Meenakshi Jain is an Indian political scientist and historian who served as an associate professor of history at Gargi College, Delhi. In 2014, she was nominated as a member of the Indian Council of Historical Research by the Government of India.[1] In 2020, she was conferred with the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian award, for her work in the field of literature and education.[2]
Jain wrote Sati: Evangelicals, Baptist Missionaries, and the Changing Colonial Discourse on the practice of Sati in colonial India and had also authored a school history textbook, Medieval India, for NCERT, which replaced a previous textbook co-authored by Romila Thapar, Satish Chandra et al.[3]
Philosopher Martha Nussbaum noted Jain to be an amateur historian, who despite being trained as a sociologist, was inducted as a historian in service of a political mission.[7] Her Medieval India rendered the time-span through a monoscopic clash-of-civilizations narrative between the forces of good (Hindus) and evil (Muslims); the tensions and internal conflicts between these seemingly homogeneous groups were done away with.[7] Nonetheless, Nussbaum found her work to be a small "oasis of intelligence", subtlety and literacy, when contrasted with other publications of the new NCERT series, published under the aegis of the Hindu Nationalist government;[7] Professor Pralay Kanungo of Jawaharlal Nehru University reflected similar sentiments.[8]
Similarly, sociologist Nandini Sundar found Medieval India to have portrayed the exactions of the Sultanate rulers and the Mughals as anti-Hindu acts; besides, all of their contributions to the social, cultural and political were ignored.[9] She saw this as part of a broader pattern of state-induced historical negationism to suit the need of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.[9] John Stratton Hawley of Columbia University found the book to misrepresent the gensis of the Bhakti movement by presenting it as a response to Shankaracharya's monism than to the egalitarian message of Islam.[10]
Pralay Kanungo found Jain's Rama and Ayodhya to be a subtle and sophisticated work that managed to stand apart from the earlier ahistorical propaganda by Hindutva-leaning historians.[8] Nonetheless, while by cherry-picking from random sources, she had managed to produce a useful compilation, it lacked in coherence and authenticity.[8]
^"Members of the Council"(PDF). INDIAN COUNCIL OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH. Archived from the original(PDF) on 6 November 2019. Retrieved 6 November 2019.
^ abcNussbaum, Martha Craven (2007). The Clash Within : Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future. Harvard University Press. ISBN9780674030596. OCLC1006798430.
