Tag Archives: History

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.

Gandhi is possibly the greatest Indian to have lived since Buddha. His greatness, however, lies not in his invulnerability—but rather, in his struggle to overcome his many frailties. Gandhi’s story is an alluring, yet rare, tale of the triumph of human will over seemingly insurmountable odds. One is reminded of Albert Einstein’s famous phrase describing Gandhi, ‘Generations to come, it may well be, will scarce believe that such a man as this one ever in flesh and blood walked upon this Earth.

Prathama Banerjee’s book offers a brilliant academic contribution to the histories of the non-western world with its primary focus on the Indian subcontinent. This book is about ‘histories of the political’ by exploring the question of what is ‘political’ in the context of modern India. Thus, its overall focus is on how the modern ideas of political practice emerged in the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century Bengal out of different Indian philosophical traditions as well as influence of colonialism.

The two edited volumes under review comprise a collection of twenty-four essays incorporating an understanding of land in South Asia, exploring the purview beyond disciplinary boundaries. They historically map out South Asia’s land distribution and the negotiations involved in it among various actors on those lands. In Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History, among the eleven essays, those by S Nurul Hasan, Tapan Raychaudhuri, Burton Stein, and Nilmani Mukherjee start with a precolonial understanding of the land and extend to their modern-day implications.

This book, with about 250 pages and multiple useful illustrations, is a much-needed comprehensive work that fills the existing gap in both academic and non-academic understanding of early historic Gujarat. Apart from the Foreword and Introduction, the Appendix which follows the Conclusion is extremely useful as it introduces the different types of pottery of Gujarat.

Before jumping into analysing the book’s strengths, it is important to highlight the complexity of this project. Tracing a transnational project like the movement of labouring bodies across oceans, while being a scholar in a middle-income country is a feat. While the subjects of this book may be Indians, looking for their archival traces would require transcending national boundaries—something that not many early career scholars find possible.

Ideas, as we do not adequately appreciate, are profoundly important. They are not merely abstractions, because they lead to actions, to violence or to healing. As a doctor, I was a Resident at a department of psychiatry where ECTs were routine. This treatment is now considered inhuman and is banned in most countries; it continues in India.

Sumanyu Satpathy’s Will to Argue opens with a rather interesting excerpt from Jonathan Swift’s Battle of the Books about the ‘books of controversy’. Another excerpt from the same text, not quoted by the author, makes for a succinct comment on the momentous task that Satpathy has undertaken in this book.[B]ooks of controversy being, of all others, haunted by the most disorderly spirits, have always been confined in a separate lodge from the rest

In 1984, Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister and launched a far-sighted tech policy which subsidized and allowed the liberal import of personal computers. A PC at world prices was prohibitively expensive and still out of reach for most middle-class urbanized Indians. The subsidy and easy terms for a loan allowed many to own a chunky PC and institutions also gradually started converting.

The annals of Indian history are rich and expansive, filled with the most amazing tales of both valour and idiosyncrasies. School textbooks often gloss over these incidents because it is impossible to capture all of these tales in one comprehensive text and also because textbooks need to build a cohesive narrative, a sequence which may not grasp the complicated and interlinked histories which spread across time and space

Open the book and you ‘see’ Shah Jahan, imprisoned by his son Aurangzeb, gazing at the Taj Mahal from his prison. Reading on, and with the help of Kavita Singh Kale’s illustrations, you get pulled into the captive emperor’s thoughts and get a peep into his cherished memories. Those of the happy days spent with his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal. And of the sad days too, when Mumtaz died after giving birth to their fourteenth child

A little book that says it all—from beautiful descriptions of Nature’s bounty, and the history of an ancient nation and its civilization—to memories, old and precious. It is only the talented Ruskin Bond who can do it.

Rudrangshu Mukherjee’s Tagore & Gandhi:  Walking Alone, Walking Together is an arresting book laced with fresh insights and perspectives, notwithstanding that it is about a subject that is  well-trodden in the annals of academia. Tagore and Gandhi both bestrode the Indian firmament like two towering Colossuses. Attempting a book on either of them is fraught with danger.

One of the aspects studied by scholars of globalization is its antiquity. Questions have been asked about whether globalization is a novel phenomenon from the 20th century, or merely varying manifestations of an old pattern over periods of time. Convincing arguments have been made on either side. One pattern that is undeniable is the search for products, profits and resources, all contingent upon control of people and territory.

The paradigmatic method of studying the story of India is through its languages, declares Peggy Mohan with a rhetorical flourish in the title of her book, Wanderers, Kings, Merchants: The Story of India Through its Languages.Mohan’s thesis draws upon Jawaharlal Nehru’s archetypal statement about the Indian subcontinent which likened it to…some ancient palimpsest on which layer upon layer of thought

This is the story which has been buried in the rubble of history of twelve hundred years ago of a warrior Queen, who was brave and beautiful and intelligent. She was a legendary queen of Kashmir, who ruled from 950 to 1003 AD.  She became a legend for her valour. Her father was the ruler of Lohar, a hill principality near Kashmir. Didda was physically handicapped due to polio and because of that her parents neglected her and she was jeered at by other members in the palace.