CSAS Thomas R. Trautmann Honorary Lecture | Conflict, Violence and Resistance in Ancient India

Our understanding of the past changes dramatically when we recognize violence as an intimate and important part of human experience that demands the historian’s attention. It is well known that the origins, sustenance and expansion of states involve the use of coercive power. This lecture looks at conflict, violence and resistance in the context of the politics of ancient India. Moving between political ideas and practice, I focus on three themes. The first is a general discussion of the relationship between the state and violence. The second extends the analysis to the social sphere, examining how theories of kingship legitimized the state’s violence against its subjects; the state’s powers to impose punishment, torture and death; and the connections between politics and sexual violence. The third part of the lecture examines the extent to which the coercive power of the state was accepted, contested or resisted by various social groups. I also ask whether the exploration of such issues that speak to our own time endows historical inquiry with a greater contemporary relevance, even urgency, or whether it threatens to destroy the objectivity that is an essential part of the historian’s craft.

Upinder Singh is Professor of History, Ashoka University, Sonepat. Her writings range over various aspects of the political, social, economic, religious and intellectual history of ancient India; the history of Indian archaeology; and interactions between India and Southeast Asia. She is the author of Kings, Brāhmaṇas, and Temples in Orissa: An Epigraphic Study; Ancient Delhi; The Discovery of Ancient India: Early Archaeologists and the Beginnings of Archaeology; A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the Twelfth Century; and The Idea of Ancient India: Essays on Religion, Politics, and Archaeology. Her edited books include Rethinking Early Medieval India; Asian Encounters: Exploring Connected Histories and Buddhism in Asia: Revival and Reinvention. Her most recent book is Political Violence in Ancient India.