An Essay on Historiography: Some Recent Writings on Assimilation and Antagonism in Pre-Modern India

Abstract

Scholars of the subcontinent have abided by colonial paradigms too long. We have accepted the incredibly racist stereotype that the pre colonial past was a static country and was interrupted only by a succession of essentially similar empires – all we had were wars and gods until the British taught us to be liberal individuals in a modern world. Therefore, we need to write histories not only of the present, but histories that investigate the silences and distortions that make our present possible. All the writings discussed herein seek to restore a protean past, filled with possibilities for different futures and multiple modes of being Indian; as several centuries of empire have failed to quell our irrepressible diversity.