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In Just Being, historian Romila Thapar invites us into her illustrious world – a rich, extensive memoir from a scholar who has profoundly shaped our understanding of India’s past and present.

From her childhood growing up in British India, through her years of education in London, her extensive travels to archaeological sites across Asia and beyond, and her trailblazing role in shaping the Centre for Historical Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Thapar reflects on a life lived in the service of inquiry and education. Composed over the past few years, Just Being is a testimony to Thapar’s ability to view herself within the larger flow of history, and to illumine it with a scholar’s depth and a storyteller’s sensitivity. It reveals not only an extraordinary, boundary-defying life but a profound conviction that understanding our past in the light of irrefutable evidence is essential to an insight into the present and to shaping a more thoughtful future.

The race against time has begun, and India is already alarmingly behind. With only 15 years left of its demographic dividend, India is staring at a stark future – it may age into a poorer nation. Millions...

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