Meenakshi Jain
| Meenakshi Jain | |
|---|---|
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | University of Delhi |
| Thesis title | Congress Party, 1967-77: Role of Caste in Indian Politics |
| Academic work | |
| Notable works |
Parallel Pathways Rama and Ayodhya |
Meenakshi Jain is an Indian political scientist and historian of 'Hindu right' persuasion, i.e., sympathetic to Hindu revivalism and Hindu nationalism. She is the author of the controversial history textbook Medieval India published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) during the NDA government, as a replacement for a prior text by Romila Thapar. Her recent book Rama and Ayodhya sets out the Hindu revivalist perspective on the Ayodhya dispute.
Meenakshi Jain is the daughter of journalist Girilal Jain, who would retire as editor of The Times of India.
Meenakshi Jain received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Delhi. Her thesis on the social base and relations between caste and politics was published in 1991. She also worked as a Fellow of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. Currently, Jain is an associate professor of history at Gargi College, affiliated to the University of Delhi.
In December 2014, Jain was nominated as a member of the Indian Council of Historical Research by the Narendra Modi government.
Jain also wrote a review of Romila Thapar's Somanatha: Many Voices of a History.
The Professor of Law and Ethics at Chicago University, Martha Nussbaum finds Jain's Medieval India "lacking in the complexity of the medieval period and its historical sources". Her account is seen to oscillate between responsibility to the truth and the demands of a "prior ideological commitment." Sociologist Nandini Sundar states that the exactions of the Sultanate rulers and the Mughals are exaggerated. Their contributions to the society, culture and polity are ignored. John Stratton Hawley finds the book going against the grain in its treatment of the Bhakti movement. Jain presents the movement as a response to Shankaracharya's monism rather than as a reaction to the egalitarian message of Islam. She rejects any idea that the Indian masses converted to Islam due to its professed egalitarian appeal. Rather, she believes that the Muslim elites suffered from "extreme racialism" that continued well into the seventeenth century. Hence, there is no place to look but the bhakti movement for a class-comprehensive view of religion.
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