Contested Indian History #1: Intro
Shaan Kashyap’s Who Owns History? is an interesting read that goes over the writing of Indian history from a particular angle: “The book is not a history of India – it is the history of how Indians have argued over, contested and even reimagined history itself.” The same point, from a different angle: “It traces the moments when historians stepped the safe confines of universities and found themselves in the public sphere.” In the polarized India of today, one set believes such contested history is a recent (aka Modi era) phenomenon. Another believes what is happening today is a backlash against the Left’ist version of history from before that. But no, says the book, in India, such clashes pre-date both of the above by a long time! ~~ Yuval Noah Harari said we’re hardwired to love stories and (mis)apply it to everything around us. Including history. We like clean narratives. Good and bad. Nothing grey, nothing messy. As Kashyap puts it: “If people can ch...