Book at Lunchtime: Royals and Rebels: The Rise and Fall of the Sikh Empire

TORCH Book at Lunchtime webinar on Royals and Rebels: The Rise and
Fall of the Sikh Empire, written by Dr Priya Atwal. Book at
Lunchtime is a series of bite-sized book discussions held weekly
during term-time, with commentators from a range of disciplines.
The events are free to attend and open to all. In
late-eighteenth-century India, the glory of the Mughal emperors was
fading, and ambitious newcomers seized power, changing the
political map forever. Enter the legendary Maharajah Ranjit Singh,
whose Sikh Empire stretched throughout northwestern India into
Afghanistan and Tibet. Priya Atwal shines fresh light on this
long-lost kingdom, looking beyond its founding father to restore
the queens and princes to the story of this empire’s spectacular
rise and fall. She brings to life a self-made ruling family,
inventively fusing Sikh, Mughal and European ideas of power, but
eventually succumbing to gendered family politics, as the Sikh
Empire fell to its great rival in the new India: the British.
Royals and Rebels is a fascinating tale of family, royalty and the
fluidity of power, set in a dramatic global era when new stars rose
and upstart empires clashed. Panel includes: Dr Priya Atwal is
Community History Fellow at Oxford. She is a historian of empire,
monarchy and cultural politics across Britain and South Asia. She
has taught History at King's College London and Oxford, where she
obtained her doctorate. Her research has been featured in
collaborative projects with Historic Royal Palaces, among others;
and she makes regular broadcast appearances, most recently
presenting the BBC Radio 4 series, Lies My Teacher Told Me. She
tweets @priyaatwal. Professor Faisal Devji is a Professor of Indian
History and the Director of the Asian Studies Centre at Oxford. His
research focuses on political thought in modern South Asia, and is
more broadly concerned with ethics and violence in a globalized
world. He is the author of four books, most recently Muslim Zion:
Pakistan as a Political Idea. He is a Fellow at New York
University’s Institute of Public Knowledge and was formerly Yves
Otramane Chair at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. Professor Polly
O’Hanlon is a Professor of Indian History and Culture at Oxford and
co-course director for the MSc and MPhil in Modern South Asian
Studies. Her research interests focus on the social and
intellectual history of India. Her most recent book was At the
Edges of Empire: Essays in the Social and Intellectual History of
India, which explores new approaches to questions about caste,
gender, and religious cultures across a range of historical
environments.