College News

18 February 2004

Public lecture: India, Islam and Everyday Jihad

The Hayes Robinson lecture, India, Islam and Everyday Jihad, by Professor Barbara Metcalf, will take place at Royal Holloway, University of London in the Main Lecture Theatre on Tuesday 2 March at 5.30 p.m.

Barbara Metcalf is the A.F. Palmer Professor of History at the University of Michigan. She studies Muslim history and identities in Europe, America, south-east Asia and India. Her recent publications include A Concise History of India (Cambridge, 2002), written in conjunction with her husband, Tom Metcalf.

This year's lecture puts the Islamic concept of Jihad, or holy struggle, into historical context to show how it is applied to both peaceful daily life and religious militancy. The lecture will focus upon the Muslim population in India in the years around Independence in 1947, identifying the strategies followed by some 140 million people within a lively and diversified democratic system.

The Hayes Robinson Memorial Fund was founded in 1931 by past and present members of Royal Holloway, University of London, to institute a lecture in memory of Miss Hayes Robinson, founder of the Honours School of History in the College.

ENDS

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