A new and widening threat to history has emerged in India with widespread erasure of India's deeply held syncretic history. The Mughals, who represent nearly 400 prosperous years of India's history and are responsible for so many cultural touchstones in the nation, have been systematically removed from textbooks. In this conversation with Scott Levi and Mytheli Sreenivas, Ruby Lal will reflect on how her work as a public historian of the Mughals provides a bulwark against the erasure of the storied Mughal empire, and its daring and dynamic female figures and non-power people. The discussion will center Lal's most recent biography of the only female historian of the Mughal Empire, Vagabond Princess: The Great Adventures of Gulbadan, and a forthcoming companion volume, Gulbadan’s Chronicle. Lal will speak about forms of narration, who is the public, what is “fact” and who gets to decide what counts as evidence.
2027 Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the South, The Library of Congress, Ruby Lal is an acclaimed historian of India and professor of South Asian history at Emory University. She is the author of six critically acclaimed books. Her most recent book, Vagabond Princess: The Great Adventures of Gulbadan, was a Finalist for James Tair Black Prize, and her previous biography Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 2018 and won the Georgia Author of the year Award.
www.RubyLal.com
