Itihasa made itihasya...

A short video presentation where I summarise my key thoughts on historiography and historiographical conflicts. It is in essence a distillation albeit rather simplified if not simplistic, of my arguments, ideas, meanings and purpose that has informed my teaching, my trainings, my professional interactions over years. The broad perspective presented here have further been the backdrop for my explorations, deliberations and experimentations particularly via different pedagogical endeavours that I have shared in these pages, in my book  and my facebook page . Of course my presentation may leave a lot wanting, given my own clumsiness in articulation and lacking media finesse and media savviness but yet I hope in some little more than 8 minutes, key issues in contemporary historiography and some directions in resolving messy and fraught epistemic imbroglios emerge. 

Manu Pillai and Anirudh Kanisetti have been two writers who attempt to present their understanding of India’s past in a style and prose that can fancy more discerning readers bought on popular fiction. While it is doubtful if they present any original research, they certainly lay before a much larger audience, distilled views from more serious academic studies in racy and elegant prose. Otherwise much of social sciences and historical research are transacted in obtuse language that can intimidate and deter many. Yet social science scholarship is very subjective and over the years the conflict paradigm has dominated its practice. This perspective is not without its problems for it imagines an eternally divided world from the past where matters have always worked against the putatively disadvantaged communities at the hands of a propertied minority.  While no doubt hierarchies are obnoxious, we can also see how communities in the past have sought to combat the vileness, the oppressi...