Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in South Asia. Edited by Daud Ali SOAS Studies on South Asia. Understandings and Perspectives Series. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999. xii, 399 pp. $25.95 (cloth).

Abstract

This collection of 13 essays by some leading scholars explores the variety of uses (and abuses) of history in South Asia from different perspectives. The first two sections deal with colonial and nationalist themes, including the racialization of history and its political appropriation by various political parties along the ideological spectrum, as well as the nationalist and Hindutva recasting of the past at the hands of Indologists, scientists, doctors, and travel writers. The third and final section focuses on a wide range of pre-colonial themes, ranging from Sanskritic uses of the past in the theory of mixed castes to Sri Lankan and north Indian debates about religious community and history, from Mughal imperial history to south Indian innovations. The essays reveal a complexity of traditions rarely acknowledged by those who would attribute history to the coming of modernity. They alert us to the need for a more nuanced and sustained examination of the often stereotyped attributes of pre-colonial, colonial, and nationalist history.