Who Gets Remembered from History? A Conversation

Oblivion and erasure are themes at the core of Ruby Lal’s work as an historian. She has explored not only what happened in the past, and why certain figures do not take center stage in Mughal history, but also how women, girls, ordinary people, ambiguous figures (eunuchs, concubines, wet nurses), spaces (harem, gardens, tents), and multiple forms of desire are made deviant, redundant, or obscure in history. At the heart of her new biography of the 16th century Princess Gulbadan, the only woman Mughal historian, rests the “question of evidence.”

In conversation with Irina Dumitrescu, she will explore what counts as a source? Who decides what is deserving of the name archive? How have the most important Mughal sources been preserved and become available to us? Who writes them, for what purpose? Since her previous book, Lal took on a new form of writing (biography). She will discuss why she turned to a new form and what about the Mughal era she found particularly intriguing.