Lecture (8): Faith and Allegiance in Mughal Rajasthan

I had been meaning to put this up for a while. An excellent talk by Prof. Ramya Sreenivasan given at Harvard University on March 23, 2012, on the topic "Faith and Allegiance in Early Modern Rajasthan: Perspectives from the Mughal Era." Sreenivasan looks at how court elites viewed Rajput conversions to Islam under the Mughal empire, a topic that has become contentious due to retroactive labeling of nationalist identities.

Akbar presiding over discussions in the Ibadat-khana (from a ms. of the Akbar Nama)

by Nar Singh, ca. 1597 (Dublin: Chester Beatty Library)

Prof. Ramya Sreenivasan's well known publications include: 

The Many Lives of a Rajput Queen: Heroic Pasts in Indian History c. 1500-1900. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007.

"Drudges, Dancing-girls, Concubines: Female Slaves in Rajput Polity, 1500-1850". In Slavery and South Asian History, edited by Indrani Chatterjee and Richard Eaton. Indiana University Press, 2006.

The video can be viewed here courtesy of the South Asia Initiative at Harvard University.