‘The Importance of Being Narayani’: Tributes to an Enduring Legacy

In our times, a book may seem like a paltry tribute to a person who has left an indelible imprint on her students and readers, as much as on the general public, children and tourists. When it not only celebrates a truly remarkable historian, history teacher, public intellectual and popular writer, but also doubles as a celebration of her beloved city, Delhi, it moves beyond being merely a tribute but reveals a unifying passion. True, the omnibus—and it is indeed, as the rather clunky title suggests, a broad sweep of articles written by her friends, colleagues, and admirers—does stray beyond the layered histories of the capital, to include, instructively, cities as far apart as Bombay, Jalandhar, Calcutta, Agra, Lalitpur and Srirangam. But the shared commitment to rethinking the historical city, to devise an appropriate approach to historical conservation, and to the teaching of history in classrooms and settings that have so dramatically been transformed of late—all these bind the contributions together in what might otherwise appear like an eclectic collection.