Talk:Rama Mantena
Rama Mantena is Associate Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of History (South Asia, India, British Empire) at the University of Illinois, Chicago, as of July 2023[1]. According to her university profile, her research interests include colonial archives and the production of knowledge, historiography and the practices of history, and more recently public spheres, publicity, and debates over civil society in Twentieth-century India.
She has published no books, papers, or research pertaining to Hindus, the rights of Hindus, the impact or relationship between Islam and Hinduism / Hindutva, India, or the Indian Government as of July 2023
In 2021, she along with Hibatullah Akhundzada, the supreme leader of the Taliban, co-signed a letter supporting "Dismantling Global Hindutva" Conference, as an academic and scholar and made the allegation
"the current government of India [in 2021] has instituted discriminatory policies including beef bans, restrictions on religious conversion and interfaith weddings, and the introduction of religious discrimination into India’s citizenship laws. The result has been a horrifying rise in religious and caste-based violence, including hate crimes, lynchings, and rapes directed against Muslims, non-conforming Dalits, Sikhs, Christians, adivasis and other dissident Hindus. Women of these communities are especially targeted. Meanwhile, the government has used every tool of harassment and intimidation to muzzle dissent. Dozens of student activists and human rights defenders are currently languishing in jail indefinitely without due process under repressive anti-terrorism laws."[2]
On November 5, 2017, she signed the letter submitted by the South Asia Faculty Group (SAFG) to the California State Board of Education[3] where she:
- She misrepresented scholarship stating "Mythological terms substitute for historical ones for example the 'Indus Valley Civilization' (a fact-based geographic term) appears to be replaced with a religiously-motivated and ideologically charged term 'Indus-Saraswati/Sarasvati Civilization'. The Saraswati is a mythical river"[4][5][6]
- Implied that Christians and Muslims existed in Ancient India, prior to the founding of these religions
[edit]
- Mantena, Rama Sundari. "Publicity, civil liberties and political life in Princely Hyderabad." Modern Asian Studies, vol. 53, no. 4, 2019, pp. 1248-1277.
- Mantena, Rama Sundari. "Anti-colonialism and Federation in Colonial India." Ab Imperio, vol. 3, 2018, pp. 36-62.
- Mantena, Rama Sundari. "Vernacular Publics and Political Modernity: Language and Progress in Colonial South India." Modern Asian Studies, vol. 47, no. 5, 2013, pp. 1678-1705.
- Mantena, Rama Sundari. "Imperial Ideology and the Uses of Rome in Discourses on Britain’s Indian Empire." In Classics and Imperialism in the British Empire, ed. Mark Bradley, Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 54-73.
- Mantena, Rama Sundari. "The Andhra Movement, Hyderabad State and the Historical Origins of the Telangana Demand: Public Life And Political Aspirations in India, 1900-1956." India Review, vol. 13, no. 4, 2014, pp. 337-357.
- Mantena, Rama Sundari. "The Question of History in Pre-colonial India." History and Theory, vol. 46, 2007, pp. 396-408.
- Mantena, Rama Sundari. "The Origins of Modern Historiography in India: Antiquarianism and Philology, 1780-1880." New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
- Mantena, Rama Sundari. "The Origins of Modern Historiography and Indian Intellectual History," a special issue on the work of Professor Velcheru Narayana Rao in eemaata: a Telugu webzine for a world without borders, January 2013.
References[edit]
- ↑ * Rama Mantena page on University of Illinois, Chicago accessed July 2023
- ↑ "Letter of Support", Dismantling Global Hindutva Conference website, accessed August 7, 2022
- ↑ 2017 South Asia Faculty Group (SAFG) Letter to the California State Board of Education
- ↑ Chakrabarti, Dilip, and Sukhdev Saini. The Problem of the Sarasvati River and Notes on the Archaeological Geography of Haryana and Indian Punjab. Aryan Books International, 2009.
- ↑ Danino, Michel. The Lost River: On the Trail of the Sarasvati. Penguin Books, 2010.
- ↑ McIntosh, Jane R. A Peaceful Realm: The Rise and Fall of the Indus Civilization. Westview Press, 2002, p. 24. where she stated "Suddenly it became apparent that the “Indus” Civilization was a misnomer—although the Indus had played a major role in the development of the civilization, the “lost Saraswati” River, judging by the density of settlement along its banks, had contributed an equal or greater part to its prosperity. Many people today refer to this early state as the “Indus-Saraswati Civilization” and continuing references to the “Indus Civilization” should be an abbreviation in which the “Saraswati” is implied. There are some fifty sites known along the Indus whereas the Saraswati has almost 1,000. This is misleading figure because erosion and alluviation has between them destroyed or deeply buried the greater part of settlements in the Indus Valley itself, but there can be no doubt that the Saraswati system did yield a high proportion of the Indus people’s agricultural produce"