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TITLE: Translating "History": Rajatarangini and the Making of India's Past
SPEAKER: Chitralekha Zutshi
EVENT DATE: 07/10/2008
RUNNING TIME: 65 minutes
DESCRIPTION:
Nineteenth-century European orientalists and philologists considered the Rajatarangini--a 12-century Sanskrit historical narrative from Kashmir--as the only Indian text to which the status of "history" could be accorded. Chitralekha Zutshi analyzes several late-19th and early 20th-century translations of this text by both Europeans and Indians to illustrate the mediated nature of the process of colonial and nationalist production of knowledge about India's past--indeed of the idea of history itsef--in British India.
Speaker Biography: Kluge Fellow Chitralekha Zutshi is associate professor of history at the College of William and Mary. She is the author of "Languages of Belonging: Islam, Regional Identity and the Making of Kashmir."