India not serious about ideas of non-violence icons: Upinder

Historian Upinder Singh today said the country did not take seriously the ideas of its three icons of non-violence and this mistake needed to be rectified.
The three icons are Gautama Buddha, Emperor Ashoka and Lord Mahavira, said Singh, author of 'Political Violence in Ancient India', at the Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet.
"I don't think we take their ideas seriously now. That is the mistake we need to rectify," Singh said during a discussion on Indian history, research and interpretation with eminent historian Mukul Kesavan.
On Ashoka's message of renunciation of violence after the Kalinga War, she said "If you read his inscriptions, you can hear him speak on issues like happiness and goodness... Something truely remarkable of Ashoka is the way he pursued propagation" of non-violence.

Singh, the head of the history department at the University of Delhi, said, "We need to engage with Ashoka by reading words in his inscription."
The daughter of former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh was speaking on the inaugural day of the six-day Tata Steel Kolkata Literary meet.

In another session at the meet, author of "The Other Sides of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India," Urvashi Butalia talked on 'Remembering and Reimagining Partition'.
"I can't say you can reject facts and take on memory. Work with two together and you can have better understanding of history," she said about ways to chronicle events.

About her book, Butalia said, "I did research over a long period of time.