Indian historiography

Why Europe Pulled Ahead: Science, Printing and the Freedom to Criticise

A commenter argues that Islam, like the British, is invoked to explain India’s underdevelopment, that India once allowed freedom to criticise and produced thinkers who opposed caste, and that knowledge…

Bharata Bharatavanshi12 April 20180 comments
Indian History Wars..

Contrasting China, where population genetics is not politically explosive, with India, the author points readers to articles on Indian genetic debates and argues that Indian population genetics is contentious because…

Omar Ali2 August 20173 comments
Romila Thapar. Something is missing..

Commenting on an interview with Romila Thapar, the author says he accepts her sceptical, neutral historian’s ideal but finds she lacks a vision of what India is and why India…

Brown Pundits Archive17 September 20150 comments
The neo-Marxist historians of India

Drawing on Ramachandra Guha’s reflections on India’s social-science community, the poster argues Marxist historians’ pre-eminence rested on Congress patronage, and says the Hindu right’s plan to rewrite history should be…

Brown Pundits Archive14 August 20140 comments
Ramayana, Mahabharata true accounts, not myths

Responding to a claim that the Ramayana and Mahabharata are true accounts, the poster argues that left-liberal historians have a tiny secular fan base, because conservative Muslims, Sikhs and Dalits…

Brown Pundits Archive12 July 20140 comments
The RSS is back in (cultural) business

The author sees the RSS taking over India’s cultural institutions, beginning with Y. Sudershan Rao at the ICHR, and mocks what may follow, from degrees in astrology to claims about…

Brown Pundits Archive4 July 20140 comments
RSS Led by Modi in Charge of India, Part II: Domestic Policy

In a series on the Modi government, the post reads domestic policy from RSS views, the Gujarat model and the BJP manifesto, expecting rewritten school history texts that dilute Congress…

Brown Pundits Archive21 May 20142 comments
Bangladesh war hero is history

On the sale of INS Vikrant, the poster argues India has never written proper history and that the 1971 war should be retold around its victims, mainly Hindus driven out…

Brown Pundits Archive9 April 20140 comments
World War I (from an Indian viewpoint)

A note on the roughly 1.4 million Indians who took part in the First World War, mostly from Punjab, regretting that Indian historians have neglected the subject, with a quoted…

Brown Pundits Archive22 March 20140 comments
The bridge stretches from Pune to Potsdam

An extract on Raghunath Purushottam Paranjpye as a bridge between India and Germany, with the poster noting Germany’s long admiration of Indian culture and asking whether it had anti-Semitic undertones.

Brown Pundits Archive8 March 20141 comment