Of Times There Were Before is a portrait of Romila Thapar, one of the world’s most influential historians and public intellectuals. At ninety-four, having lived through much of the making of modern India, Thapar stands at an unusual distance from the past she has spent a lifetime studying. Filmed at her home in New Delhi, the documentary begins with a simple question: who is the person behind the historian’s name? Moving beyond the authority of Thapar’s scholarship and the public image built around it, the film explores her life, memories, ideas and intellectual journey. What emerges is an intimate portrait of a life still in conversation with its own time. The film is the first in Eshan Sharma’s planned series of documentaries on Indian historians who have shaped the ways in which we understand the past. 

Film Details

Run time: Approx. 85 minutesLanguage: English with English subtitlesDirected and produced by: Eshan SharmaEdited by: Anant Raina

Filmmaker

Eshan Sharma

Eshan Sharma is the founder of Karwaan and an independent filmmaker. Of Times There Were Before is the first in a planned series of documentaries on Indian historians who have shaped our understanding of the past. Through the series, he seeks to move beyond historians’ scholarship and public profiles to explore their lives, memories, ideas and intellectual journeys.

Chair

Dr Humaira Chowdhury

Humaira Chowdhury is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the King’s India Institute. Her research explores histories of trade, labour, migration and Muslim life in South Asia. Her current postdoctoral research examines the intertwined histories of modern capitalism and Islam through the trade networks of the Dawoodi Bohra community across the Indian Ocean. She received her MPhil in Modern South Asian History and PhD in History from the University of Cambridge. Her wider research interests include artisan-labour histories, trade and diaspora, migration and immobility, and Muslim lives in South Asia. King's College London