The work of historians is to deconstruct the past and re-present it, not necessarily as a coherent whole or one of consensus (Joan Scott, Gender and Politics of Representation) but rather, to explore the complexities in the past—including fissures and the conflicts that existed.
The title is a misnomer. This tantalizing title of a book of translation that is saturated with divinity is an invitation to the enterprising reader to explore what lies within and what lies beyond the imagined entity called ‘God’. I would like to begin my review.
This is a daring outlier of a book. At a time when genetic research, coupled with linguistic and archaeological studies, provide path-breaking revelations on ‘who we are and how we got here’, Harsh Mahaan Cairae has chosen to trace the journey of the Aryan.
Certain historical events—often, military or strategic in nature— engender obsessions with counter-factual questions. Questions such as, ‘what if Hitler and the Axis had won’, ‘what if Jinnah had died before August 1947’, and ‘what if the South had won the U.S. Civil War’, continually.
Before Robert Clive slit his jugular, perhaps in a paroxysm of violent pain in the abdomen, he had excused himself from a game of whist to visit the toilet. He was in his Berkeley Square townhouse in London and had ordered for his carriage to take him to Bath later after noontide.
‘The 1940s’, observes Ashis Nandy, ‘introduced into the South Asian public life a new actor—the refugee.’