pointing down the river.

The morning sunlight burned on the water’s surface.

“Where”? asked a clipper, dashing on the sloping bank.

The gasps and cries could be heard over the traffic and the wind that groaned through the bridge girders.

I saw it. First a ripple on the surface and then the emergence, grey and colossal.

“There!”

“A whale! Look mum!” cried a child beside me, clutching his mother’s skirt. The mother held her hand to her mouth.

Throughout the morning and into the afternoon, crowds gathered on the banks and bridges to catch a glimpse of the whale that had come to visit. Though it had submerged soon after peering above the surface, we cooed over any disturbance in the water and cheered for the rescue service that zipped along the river on small engine boats toward any unconfirmed sighting.

I watched the river carefully. The water heaved with all the activity, exciting the crowds, who’s faces stole my attention. Many smiled and waved, as if welcoming family back from a long journey at sea. Many clapped and cheered. Some were holding back tears while others openly cried. Some prayed, in different styles and languages. It was a harmony of loving chaos. We were all, with our scars and religions, willing the whale to survive. We were thankful for its visit and the well wishes, but mentally guided it back to the vast ocean. We wouldn’t admit to ourselves that it was lost and afraid, that it had made some navigational error and swam into the shallow, fetid waters of our notorious tributary by mistake. A river once so polluted it was declared biologically dead. A river once a whaling port, where the stranded were hacked up for their oil and bone. A river that regularly surrenders corpses. We willed it back to safety with all our collective strength.

I stayed leaning on the walkway railings until the sun set and the winter chill had seeped through to my bones. I gazed on to the now calmer waters. Fewer rescue boats patrolled the river and most of the families had left. Workers crossed the footbridges with their heads down. I thought about the old man on the square. I still didn’t know what he was accusing us of, but really, I don’t think he did either. We all have our secrets, faults and regrets and we all have our rules and devotions. We have our histories that shape our futures, and for now the ever-occupied present. The old man stood there as a mirror to all that dared to look into it, and if they did, they would confront their guilt — just as we did when we stared into the soul of our river — and scream until all that is left is blind hope.

For the first time since the bombs, I wanted to go home.

Luke Draper is from Portsmouth, UK and lives in Japan. He studied Creative Writing at the University of Chichester. His literary influences include Leonard Cohen and Ryūnosuke Akutagawa.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.