'History Wars' in Contemporary India. Professor Janaki Nair, Jawaharlal Nehru University

DEBATES about history textbooks have been central to every ‘regime change’ in the Indian setting since the 1960s. A serious attempt was made in 2005/6 to refocus history textbook writing on pedagogical rather than ideological issues, though challenges remained. However, since 2014, the history textbook has once more returned to foregrounding a neo-nationalist ideology, while simultaneously undermining the sophisticated body of work that Indian historians had produced over the last 40 years. In this lunchtime seminar, Professor Janaki Nair will examine the implications of this current shift on the development of a ‘historical temper’ among young people in India.

JANAKI NAIR was Professor of History in the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her books include Women and law in Colonial India (1996, Second Revised and Updated Edition, 2025), Miners and Millhands: Work Culture and Politics in Princely Mysore, (1998) and The Promise of the Metropolis: Bangalore's Twentieth Century (2005, which won the New India Foundation Book Prize) and Mysore Modern: Rethinking the Region under Princely Rule (2011/2012). She has published widely in national and international journals, and has served on the editorial boards of Journal of Women’s History, and Urban History. She has also held Visiting Appointments and Fellowships at University of California, Berkeley, USA; Columbia University, USA; University of Wuerzburg, Germany; German Historical Institute, London, UK; National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan; Azim Premji University, Bengaluru; and Cambridge University, UK. She has served on the Board of Governors, Institute for Social and Economic Change; on the Advisory Committee of the Karnataka State Education Commission (2023-25), and has been a member of the Kerala State Urban Policy Commission (2024-25).