Upinder Singh

Last updated

Upinder Singh
Dean of Faculty Ashoka University
Personal details
Born (1959-06-22) 22 June 1959 (age 65)
SpouseVijay Tankha
Children2
Parents
Relatives Daman Singh (sister)
Education McGill University, Canada (PhD)
St. Stephen's College, Delhi
Occupation
Awards Infosys Prize

Upinder Singh (born 22 June 1959) is an Indian historian who is a professor of History and Dean of Faculty at Ashoka University. [1] She is the former head of the History Department at the University of Delhi. [2] [3] She is also the recipient of the inaugural Infosys Prize in the category of Social Sciences (History). [3]

Contents

Education and professional life

Singh is an alumna of St. Stephen's College, Delhi and received a PhD from McGill University in Canada. She has a Master of Arts in history and an M.Phil. in history, both from the University of Delhi. She has a Ph.D. from McGill University, Montreal, Canada, with a thesis titled Kings, Brahmanas, and Temples in Orissa: an epigraphic study (300-1147 CE). She is a Professor in the Department of History at Ashoka University. [3]

Personal life

Singh is the daughter of Dr. Manmohan Singh, the former prime minister of India, and history professor Gursharan Kaur. [4] She is married to Vijay Tankha, a professor of philosophy and has two sons. [5]

Honours

Singh was awarded the Netherlands Government Reciprocal Fellowship in 1985, to pursue research at the Instituut Kern, Leiden. She was awarded the Ancient India and Iran Trust/Wallace India Visiting Fellowship to pursue research in Cambridge and London in 1999. She was also a visiting fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. Singh has received the prestigious Daniel Ingalls Fellowship at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University in 2005. [3]

She is the national coordinator for history at the Institute of Life Long Learning at the University of Delhi. [3]

She was visiting professor at the University of Leuven, Belgium, as the recipient of the Erasmus Mundus Fellowship, May–June 2010. [2]

Controversies

On 25 February 2008, right-wing activists demonstrated at the Delhi University campus, in protest against an essay by A.K. Ramanujan titled Three Hundred Ramayanas . The activists felt the essay was offensive, and alleged that Singh was responsible for its inclusion in a list of recommended readings for the BA programme in history. The University denied the allegation and stated that Singh was "… neither the editor nor compiler of the book on Cultural History of Ancient India." [4]

Publications

Books authored

Books edited

Papers

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bindusara</span> 2nd Maurya Emperor

Bindusara was the second Mauryan emperor of Magadha in Ancient India. The ancient Greco-Roman writers called him Amitrochates, a name likely derived from his Sanskrit title Amitraghāta.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Romila Thapar</span> Indian historian (born 1931)

Romila Thapar is an Indian historian. Her principal area of study is ancient India, a field in which she is pre-eminent. Thapar is a Professor of Ancient History, Emerita, at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kosala (Mahajanapada)</span> One of the Mahajanapadas

Kosala, sometimes referred to as Uttara Kosala was one of the Mahajanapadas of ancient India. It emerged as a small state during the Late Vedic period and became one of the earliest states to transition from a lineage-based society to a monarchy. By the 6th century BCE, it had consolidated into one of the four great powers of ancient northern India, along with Magadha, Vatsa, and Avanti.

Indraprastha is a mythological city cited in ancient Indian literature as a constituent of the Kuru Kingdom. It was designated the capital of the Pandavas, a brotherly quintet in the Hindu epic Mahabharata. Under the Pali form of its name, Indapatta, it is also broached upon in Buddhist texts as the capital of the Kuru Mahajanapada. The topography of the medieval fort Purana Qila on the banks of the river Yamuna matches the literary description of the citadel Indraprastha in the Mahabharata; however, excavations in the area have revealed no signs of an ancient built environment. The mythical city is sometimes also referred to as Khandavaprastha or Khandava Forest, the epithet of a forested region situated on the banks of Yamuna river which, going by the Hindu epic Mahabharata, was cleared by Krishna and Arjuna to build the city.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gursharan Kaur</span> Spouse of Manmohan Singh (Born: 1937)

Gursharan Kaur Kohli is an Indian history professor, author and widow of the former prime minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pratap Bhanu Mehta</span> Indian academic (born 1967)

Pratap Bhanu Mehta is an Indian academic. He was the president of the Centre for Policy Research, a New Delhi-based think tank and was the Vice-Chancellor of Ashoka University from July 2017 to July 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Early Indian epigraphy</span> History of South Asian writing systems

The earliest deciphered epigraphy found in the Indian subcontinent are the Edicts of Ashoka of the 3rd century BCE, in the Brahmi script.

Tosali or Toshali was an ancient city in the present day Odisha state in eastern India. It was the capital of the eastern province of the Kalinga Kingdom. While some scholars tried to identify this ancient city with Dhauli, 7 km away from Bhubaneshwar, other scholars were inclined to identify this city with Shishupalgarh, 5 km away from Bhubaneshwar.

Kanganahalli, situated about 3 km from Sannati, is an important Buddhist site where an ancient Mahastupa was built. It is on the left bank of the Bhima river in Chitapur taluk, Kalaburagi district in Karnataka, India. Nalwar is the nearest Railway station about 19 km from Sannati. The Buddhist site about 2.5 km from Chandrala Parameshwari temple of Sannati.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heinrich von Stietencron</span> German Indologist (1933–2018)

Heinrich von Stietencron was a German Indologist. During his academic career, he was an emeritus professor and the chair of the Indology and Comparative Religion department at the University of Tübingen.

Sunil Khilnani is a professor of politics and history at Ashoka University, India. Previously, he was a professor of politics and the Director of the King's College London India Institute. He is a scholar of Indian history and politics best known as the author of The Idea of India (1997). He was the presenter of a BBC Radio 4 series entitled Incarnations: India in 50 Lives, which was later published as a book in 2016. He was a 2010 Berlin Prize Fellow, and he was also a recipient of the Indian government's 2005 Pravasi Bharatiya Samman award.

Padmavati was a queen and third wife of the third Mauryan Emperor, Ashoka and the mother of his second son, the Crown Prince Kunala. She was also the grandmother of Emperor Samprati.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vidya Dehejia</span> Indian art historian and curator

Vidya Dehejia is a retired academic and the Barbara Stoler Miller Professor Emerita of Indian and South Asian Art at Columbia University. She has published 24 books and numerous academic papers on the art of South Asia, and has curated many exhibitions on the same theme.

Brahmadeya was tax free land gift, either in the form of single plot or whole villages, donated to Brahmanas in the early medieval India. It was initially practiced by the ruling dynasties and was soon followed up by the chiefs, merchants, feudatories, etc. Brahmadeya was devised by the Brahmanical texts as the surest means to achieve merit and destroy sin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Epic-Puranic chronology</span> Timeline of Hindu mythology based on the Hindu Epics and the Puranas

The Epic-Puranic chronology is a timeline of Hindu mythology based on the Itihasa and the Puranas. These texts have an authoritaive status in Indian tradition, and narrate cosmogeny, royal chronologies, myths and legendary events. The central dates here are the Kurukshetra War and the start of the Kali Yuga. The Epic-Puranic chronology is referred to by proponents of Indigenous Aryans to propose an earlier dating of the Vedic period, and the spread of Indo-European languages out of India, arguing that "the Indian civilization must be viewed as an unbroken tradition that goes back to the earliest period of the Sindhu-Sarasvati Valley traditions ."

The information about the mother of Ashoka, the 3rd Mauryan emperor of ancient India, varies between different sources. Ashoka's own inscriptions and the main texts that provide information about his life do not name his mother. The Asokavadanamala names her Subhadrangi, while Vamsatthapakasini calls her Dharma. Different texts variously describe her as a Brahmin or a Kshatriya.

Chunar stone or Red-spotted sandstone is a kind of reddish or buff-colored, finely grained, hard sandstone quarried in the Chunar in the Mirzapur District of Uttar Pradesh, and widely used in the architecture of India.

Nayanjot Lahiri is a historian and archaeologist of ancient India and a professor of history at Ashoka University. She was previously on the faculty of the department of history at the University of Delhi.

Amita Baviskar is a sociologist and Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology & Anthropology at Ashoka University, India. Previously, she was Professor at the Sociology Unit, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi, India. She received the 2005 Malcolm Adiseshiah Award for Distinguished Contributions to Development Studies, the 2008 VKRV Rao Prize for Social Science Research and, in 2010, was awarded the Infosys Prize for Social Sciences – Sociology in recognition of her analysis of social and environmental movements in modern India. Baviskar studies the cultural politics of environment and development in rural and urban India.

Gosahasra or go-sahasra-dana is a ritual donation described in the ancient texts of India. It is one of the sixteen great gifts (shodasha-mahadana), and is frequently mentioned in the ancient inscriptions.

References