2018
I must say I thoroughly enjoyed Shashi Tharoor’s timely book: Why I am a Hindu. Not a scholarly work, but an eminently readable one.
Shashi demolishes the facile Right-Wing Hindutva assumption that the only criterion for ‘Hinduness’, is subscribing to their Talibanized ideology. He delves into the many centuries of Hinduism in India and talks about the tolerance, the welcoming inclusiveness and the profound metaphysics of Hindu traditions, all the way from the sublime non-dualism of Shankara to the atheism of the Charvaka.
Neyaz Farooquee’s memoir An Ordinary Man’s Guide to Radicalism:Growing up Muslim in India has raised the all-time charged question of identity Indian Muslims have been grappling with. This is basically a tale of an ordinary Muslim youth who migrated from Bihar’s Gopalganj district and settled in a ‘Muslim ghetto’ called Batla House in Jamia Nagar, a locality behind Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He has documented his stories in the backdrop of the infamous Batla House encounter (widely believed to be fake), which took place in 2008, just 200 meters away from his residence.
Caste continues to be a reality in India even as the country is moving to the third decade of the twenty-first century. Undoubtedly the most inhumane and oppressive aspect of the caste system is untouchability. Not only are caste and untouchability experienced in quotidian life across the country, come elections and they manifest in the most pronounced fashion in a variety of ways as the parties and politicians set out to garner votes.
The literature on feminist methods, methodologies and epistemologies which developed rapidly since the 1970s as an aftermath of the feminist movement across the world is undoubtedly rich, varied and wide ranging and evolved both in terms of its theoretical premises, as well as evidence based on real life experiences, anecdotes and other feminist writings. However, the history of Indian feminist writings date prior to the western waves of feminism and go back to pre-Independence era.
The canvas of studying the environment is extensive and multidisciplinary. Given its multifarious aspects, addressing the subject at length is not an easy feat. Pamela Hill attempts to answer pressing environmental concerns by addressing the science behind ecological issues, environmental laws and treaties. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach, she connects environment to economics and politics, putting forth arguments which explain why conserving the environment is the utmost need of the hour. To clarify the assertions further, the author uses examples from history as well as addresses some highly debated contemporary issues which throw light on how the international community, especially the United States, is trying to unravel the science behind environmental protection.
The evolution of capital, the corresponding spread of western imperialism, the exploitation of the colonies, fuelled by the industrial needs of the West, anti-colonial struggles against the abject exploitation of the colonies and the subsequent formation of the sovereign independent government in the new nation states is all but one seamless trajectory, wherein also lie the voices of resistance as well. Such resistance or for our purpose, the alternative economic model—of socialism or welfarism—continued to be an aberration in the world where economics as a discipline has been tailored to be studied and understood in isolation from politics.
Archives of Empire is predominantly a collection of various documents from the 19th century, from the 19th century, of sources, mostly collated in excerpt form, ranging widely across genres and subject materials. Thus, there are speeches, essays and letters of notable 19th century personae, government documents, the odd legislation, even chapters from novels and books from the era, are presented as excerpts of varying sizes. This review engages with the first of a four-volume set. First published in 2003, it has found its way to India, the dominant subject of its attention, fifteen years later.
2018
Even though the published literature on the revolt of 1857 is vast, the historiography on the subject remains underdeveloped. The impact of colonial historiography has been so far-reaching and pervasive that till very recently it has been difficult to formulate relevant questions for research on the subject. For instance, since there is an assumption that Panjab remained ‘loyal’ to the British, researchers have not paid much attention to the events in the province.
The histories of bhakti and sufi traditions have dominated the study of religious developments in the medieval and early modern period in the South Asian region. Consequently, the presence of other religious communities is hardly recognized and research on them remains somewhat marginalized. The book under review is a much-needed intervention in the historical scholarship of religious studies of the pre-colonial period. Based on wide ranging sources, mostly unexplored till date, the work highlights the developments within the Jaina community, the development of the community identity and its interactions with the Mughal imperial authority in northern India especially in the Mughal provinces of Ajmer, Awadh, Allahabad, Bihar, Delhi, Gujarat, Lahore and Malwa.
The historian’s engagements with the past—whether remote or recent—with an explanatory orientation, require a clear understanding of the preferred temporal and spatial units. The historian’s choice of a given area and a chronological span is often determined by, inter alia, historiographical issues and debates and evidential wherewithal. These are methodological issues which the historian BD Chat-topadhyaya once labelled as the burden of historiography and the burden of sources. The other almost invariable compulsion of a historian is to pitch in the nation state or parts thereof as a pivot of historical enquiries.