Books about Indian History

Rob_The_Pom

Hi all,

I must admit to being a big time Indian history lover and I've churned my way through some splendid books about the subject recently just wanted to share....

Liberty or Death, Patrick French
I think this is one of, if not the, best modern book on the transfer of power.

White Moghuls, William Dalrymple.
A real masterpiece and a truly tragic tale. Great reading.

India Discovered
India: A History
The Honourable Company (The East India Company)
The Great Arc, John Keay
Keay really is a splendid writer on all things Indian.

The Moghul Throne, Abraham Eraly
A fascinating survey of the great Moghuls.

Mountbatten, Phillip Zeigler
A brilliant account of the last Viceroy.

Indira, Katheryn something or other (can't remember)
Mrs Gandhi's life was certainly truth stranger than fiction.

Raj, Lawrence James
A fascinating history of British India, albeit from a very anglocentric point of view.

I'd love to here anyone elses opinions on these books and any recommendations for other quality histories of India.

Cheers

RTP

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Merchant

"The Idea of India," by Sunil Khilnani, is an excellent political history for non-specialists.

"In Light of India," by Octavio Paz, is a superb short treatment of India's cultural and artistic heritage.

"India File," by Trevor Fishlock, is an excellent collection of essay about modern India (only slightly dated now).

IainC

Nehru: A Political Life; Judith M. Brown.
Early India; Romila Thapar.
Modern India; Sumit Sarkar.
The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier; Richard M. Eaton.

These are a bit academic but are well written and researched and fairly easy to read.

IainC.

SHIMLA

Simla-Past and present; by Edward J. Buck

Delhi-It's monuments and history; by T.G.P. Spear

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onajourney

I have recently finished Freedom At Midnight about the events leading up to and following the Partition. Being a history buff and an Indian resident, I'm curious to what other books on Indian history you would recommend. I'd like to find a good comprehensive history book that deals with more than just one era in time.

Any help would be appreciated!

attitudemyown

hi

Freedom at Midnight is an excellent book...read it a long time back............i don`t get the time to read any more.........it sort of generated my interest in Larry Collins and Dominique Lappiere`s works and i subsequently read all of them

Is Paris Burning ? ( abt the french nationalists led by De Gaulle and Nazi
invasions)

O Jerusalem ( abt the fight for city of jerusalem between palestinians and jews)

The Fifth Horseman ( abt Spanish civil rights movement)

City of Joy ( abt our very own Kolkata)

Maze ( abt Russian civil service )

Regarding Indian History my pick is Peter Mason`s `The Men Who Ruled India `............

*jyoti*

I read Freedom at Midnight, too! Very good book. I am reading The Great Mutiny now. Very partisan, but good history and give a different view of the British colonization than Freedom at Midnight, with lots of anecdotal references. Several others I've started were just too dull to continue...

lotus blossom

i took an art history of india class a few years ago. i learned a fair amount, but the teacher, who'd never been to india, was so dry and boring that it made a fascinating subject difficult to embrace with much enthusiasm, since she had none. it seems that the beginning was about the aryans though, which i find interesting. i remember the indus valley being the start of india (i think) and learning about the stupas.

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Chintuthewhizkid

"India: A History " by john Keay.....Iam reading it currently.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/080...lance&n=283155

onajourney

All of these look good. I think I'll start with India: A History. I'll have to look for it the next time I'm at Tekson's or OM.

Hippie at Heart

a bit off topic here, i highly recomand "Return of the Aryans' by bhagwan das gidwani who have reserched nearly 16 years before sitting down to write this one... he maintains aryans dint came to india from central asia but they were from somewhere near what is now central pakistan and migrated out towards europe and central asia and return back to indus valley in later years

sezegnin

Bhagwan Das Gidwani is a novelist. His book is one of many that attack mainstream scholarship on ancient Indian history (pre-1000 B.C.) from a Hindu nationalist perspective. I would be very wary of his perspective for two principal reasons:

1. It is intensely distrustful of mainstream scholarship. I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories about academia and I know a little of the work of some academics whose work has touched on this very remote and enigmatic period (eg. Witzel, Deshpande, Hock). I have a great deal of respect for the academic integrity of these scholars. I don't see the slightest echo of respect for the integrity of academic enquiry among the crowd of Hindu nationalists including Gidwani who presume to attack their scholarship without being held to the same standards of peer review.

2. It is incredibly xenophobic and specifically motivated by a hatred of Muslims and Christians. The reason why Hindu nationalists need to prove that pre-1000 BC Vedic Sanskrit was not an intrusive language to the Indian subcontinent is because they need to be able to maintain a discourse which holds up Hindu tradition as the sole "indigenous" and "authentic" tradition in India, and by implication, assigns to Muslims and Christians the role of second-class followers of a foreign religion. They feel standard scholarship undermines this discourse (by implying that Hinduism might have some foreign antecedents too) and so they attack it in any inchoate way they can. They have no interest in or ability to analyse any other aspects of the fascinating problems of ancient Indian history and the history of the Indo-European language family.

There is a direct line from this intellectual argument to street violence like the Gujarat riots by Hindus against Muslims, and to murders like that of the Christian missionary Graham Staines. If you want to understand where Gidwani is coming from you must read two books written by the late RSS Sar Sanghachalak MS Golwalkar. The first is "We, or Our Nationhood Defined", which some RSS people have tried to dismiss as an "adaptation" rather than his own work because it is so obviously fascist and influenced by Germany and Italy of the 1930s, even though he unquestionably wrote the foreword, edited and advocated the text, and published it through the agency of the RSS of which he was the supreme leader. (The RSS adopted the Fuhrerprinzip from European fascist movements on its foundation in 1925 and has not discarded them to this day: it continues to be led by a single "Sar Sanghachalak" without any democratic structure). The second book is "Bunch of Thoughts" which is toned down but still recognisably infused with the same xenophobic venom. Here's a taste of the first: "The foreign races in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e., of the Hindu nation and must loose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment — not even citizen's rights. There is, at least, should be, no other course for them to adopt. We are an old nation; let us deal, as old nations ought to and do deal, with the foreign races, who have chosen to live in our country”.

I would think the "foreign races, who have chosen to visit our country", should be a bit perturbed by that too...

Hippie at Heart

Even if Bhagwandas gidwani falls in the category of fundamental heretic I will read him as well, for reading a fictional work with some research (even if contrived) is not going to rob me of my own judgment and discretion. Benefit of doubt should be given to anyone sitting through some 1,400 page odd book and is bound to have some application of mind of his own. It is not easy to crystallize 4,000 years of history into dry facts that are devoid of solid backed up proofs as far as mainstream scholars are concerned. If Gidwani disturb the purists or conformists then it is their outlook and not all may subscribe to that.

Merchant

"The Wonder That Was India" is a bit of a classic--much scorned, though, by people who haven't read it. It's worth your time, though, especially Basham's treatment of art throughout the ages and the rise of Buddhism and Ashoka. The book trails off in the Mughal period--for that you should pick up "Twilight of the Mughals," another much scorned work written by a whitey. You can also learn a great deal about the Mughal period in "Three Mughal Poets," a Penguin study that treats the historical period, as well as the poetry of Mir, Mir Hasan, and Sauda. The section about the fall of Delhi is marvelous. Mir Hasan witnessed it and wrote about, and his Urdu poems form of the narrative at the Red Fort's sound and light show.

For India from the 1970s to the early 1990s, you can do no better than Trevor Fishlock's "India File," a tiny classic collection of essays (Bollywood, Indira and Rajiv, sexual mores, Phoolan Devi).

For a brief if fascinating cultural overview (art, architecture, religion, food), try Octavio Paz's "In Light of India."

Recent political histories: "The Idea of India," by Sunil Kilnani, and "India: From Midnight to the Millennium," by Shashi Tharoor. Tharoor is a terrible writer but a great explainer, which explains why he is such a terrible writer.

abracax

I am reading Gidwani's Return of the Aryans (picked up a few months back at Higginbotham's in Bangalore). I can say after getting half way through that if modern Hindutvas went even halfway towards meeting the ethical and moral standards Gidwani prescribes for his proto-Hindus in 5000BC, India would have no communal problems. There's nothing wrong with poetic chauvanism if it points the way to a humane attitude to life.

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