Department of History

Ashoka University is a private university located in Sonipat, Haryana, India, focusing on liberal arts and sciences. It was established in 2014.&nbsp;It is guided by an academic council of academics and scholars from around the world. The council sets the university&#39;s academic standard, advising on matters of curriculum, faculty hiring and research.&nbsp;

Ashoka University offers a full-time 3 (+ 1) year undergraduate programme. The University comprises of&nbsp;2500 plus students, with a mix of both national and international students.&nbsp; &nbsp;

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Ashoka University

This article examines whether the concept of a security dilemma is useful in understanding the trajectory of India-China relations over the past seven decades. It considers several phases through which this relationship has passed and it argues that the security dilemma has never been at work. The relationship is characterized not by a security dilemma but by fundamental conflicts of interests. These have been exacerbated or ameliorated by changes in domestic politics and the wider strategic context. Going forward, too, these factors are likely to influence relationship. © 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Asian Security

The security dilemma and India-China Relations

In this paper we examine some of the problems of world historical frames especially as they are made manifest in the classroom, and we show how we designed a course to resist and avoid reproducing Eurocentrism and other biases. We reject frameworks that insist on focusing solely on connectivities, entanglements, braidedness, and "Big History." Drawing pedagogical and intellectual inspiration from the writings of Paulo Freire, Ivan Illich, John Holt, and Rudolf Steiner, we make a case for widening the scope of world history by insisting that it take on board the ruptures, dissonances, and messiness of a human past that defies easy cataloguing and facile connectivities. We centered the course around developing students' understanding of how history is constructed and written, including how we can construct, write, and teach many possible narratives of world history. We argue that a course taught in such a way can be a vehicle for deepening human understanding, for decolonizing thought, and for helping students understand and articulate their position in the world. © Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

World University root node

Asian Review of World Histories

Rewriting World History in the Classroom: Pedagogical Dispatches from India

Identities in South Asia: Conflicts and Assertions

Was Bhagat Singh an internationalist?: Resistance and identity in global age

This article analyses the military transformations that India underwent during the Second World War. It focuses on the institutional dimension of these changes and considers the longer-term changes wrought by the war in the composition of the army, the logistical and support infrastructure and the emergence of an indigenous military industrial base. Taken together, the article argues, these changes positioned India as a potential regional military power that was qualitatively different from the interwar period. © 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Journal of Strategic Studies

Building the sinews of power: India in the Second World War

In conventional historiography, kings of the Pa-la dynasty are celebrated for upholding the last bastion of Buddhism in early medieval eastern India. The article demonstrates, on the basis of epigraphic evidence, that along with royal patrons, there were other categories of benefactors actively involved in the building and sustenance of Buddhist establishments. In fact, compared to the brief epigraphic history of royal patronage, there is a more sustained record of support provided to Buddhist establishments by subordinate rulers and Buddhist monks in the Pa-la domain. Through a close analysis of two twelfth-century stone inscriptions, an attempt is made to track continuities and changes in the nature of patronage provided by these two categories in a milieu defined by the presence of Buddhist institutions of trans-regional renown and participation of patrons from other realms. By paying attention to the inscriptional vocabulary, the article also highlights a typology of Buddhist monastic establishments within an eastern Indian sector and a range of devotional activities open to donors to acquire religious merit at these centres. © 2019 SAGE Publications.

Studies in History

Building for the Buddha: Patrons in the Pa-la Kingdom

The present article is a study of the process of Mughal empirebuilding in early modern North India using war as the point of entry. Specifically, it focuses on three sieges from the early years of Akbar’s reign—Chitor (1567–68), Ranthambhor (1569) and Kalinjar (1569). It teases out certain aspects of these sieges and discusses them at length individually. Bypassing historiographically-popular themes like combat and technology, it explores less-probed issues such as the fate of defeated enemies, the involvement of zamindars and mansabdars, military finance and the role of quasi-military labour in imperial military campaigns. In the process, it strives to write a social, cultural and economic history of Mughal military expansion focused primarily on the second half of the sixteenth century. © 2018 South Asian Studies Association of Australia.

South Asia: Journal of South Asia Studies

Through the lens of war: Akbar’s sieges (1567–69) and Mughal empire-building in early modern North India

Hindu College was set up in Calcutta in 1817 as a pioneering institution to impart Western learning to its students. In 1831, its most outstanding teacher, Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, then only 22 years old, was compelled to resign. A look at the circumstances that forced his resignation attempts to reconstruct Derozio's ideas and his teaching methods. The episode offers a glimpse of the intellectual ambience of early 19th-century Calcutta.

Economic and Political Weekly

The Derozio affair: An annal of early Calcutta

How do great discoveries take place? This paper aims to looks at a 1924 discovery–that of the Indus civilization–in order to understand how it can be juxtaposed with the literature on how scientific discoveries take place. In the case of the Indus civilization, there was a specific constellation of ideas and factors that came into sync with each other in 1924. Several of these–an idea slowly taking shape or the platforms and transactions that facilitated flow of information and helped in connecting the dots–have frequently been discussed in histories of innovation and discovery. There are other factors, however, which are specific to this story. These range from the varying intellectual backgrounds of the many protagonists that figure in this discovery saga to the peculiar challenges of doing archaeology within the confines of a government department. © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

World Archaeology

Are archaeological discoveries like scientific discoveries? The curious case of the Indus civilization

This paper examines the United States’ involvement in South Asia during the Second World War. It traces the evolution of American policy towards India against the backdrop of the US grand strategy during the war and its plans for a post-war international order. In this context it analyzes the tensions between American attitudes towards the Indian freedom movement and wartime imperatives of collaborating with the British Empire. By bringing into focus America’s policy towards the region at a time when it rose to global preponderance, the paper casts into relief key longer-term determinants of the US’ engagement with the subcontinent.

India and the World in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

The imperialism of anti-imperialism: The United States and India in the Second World War

Rudrangshu Mukherjee places the 'soldier-peasant' at the forefront of the Revolt. Violence has rarely been described with so much realism and subtlety. The imaginative use of primary source materials adds clarity to accounts such as the massacre in Satichaura Ghat and the trial of Mangal Pandey. The layers of complexity that defined the relationship between the rulers and the subjugated are also exposed. © 2018 Rudrangshu Mukherjee and Social Science Press. All rights reserved.