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Romila Thapar and Peter Brown will be awarded the 2008 Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Study of Humanity in a ceremony on December 10, at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
Endowed by John W Kluge, the Kluge Prize is unique among all international prizes in rewarding a very wide range of disciplines including history, philosophy, politics, anthropology, sociology, religion, criticism in the arts and humanities, and linguistics, as well as a great variety of cultural perspectives in the world. Each awardee will receive half of the $1 million prize.
73-year old Brown, and 77-year-old-Thapar, brought dramatically new perspectives to understanding large tracts of history, respectively, in Europe and the Middle East, and in the Indian subcontinent.
Thapar is credited with creating a new pluralistic view of the Indian civilization, by scrutinizing its evolution over two millennia.
Her prolific writings have set a new course for scholarship about the Indian subcontinent and for the writing of history textbooks in India. One reviewer said, "Thapar's rigorous professional standards are cast against a background of her implicit appreciation of an India that accommodates civilizational diversity." Another said: "Thapar's relentless striving for historical truth--independent of the superimposition of vacillating, fashionable theories of current sociopolitical conditions--is a landmark in the global writing of history."
First awarded in 2003, the Kluge Prize is international; the recipient may be of any nationality, writing in any language. The main criterion for a recipient is deep and sustained intellectual accomplishment in the study of humanity that has an impact beyond narrow academic disciplines.
An emeritus professor of Ancient Indian History at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, Thapar has made an extensive contribution to India and the world with her role in innovating methodologies for historical research and transforming our knowledge of Indian history.