by Dr. Manu S. Pillai

Dr. Manu S. Pillai is a historian and the author of five books, most recently Gods, Guns & Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity. A winner of the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar for his first book, The Ivory Throne, he is also a columnist at Mint Lounge. Manu holds a PhD in history from King's College London.

Abstract

In this talk Dr. Manu S. Pillai addresses the question of what constitutes history and its study. How do communities “remember” the past? Do such “memories”—so integral to identity—clash with academic engagement with history, and with the counternarratives held by other groups? Why does history matter so much to politics and ideology? And in speaking of history, whose history are we speaking about, given issues around caste, class, gender, and more. Above all, how do we address hypersensitivity around historical topics in the world today? The lecture intends not so much to supply a definite answer but to lay out some thoughts, illuminating why history matters—and should matter—to all of us.