A L BASHAM AND ROMILA THAPER

Professor Arthur Llewellyn Basham (24 May 1914 – 27 January 1986) was a noted historian and indologist and author of a number of books. It is perhaps not a mere coincidence that two of the most renowned living historians of early India, Professors R.S. Sharma and Romila Thapar, received their doctoral blessings from Basham (who had guided a generation of historians from India at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London in the 1950s and the 1960s) and were either closely associated with or inspired by D.D. Kosambi.

A L Basham was born on May 24, 1914, in Loughton, Essex, the son of Abraham Arthur Edward Basham and Maria Jane Basham née Thompson. Although an only child, he grew up in Essex with his adopted sister, who was in fact his cousin on his father's side. His father had been a journalist who served in the Indian Army at Kasauli, near Simla during World War I, and it was the stories that his father told him about India that first introduced him to the culture of the country he would devote his professional career to. His mother was also a journalist and short story writer further instilling a love of language and literature. As a child, he was also introduced to music and learnt to play the piano to a high standard, writing a number of his own compositions by the age of sixteen. Basham developed a keen interest in religion which began with the Christianity he was brought up with and then extended into Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam. He went on to take a BA in Sanskrit from the School of Oriental and African Studies ("SOAS") and then worked in the Civil Defence Department during World War II.

After the war he returned to SOAS and began researching for a Ph.D under Professor L.D.Barnett. For his research into the "History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas" he received a scholarship. He became a lecturer in 1948, attained the Ph.D in 1950, became a Reader in 1954, and in 1958 was promoted to Professorship. When the Head of the Department of History, Professor C. H. Philips, was promoted to the Directorship of SOAS, Professor Basham became the Head of History, a position he kept until 1965 when he joined the Australian National University ("ANU") in Canberra as Head of the History Department and Professor of Oriental (later Asian) Civilizations. After retiring from ANU in 1979, Basham accepted a series of one year visiting professorships with various universities. Basham was one of the first western historians to critically gauge the impact of Swami Vivekananda from a global perspective. His well-known comment about Vivekananda that "in centuries to come, he will be remembered as one of the main moulders of the modern world," is quoted frequently in appreciations and tributes of Vivekananda. Basham was appointed Swami Vivekananda Professor in Oriental Studies at the Asiatic Society of Calcutta in September 1985. He died in Calcutta in India in 1986. An annual public lecture series is given at the ANU in his memory.

Possibly his most popular book is The Wonder That was India published seven years after the 1947 Independence of India. Basham also wrote "History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas", based on his PhD work done under L. D. Barnett. He also wrote "The Origins and Development of Classical Hinduism" jointly with Kenneth G. Zysk. A book about Basham, written by Sachindra Kumar Maity is entitled Professor A.L. Basham, My Guruji and Problems and Perspectives of Ancient Indian History and Culture. the book includes 80 of Basham's letters addressed to the author. Thomas R. Trautmann a professor for history and anthropology at the University of Michigan, dedicated his book "Aryans and British India" 'In memory of A. L. Basham, British Sanskritist historian of India, guru, friend'.

Romila Thapar (born 1931) is an Indian historian whose principal area of study is ancient India.

After graduating from Panjab University, Thapar earned her doctorate under A. L. Basham at the School of Oriental and African Studies, the University of London in 1958. Later she worked as Professor of Ancient Indian History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, where she was Professor Emerita.

Thapar's major works are Asoka and the Decline of the Maurya, Ancient Indian Social History: Some Interpretations, Recent Perspectives of Early Indian History (editor), A History of India Volume One, and Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300.

Her historical work portrays the origins of Hinduism as an evolving interplay between social forces. Her recent work on Somnath examines the evolution of the historiographies about the legendary Gujarat temple.

In her first work, Asoka and the Decline of the Maurya published in 1963, Thapar situates Ashoka's policy of dhamma in its social and political context, as a non-sectarian civic ethic intended to hold together an empire of diverse ethnicities and cultures. She attributes the decline of the Mauryan empire to its highly centralized administration which called for rulers of exceptional abilities to function well.

Thapar's first volume of A History of India is written for a popular audience and encompasses the period from its early history to the arrival of Europeans in the sixteenth century.

Ancient Indian Social History deals with the period from early times to the end of the first millennium, includes a comparative study of Hindu and Buddhist socio-religious systems, and examines the role of Buddhism in social protest and social mobility in the caste system. From Lineage to State analyses the formation of states in the middle Ganga valley in the first millennium BC, tracing the process to a change, driven by the use of iron and plough agriculture, from a pastoral and mobile lineage-based society to one of settled peasant holdings, accumulation and increased urbanisation.

Thapar had been a visiting professor at Cornell University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the College de France in Paris. She was elected General President of the Indian History Congress in 1983 and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 1999.

Thapar is an Honorary Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She holds honorary doctorates from the University of Chicago, the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales in Paris, the University of Oxford,the University of Calcutta and in 2009 from the University of Hyderabad.

In 2004 the U.S. Library of Congress appointed her as the first holder of the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the South.

In January 2005, she declined the Padma Bhushan awarded by the Indian Government. In a letter to President A P J Abdul Kalam, she said she was "astonished to see her name in the list of awardees because three months ago when I was contacted by the HRD ministry and asked if I would accept an award, I made my position very clear and explained my reason for declining it". Thapar had declined the Padma Bhushan on an earlier occasion, in 1992. To the President, she explained the reason for turning down the award thus: "I only accept awards from academic institutions or those associated with my professional work, and not state awards".

She is co-winner with Peter Brown of the prestigious Kluge Prize for the Study of Humanity for 2008 which comes with a $1 million prize. Thapar is critical of what she calls a "communal interpretation" of Indian history, in which events in the last thousand years are interpreted solely in terms of a notional continual conflict between monolithic Hindu and Muslim communities. Thapar says this communal history is "extremely selective" in choosing facts, "deliberately partisan" in interpretation and does not follow current methods of analysis using multiple, prioritised causes.

Thapar's appointment to the Library of Congress's Kluge Chair in 2003 was opposed in an online petition bearing more than 2,000 signatures. Journalist Praful Bidwai criticized the petition as a "vicious attack" by communalists who are "not even minimally acquainted" with her work.A number of academics sent a protest letter to the Library of Congress denouncing the petition as an attack on intellectual and artistic freedom.

During the 2006 Californian Hindu textbook controversy, Thapar joined Michael Witzel in opposing changes proposed by US-based Hindu groups to the coverage of Hinduism and Indian history in school textbooks. She contended that while Hindus have a legitimate right to a fair and culturally sensitive representation, the proposed changes included unscientific, religious-based material that distorted the truth and pushed a political agenda.