Tag Archives: History

Patrick Olivelle is amongst those to whom scholars of ancient Indian history, Sanskrit and others interested in early textual traditions are indebted, as he has, for decades, tirelessly and painstakingly provided access to a wide variety of texts. This volume represents yet another contribution, a typically generous act of scholarship that we have now begun to almost take for granted.

The landscape of Dharmaśāstric historiography has changed considerably since the publication of Patrick Olivelle’s Dharmasütras, The Law Codes of Āpastamba, Gautama, Baudhāyana and Vasiṣṭa (1999) and his critical edition of the Mānava Dharmaśāstra (2004). Hitherto, PV Kane’s monumental work, History of the Dharmaśāstras, was the starting point for any scholar on Dharmaśāstric traditions

Ruth Vanita’s new book titled The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics is a compendium of many articles by her, some of which have been published before and as such not all of it is recent research. Ruth Vanita has been an iconic intellectual who has made significant contributions in the field of Gender and Queer Studies and has been followed widely.

Professor Upinder Singh’s new book is bound to intrigue a random onlooker by its title, since one of the most reputed scholars of early Indian history describes the civilization of ancient India as a ‘culture of contradictions’ at a time when an image of a pristine, monolithic, singular Indian civilization, stemming from ancient roots, is not only being projected but often being enforced, and the voices of contradiction systematically shunned.

There has been no major monograph on early Buddhism by an Indian historian after Uma Chakravarti’s book, The Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987). While the body of scholarship on the subject has been growing, Xinru Liu’s engagingly written Early Buddhist Society, originated and published by Permanent Black in India, is an important addition to the historical work on the time of the Buddha.

Gauda as a political entity remains an elusive concept in the early history of Bengal. Although it is considered to have emerged in about the middle of the sixth century CE in the present-day northern Bengal (incorporating parts of modern West Bengal and Bangladesh), there is no textual evidence verifying this. Hence its genesis and rise in the regional power trajectories of early Bengal continue to be obscure.

Zahoor Ali Khan’s Studies in Indian Historical Geography: From Ancient Sarasvati to the Railway Age, a cartographic enquiry encompassing sixteen chapters, takes readers from historical-geography discourses on the river Sarasvati theories to map the impact of railways on the national markets. The book ends by mapping the uprising of 1857—offering a tribute to Kunwar Singh and his comrades

Bhangya Bhukya, Professor of History at Hyderabad University, has written an engaging textbook on the history of Telangana.  The book weaves a socio-economic and political history of the Telangana region from the prehistoric times to 1724 when Mughal control over the Deccan came to an end. In his book, Bhukya underscores the importance of writing a history of the South

Born into a wealthy family in Calcutta in 1861, there was very little scope, so to speak, in Rabindranath Tagore’s childhood years for experiencing country life first hand. It was only in the 1890s, after Tagore was well past youth, that he was tasked with the supervision and management of the family’s (zamindari) estates in the rural areas of eastern Bengal.

As per the recent research, the earliest remains of paper found in India are from early 11th century Multan. By the end of the 13th century, if one believes Amir Khusrau, it came to be manufactured even in Delhi; however, its production and its general availability was so limited that, as per Ziya Barani’s information, the paper would sometimes be washed and re-used for writing again.

The Tamil country has a long history of being a part of the larger world of maritime trade in the Indian Ocean region, with its trade links extending even up to Rome in the ancient period. The coastline was thus dotted with ports which were essential links between the hinterland and the external world. Whereas the patterns of trade remained remarkably stable over the centuries, the scenario with regard to the ports and their relative prosperity

Focusing on the northern Bay of Bengal region, this book is a welcome addition to both the corpus of Indian Ocean studies in general, and to the study of smaller regions within this large body of water in particular. Divided into two parts, the first being ‘Chittagong and the Northern Bay of Bengal in the Early Historical Period’, and the second on ‘Shipbuilding Culture and Technology in Chittagong and the Northern Bay of Bengal’, the book, while not being strictly chronology bound, covers a wide sweep of history.

The history of Maratha-ruled States in the last quarter of the eighteenth century is rather complicated, to some extent because it is the intertwined history (apart from the Pune court) of four major States. These four were the territories ruled by the Shinde, Holkar, Bhonsle and Gaikwad dynasties, all of which acknowledged the Peshwa as their nominal overlord.

Fernand Braudel’s call for studying the interactions among interrelated ‘ensembles’ (politics, social hierarchies, economy and culture) in a complex society (Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism, 1977, p. 8) finds resonance in this thought-provoking collection of essays on pre-modern South Asia. The seven contributors, including the three editors (who are authors too), demonstrate an exemplary maturity in handling pre-modern testimonies. In the current preferences for cultural studies in South Asian history, often privileging literary texts, synchronic treatments of the past(s) are common.

The very title of Bhairabi Prasad Sahu’s book The Making of Regions in Indian History: Society, State and Identity in Premodern Odisha suggests that he is looking for processes that went into the making of regions and the associated individualities. The book reminds this reviewer of a volume, Centres Out There? Facets of Subregional Identities in Orissa, edited by Hermann Kulke and Georg Berkemer, published in 2011 where attention was drawn to look beyond the ‘Golden Triangle’ of Bhubaneswar, Puri and Konarak and focus on their hinterland and periphery.

The book is a welcome addition to the field of the history of sociolinguistics and sociolinguistic anthropology. Though the book is very short with 122 pages of analysis, the history of sociolinguistics is accurately presented with a nuanced socio-cultural understanding of the Anglo-Indian community in Hyderabad. Divided into six chapters, including the introduction and conclusion.

This book is the  translation of a diary in Urdu by a young Muslim woman Muhammadi Begum that was written when she was a student in England at Oxford University in the early 1930s. Born in an elite Muslim family in Hyderabad, she studied Arabic, Persian and Urdu at home, and went on to do a BA at Osmania University where she topped her class; her academic prowess was rewarded by a scholarship to Oxford University by the Nizam’s Government.

Well-known Gandhian scholar Sudhir Chandra has poignantly noted in one of his essays, ‘Gandhi’s Sorrows’, that while in the thirty-two years that he spent resisting colonial rule Gandhiji was never once harmed, Independent India was able to keep this apostle of peace alive only for a mere five and a half months. This has remained a shameful blot on the otherwise glorious history of India’s struggle for Independence. Ashok Kumar Pandey’s Why They Killed Gandhi: Unmasking the Ideology and the Conspiracy and Appu Esthose Suresh and Priyanka Kotamraju authored The Murderer, The Monarch and The Fakir: A New Investigation of Mahatma Gandhi’s Assassination provide fresh perspectives to one of the most hotly contested political developments in Independent India

Venugopal Maddipati’s book opens with a charming anecdote of Charles Correa toppling over a model of a high-rise block strategically placed by his side during a lecture to architecture students at School of Planning & Architecture, New Delhi. Correa’s performance was meant to demonstrate that low-rise, medium density housing could easily create more humane and economical solutions for living (than in a high-rise), and therefore possibly more suitable to India’s climate and cultural context.

Reading Gandhi: Perspectives in the 21st Century as the acknowledgement page states is an outcome of a one-day conference held in the Department of English at Lucknow University in 2019. Structurally divided into an introduction and fourteen chapters, the anthology captures several interesting and less considered aspects of Gandhi’s life written by scholars drawn from diverse regions. The book is designed to present Gandhi’s thoughts navigating from his politics to principles and code of life. It helps us understand the Mahatma’s legacy and his philosophy which has always been a topic of discussion, especially in the contemporary world.