Aloka Parasher Sen’s edited volume under review comprising a collection of eight essays recognizes the need to seek ‘out the “reality” of the past rather than its “truth”’ (p. 2). Inspired by Hayden White’s essay on historical fiction and historical reality, wherein White explains that ‘The real would consist of everything that can be truthfully said about its actuality plus everything that can be truthfully said about what it could possibly be.
The book is a biographical account with a difference, of an emperor, contested currently in national discourse, in a simple story-telling style to make the narrative thrilling and delightful. Written with passion and curious interest combined with theatrical melodrama and humour, it captures the multi-faceted personality of Akbar, his different moods, temperament, sentiments, emotions, compassion and open-mindedness, yet the focus primarily remains to be on the power-driven, ambitious, warrior, conqueror, imperialist, who is never free of court animosities, politics, resentments, turmoil and turbulence enmeshed in kinship and patronage.
Historian Ramachandra Guha has spoken of what he calls the ‘Boyle’s Laws’ of biography writing; named for their author, Goethe’s biographer Nicholas Boyle, they argue for a biography to be a logical progression to its conclusion, rather than the elaboration of a premise stated in advance; the drawing upon characters other than the principal to illuminate the narrative and extensive reference to sources other than those directly attributable to that subject. Winston Churchill’s views were congruent with Boyle’s on at least the first law
Peter Robb’s Ideas Matter: Debating the Impact of British Rule on India attempts in nine chapters to present a scenario on the debates regarding the impact of British rule on Indian society, economy, culture and politics. The long-debated introduction titled ‘Changing Governance, Agriculture and Identities’, highlights various colonial themes. The author starts with an analysis of the relationship between India and Britain and argues that ‘both countries would be different today’ without British rule in India.
For a long time the Partition of Bengal in 1947 and its manifold complexities and consequences failed to emerge as a subject of serious academic research, and more so in the English writing-speaking world. The reasons behind the relatively (as compared to Punjab) subdued academic attention and consequent paucity of published works on the Bengal Partition were many, ranging from ideological-political differences (among both state and non-state actors/researchers) to the ‘perception’ that the Bengali Partition experience was far less violent and traumatic as compared to Punjab.
Decentring the gender discourse has emerged as a vital task for those seeking to understand the unprecedented expansion of Hindutva politics and the social and political ground it has gained since the erstwhile Jan Sangh won just two seats in the Indian Parliament in the year 1982. To dismiss the ‘gender’ of the political formation as conservative could be superficial, pernicious or simply convenient; a closer and more incisive examination of the women of Hindutva remains the need of the hour, to use a cliché.