Aditya Mukherjee Book Review: Analyzing Nehru’s India Through History and Time
3 months, 3 weeks ago

Aditya Mukherjee Book Review: Analyzing Nehru’s India Through History and Time

The Hindu  

Published : Dec 11, 2024 14:59 IST - 7 MINS READ At the launch of historian Aditya Mukherjee’s Nehru’s India: Past Present & Future in New Delhi earlier this month, invited speakers shared their own sense of intellectual, political and cultural affinity with Nehru, referring to certain highpoints of Mukherjee’s book in passing. I would like to concentrate on Mukherjee’s estimation of Nehru the historian, in the section of the book titled, ‘Nehru and the Discipline of History’. Like Nehru and Mukherjee, I too am persuaded by the idea of India’s syncretic history of religious faith as the only humane possibility for India. What is more convincing is Mukherjee’s argument via Nehru that we need to dissociate the history of rulers from people’s history, and stop treating history with a capital H. More emphasis needs to be given to “multiple truths” and the “non-violent dialogic tradition.” In other words, Mukherjee, like Nehru, invites us to treat history as an unfinished script where we can keep striving to find ourselves.

History India Trauma Political Prison Gandhi Hindu Mukherjee Book Past Idea Present Nehru Gramsci  trauma  aditya  mukherjee  analyzing  review  history  nehrus  book  political  prison  nehru  idea  india  present  past

History of this topic

Book Review | ‘Eminent Distorians’ exposes the selective Marxist retelling of Bharat’s history
4 weeks, 1 day ago

Book Review | ‘Eminent Distorians’ exposes the selective Marxist retelling of Bharat’s history

Firstpost  

Utpal Kumar’s book challenges the ideological conditioning that views India’s historical trajectory as one of feudal stagnation and oppression until external ideas—particularly those rooted in socialism, Marxism, and even English systems—provided a more ‘just’ alternative In Eminent Distorians: Twists and Truths in Bharat’s History, Utpal Kumar embarks on a mission to challenge and deconstruct the established narratives that have long …

Book Review: In ‘Nehru’s India’, Aditya Mukherjee Counters False Narratives About India’s First Prime Minister
3 months, 3 weeks ago

Book Review: In ‘Nehru’s India’, Aditya Mukherjee Counters False Narratives About India’s First Prime Minister

The Hindu  

Published : Dec 10, 2024 22:30 IST - 9 MINS READ At a time when the forces of Hindutva are relentlessly denigrating Jawaharlal Nehru’s contribution to the freedom of our country and the first 17 years of nation-building in independent India, the historian Aditya Mukherjee brings welcome clarification to the debate largely by citing Nehru’s own words and expanding on …

Book Review | Secrets & surprises: Oral testimonies of India's contemporary history
1 year, 7 months ago

Book Review | Secrets & surprises: Oral testimonies of India's contemporary history

Deccan Chronicle  

Journalist Neerja Chowdhury lays all the cards on the table. The narrative is built on what many people — politicians, friends and aides, bureaucrats — told her about how different Prime Ministers coped with the critical situations. It is Kapil Mohan, Anil Bali of Mohan Meakin’s liquor factory in Solan, Ravi Nair, private secretary to George Fernandes when Fernandes was …

Review of The Indians — Histories of a Civilization: Palimpsest of diversity
1 year, 7 months ago

Review of The Indians — Histories of a Civilization: Palimpsest of diversity

The Hindu  

To map the journey of a land and its people across a timeframe of 12,000 years would be an ambitious project. The first chapter begins with genetic scientist Partha Pratim Majumder pointing out that our genes are “a palimpsest of our history” — and tracing the movement of humans out of Africa some 70,000 years ago, from the Horn of …

Review of A New History of India — From its Origins to the 21st Century: Heroes and villains
1 year, 10 months ago

Review of A New History of India — From its Origins to the 21st Century: Heroes and villains

The Hindu  

For some time, professional historians have wondered whether a single, usable, Indian past can any longer be written. Professional historians have of late also been dealing with the political challenge to their practice, as a wide range of ‘custodians’ of the past have emerged, from amateurs, ‘scientists’ and community gatekeepers, to hyper-ethno-nationalists, who lay exclusive claim not only to historical …

Interrogating Nehruvian ideals of India
1 year, 11 months ago

Interrogating Nehruvian ideals of India

Business Standard  

Nehru’s India: A History in Seven Myths Author: Taylor C Sherman Publisher: Princeton University Press Pages: 284 Price: Rs 863 Taylor Sherman’s book about the history of India during the Nehru era questions the adequacy of belief that Nehru became the architect of independent India. It labels as myths this belief and six principles that are supposed to have driven …

Review of Aditya Mukherjee’s Political Economy of Colonial and Post-Colonial India: The roots of hate politics
2 years, 1 month ago

Review of Aditya Mukherjee’s Political Economy of Colonial and Post-Colonial India: The roots of hate politics

The Hindu  

A little over 30 years ago, noted historian Aditya Mukherjee wrote, “Today, since communalism is wantonly masquerading as nationalism, it is extremely important to study its origins and link with the exact opposite.” In his latest book, Political Economy of Colonial and Post-Colonial India, Mukherjee goes on to do just that. As he writes in the book, “Communalism, as it …

Why India needs to rewrite its history without falling into jingoistic traps
2 years, 4 months ago

Why India needs to rewrite its history without falling into jingoistic traps

Firstpost  

There are many reasons for the re-examination of our historical narrative. The Aryans did not ‘invade’ India, but migrated in batches, coexisting with the Indus Valley civilisation inhabitants, some two thousand years before 1500 BCE, thereby making India one of the oldest civilisations in the world. The third area needing revision is the stubborn attempt to devalue the verifiable, remarkable …

India Must Rewrite the Past But Remain Vigilant Against 'Dinanath Batra' School Of History - News18
2 years, 4 months ago

India Must Rewrite the Past But Remain Vigilant Against 'Dinanath Batra' School Of History - News18

News 18  

Is there a need to rewrite Indian history? The Aryans did not ‘invade’ India, but migrated in batches, coexisting with the Indus Valley civilisation inhabitants, some two thousand years before 1500 BCE, thereby making India one of the oldest civilisations in the world. It follows, therefore, that the authors of the Rig Veda, who describe the river as ‘great’, ‘vast’ …

Decolonising India’s history
2 years, 4 months ago

Decolonising India’s history

Hindustan Times  

There are few instruments as potent in reshaping popular consciousness as history, a power recognised by monarchs and democratic governments alike. PREMIUM History writing is an inherently political act but there’s no reason it should rake up political rows. The Indian Council of Historical Research has added to this debate with its new project, an initiat-ive to rewrite India’s history …

Indian history must be told from India’s perspective: Exposing Marxist rope trick - the Vikram Sampath way
2 years, 4 months ago

Indian history must be told from India’s perspective: Exposing Marxist rope trick - the Vikram Sampath way

Firstpost  

Vikram Sampath’s new book, ‘Bharat’s Bravehearts’, tells the story of 15 bravehearts, half of them women. Vikram Sampath’s new book In this vastly distorted worldview enters a new book by Vikram Sampath, Bharat’s Bravehearts, which promises to turn Indian history, as we have known so far, upside down. Bharat’s Bravehearts, initially, intended to be a “quicky”, which was quite “tempting” …

The Shortest History of India Book Review: Zubrzycki packs 5000-year-old history in a pocket
2 years, 6 months ago

The Shortest History of India Book Review: Zubrzycki packs 5000-year-old history in a pocket

India Today  

While India marked 75 years of Independence in August and entered a new era, its story has been fairly old, rooted in ancient civilisation, historical conquests, and exploitative tales of colonisation. This pocket book on history is a fine read if you are in a hurry and need a breather on India’s past which began in the Indus Valley Civilisation, …

First Draft | Indian history is badly distorted: Here’s how it can be rewritten
2 years, 8 months ago

First Draft | Indian history is badly distorted: Here’s how it can be rewritten

Firstpost  

Since Independence it has become almost a religious dogma of Indian and Western historians to rewrite history and to project ancient Indian/Hindu civilisation as a remarkably and uniquely inhuman civilisation, whose only characteristic was an iniquitous caste system Is Indian history being “rewritten” at the moment? But after 1947 it became almost a religious dogma of Indian and Western historians, …

Mohan Guruswamy | Rewriting history, with an open mind or empty mind?
2 years, 8 months ago

Mohan Guruswamy | Rewriting history, with an open mind or empty mind?

Deccan Chronicle  

Historical revisionism is the process of rewriting history to correct the misinterpretations of the past or for an ideological purpose. British scholars, who seemed genuinely interested in how this country evolved, wrote most of modern India’s history. As a young student in a Catholic school, in recently independent India, the first history lessons imparted to me told that story, particularly …

The great Nehruvian myth-making: How Nehru wasn’t that secular, humanist and democrat as made out to be
3 years ago

The great Nehruvian myth-making: How Nehru wasn’t that secular, humanist and democrat as made out to be

Firstpost  

Acharya Jivatram Bhagwandas Kripalani was close to Jawaharlal Nehru at the time of Independence. MC Chagla, noted jurist and Nehru’s Cabinet colleague, wrote in his memoirs Roses in December how Nehru showed “great strength and courage in getting the Hindu Reform Bill passed, but he accepted the policy of laissez faire where the Muslims and other minorities were concerned”. He …

Western narrative on Subhas Chandra Bose suffers from poor scholarship, revisionist history and rank hypocrisy
3 years, 1 month ago

Western narrative on Subhas Chandra Bose suffers from poor scholarship, revisionist history and rank hypocrisy

Firstpost  

The vilification of Bose by the Western elite, reeks of confirmation bias and politicisation of history. Another one regards Bose’s move to seek alliance with Hitler “ morally offensive ” and is of the opinion that “India has always had a rather ambivalent attitude to Subhas Chandra Bose.” India has always had a rather ambivalent attitude to Subhas Chandra Bose, …

Why Indian history must be written as per historical evidence and norms, and not ideological agendas
3 years, 2 months ago

Why Indian history must be written as per historical evidence and norms, and not ideological agendas

Firstpost  

There is a lot of noise being made on the new education policy and rewriting of history and social sciences textbooks. All one could gather was that there was agreement among some of the ‘eminent historians’ and the topics are those that can be used for the blackening of the ancient period of Indian history. In an absurd vein, AJP …

History exam? Here are five books to help you with modern history!
3 years, 3 months ago

History exam? Here are five books to help you with modern history!

India Today  

India has a rich culture and history that spans well into the ancient era. Here are 5 history books that you can read to expand your knowledge of history: The Discovery of India by Jawaharlal Nehru This book by the first Prime Minister of India was written by him while he was imprisoned for his participation in the Quit India …

Why Indian history textbooks are in absolute and urgent need of revision
3 years, 3 months ago

Why Indian history textbooks are in absolute and urgent need of revision

Firstpost  

I guess I was asked to write this article because I’m a Westerner who has been defending India for a long time, and I have written many books, both in French and in English, which rewrite Indian history. Compare this with Shivaji Maharaj, who is only given a few lines in Indian history books — and sometimes even called “a …

Leftist History Negates India’s Civilisational Greatness, Underplays Bloody Islamic Conquests
3 years, 5 months ago

Leftist History Negates India’s Civilisational Greatness, Underplays Bloody Islamic Conquests

News 18  

English novelist George Orwell had mentioned in his book ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ that “who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” This could not have been more germane than in the legacy wars and live battlefield that Indian historiography routinely becomes. Sir John Strachey, a British administrator in-charge of training the Imperial Civil Service newbies …

Irfan Habib: Defender of history
3 years, 6 months ago

Irfan Habib: Defender of history

The Hindu  

A remarkable symposium, entitled “In Defence of History”, was hosted by the reputed academic journal Social Scientist, the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust and Tulika Books on August 12 to celebrate the 90th birthday of Professor Irfan Habib, legendary historian, progressive intellectual and leading role model for generations of students and scholars. Aditya Mukherji’s presentation drew attention to “the close umbilical …

How India’s historians have reflected on the country’s history, culture and heritage
4 years, 6 months ago

How India’s historians have reflected on the country’s history, culture and heritage

The Hindu  

THE term ‘Indian history’ is deceptively simple at first sight, so much so that we take it as a given rather than as a point of reflection: it assays a study of the past of the Indian subcontinent. As early as in 1935, Shafa’at Ahmad Khan, in his presidential address to the first All India Modern History Congress, warned of …

The three men who wrote modern India’s history
5 years ago

The three men who wrote modern India’s history

Live Mint  

Writing in 1937 to the future president of India, Rajendra Prasad, historian Jadunath Sarkar put forth his views on what would constitute a good “national history” for the country. The historian’s job, Sarkar insisted, was “not to suppress any defect of the national character, but add to his portraiture those higher qualities which, taken together with the former, help to …

How Rani of Jhansi escaped the Nehruvian hammer of oblivion
6 years, 1 month ago

How Rani of Jhansi escaped the Nehruvian hammer of oblivion

Op India  

I happened to watch “Manikarnika—The Queen of Jhansi” in the theatre the other day. People of my generation surely remember the immortal poem of Subhadra Kumari Chauhan : “Bundele Harbolon Ke Moonh Humnein Suni Kahani Thi; Khoob Ladi Mardani Woh to Jhansi Waali Rani Thi.”. The other issue which interests me is how Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi escaped the censorious …

When there is too much Indian history to remember
6 years, 8 months ago

When there is too much Indian history to remember

Live Mint  

One of the great challenges with Indian history is that there is just so much of it. But, in fact, they could well be drafted in two entirely different languages, using two entirely different systems of land assessment and prepared by two entirely different regimes functioning in two entirely different economic environments. If the first tendency is homogenization, the second …

Pranab Mukherjee at RSS event: Former President praises Hedgewar but quotes Gandhi, Nehru, Patel to emphasise unity in diversity
6 years, 9 months ago

Pranab Mukherjee at RSS event: Former President praises Hedgewar but quotes Gandhi, Nehru, Patel to emphasise unity in diversity

India TV News  

Former President Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday praised RSS founder KB Hedgewar as a “great son of Mother India” but quoted Gandhi, Nehru and Patel to underline the importance of unity in diversity for a country like India. "Today I came here to pay my respect and homage to a great son of Mother India," the former President wrote in a …

Why Indian ‘intellectuals’ seem to hate Indic native culture and Hinduism
7 years, 11 months ago

Why Indian ‘intellectuals’ seem to hate Indic native culture and Hinduism

Op India  

You may have often thought that why do so many ‘intellectuals‘ take pride in being anti-India and talk about Hindus with such contempt? He compares it to Italy and says, “Just as Italy has, from time to time, been compressed by the conqueror’s sword into different national masses, so do we find Hindostan, when not under the pressure of the …

On Jawaharlal Nehru's birth anniversary, let's remember his vision for India
8 years, 4 months ago

On Jawaharlal Nehru's birth anniversary, let's remember his vision for India

Firstpost  

Nehru, of course represented the clearly understandable notion of modernity, but was Gandhi merely ‘traditional?’ More importantly, are tradition and modernity so monolithic? For some people, such a “connect” with people would be quite explicable in case of Mahatma Gandhi — who spoke the ‘religious’ language and employed traditional metaphors like Ram-rajya; but Nehru? In India, the philosophical idea of …

Book review: 1991 - How P V Narasimha Rao Made History
8 years, 5 months ago

Book review: 1991 - How P V Narasimha Rao Made History

Deccan Chronicle  

In his 90th birthday gift to his illustrious father B.P.R. Narasimha Rao closely and well… warts and all, as a collector of the district in which PV’s constituency lay, and wrote his famous Tirupati Congress session speech, Dr Sanjaya Baru has written a definite biography not of a person but an year — 1991 — which he illustrates is unimpeachably …

Book review: A collection of essays that revives the debate on communalism
8 years, 8 months ago

Book review: A collection of essays that revives the debate on communalism

Hindustan Times  

“Astonishing thought,” Nehru wrote in The Discovery of India about India’s common civilisational continuity of nearly six thousand years, about this multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic and multicultural land suffused with a unitary wholeness. It was a good repudiation of Churchill, who, stumped by the subcontinent’s diversity, once said India was “no more one country than the whole of the tropics”. Amartya Sen’s …

Sunil Khilnani | Writing a history of angry young men and women
9 years ago

Sunil Khilnani | Writing a history of angry young men and women

Live Mint  

Sunil Khilnani’s last major book was about how India is constituted by its politics. But if you think about it, since that book, there’ve been not that many efforts at these more general accounts often driven by urgent political questions. If one of the distinctive marks of liberal historiography is a kind of easy progressivism that wants to argue that …

The notion of nation
9 years, 1 month ago

The notion of nation

Deccan Chronicle  

Controversies in India leave one jaded and jarred because they produce neither debate nor resolution. Dharampal tried to locate Gandhi’s ideas not as an addendum to the Western thought of John Ruskin and Henry David Thoreau, but as extensions of indigenous thought and practice. When Dharampal talked of Indian science and technology, he was talking about culture and cultural styles …

Knowing India: Understanding the Right History
9 years, 11 months ago

Knowing India: Understanding the Right History

Op India  

For how many years did British really rule all of India? This is a vast area and there are no boundaries, but here are 5 books which I believe should be read and delved deeper into for those interested in how India evolved over the centuries: Heroic Hindu Resistance To Muslim Invaders, 636 AD to 1206 AD – Sitaram Goel …

Jawaharlal Nehru and his conflicts with Congress party
10 years, 4 months ago

Jawaharlal Nehru and his conflicts with Congress party

The Hindu  

Anniversaries have a habit of confronting us with uncomfortable contrasts. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, would have been 125 years old this year; the state that Nehru saw through its first years of independence is now ruled by forces he found abhorrent: supporters of a narrow-minded, exclusionary definition of national belonging, accompanied by crude capitalist profiteering and …

Jawaharlal Nehru: Secular, above all
10 years, 4 months ago

Jawaharlal Nehru: Secular, above all

The Hindu  

THE 125th birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru has brought back the discussion on the Nehruvian path and Nehru’s legacy and what it means in the present-day period. There were greater affinities between the Left and Nehru during the national movement for independence and more discontinuities and conflicts in the years Nehru headed the government of independent India. After the early …

A vision for India: Nehru’s idea of modern nationhood
10 years, 4 months ago

A vision for India: Nehru’s idea of modern nationhood

The Hindu  

THE FOUR KEY DIMENSIONS OF India’s modern nationhood, as conceived and implemented by Jawaharlal Nehru, were democracy, secularism, socialism and non-alignment. Thus, by insisting on a democratic polity and “nurturing it like a mother nurtures her child”, as Congress president Sonia Gandhi remarked at Nehru’s 125th birth anniversary celebration, Nehru established the democratic ethos, the democratic institutions and the democratic …

Science as a solution: How Nehru used science for nation building
10 years, 4 months ago

Science as a solution: How Nehru used science for nation building

The Hindu  

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU is justly seen as the main architect of modern India. Progressive and scientific vision Jawaharlal Nehru’s initiation into science began early in life when his father, Motilal Nehru, engaged Ferdinand Brooks, a theosophist, as his tutor in 1901. Gopal felt that according to Nehru “the spread of scientific knowledge would reveal the absurdity of such mental co-existence by …

Nehru & idea of India
10 years, 4 months ago

Nehru & idea of India

Deccan Chronicle  

With television, the Internet and our smartphones we have daily sightings of our leaders. In the context of what Jawaharlal Nehru achieved, however, I consider both criticisms secondary, because his contributions to India are so fundamental that they have defined what our country is today. Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel didn’t live for too long after August 15, 1947; …

Be critical of Nehru's policies, not his persona
10 years, 4 months ago

Be critical of Nehru's policies, not his persona

Hindustan Times  

Slowly but surely, an image of the man emerged – a man gifted with language, a passionate nationalist, a modernist beyond compare, a world citizen, a scholar, a man of excellent Kashmiri pandit ancestry. I recall reading how Nehru could never really get over the fact that the China, despite agreeing to the principle of panchsheela, would so brazenly disregard …

Nehru and Idea(s) of India: Separating fact from fiction
10 years, 4 months ago

Nehru and Idea(s) of India: Separating fact from fiction

Firstpost  

As India struggles over the nature of its identity and as contestations over its nature grow shriller, a rather curious debate is taking place. This debate pertains to the nature of Jawaharlal Nehru’s ‘legacy’ and its future amid all the fluid and churn that defines India contemporaneity. It was Nehru who, in the world view of these hagiographers, who ‘discovered’ …

History and the nationalist project
10 years, 5 months ago

History and the nationalist project

The Hindu  

It is good to see Digvijaya Singh of the Congress Party finding time from his life of leisure and party responsibilities to address ideological issues raised by me that arise from the task of re-writing our history text books and de-falsification of the same. In his article “ >History, battleground for politics ” published in The Hindu on October 10, …

Dr. Subramanian Swamy, burning books won't fix problems with our history texts
10 years, 5 months ago

Dr. Subramanian Swamy, burning books won't fix problems with our history texts

Firstpost  

When Dr. Subramanian Swamy says books by Nehruvian historians should be burned he forgets that burning and banning books can never be the answer. by Vamsee Juluri Mr. Subramanian Swamy’s recent suggestion that books by “Nehruvian historians” such as Bipan Chandra and Romila Thapar should be set on fire is like saying Lord Hanuman decided not to make the leap …

Remembering Bipan Chandra: Iconic historian and scholar
10 years, 7 months ago

Remembering Bipan Chandra: Iconic historian and scholar

Firstpost  

While a number of leaders and scholars expressed grief over the demise of veteran historian Bipan Chandra, President Pranab Mukherjee condoled his death saying the country had lost one of its “foremost scholars on modern India” who had an immense contribution towards the study of Indian history. Others heaped rich praise on the left-leaning scholar too, notably Pratap Bhanu Mehta …

Safeguarding the many histories of India
11 years ago

Safeguarding the many histories of India

The Hindu  

It’s hard to tell the truth, harder still to accept it. The recent out-of-court-settlement between Penguin India and a right wing Hindu outfit that resulted in the decision to pulp a scholarly work on Hinduism by Wendy Doniger signals the growing dominance of a conservative and intolerant section of Indian society. Groups like Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti must be made …

India is not a civic nation, says Jaswant Singh
12 years, 6 months ago

India is not a civic nation, says Jaswant Singh

India TV News  

"We need some moderation in public life," Jaswant Singh mused.The 74-year-old parliamentarian from Darjeeling, who has courted controversy and expulsion from the BJP for his book "Jinnah: India Partition Independence", released his new work, "The Audacity of Opinion: Reflections, Journeys and Musings" last week. It is an anthology of his writings for various publications for more than two decades, reflecting …

Awareness of the perception of authors of historical works required, says Romila Thapar
13 years, 2 months ago

Awareness of the perception of authors of historical works required, says Romila Thapar

The Hindu  

Eminent historian Romila Thapar, Professor Emeritus at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, has emphasised on the need to cultivate an awareness of the perceptions that the authors of early historical works, which are currently used as sources, had of their own past. The colonial power would now write the history of the colony as it saw fit.” According to Prof. Thapar, …

Rewriting History in India: How Ideological Motives Blur the Line Between Myth and Fact
24 years, 2 months ago

Rewriting History in India: How Ideological Motives Blur the Line Between Myth and Fact

The Hindu  

Rewriting of history is a continuous process into which the historian brings to bear new methodological or ideological insights or employs a new analytical frame drawn upon hitherto unknown facts. The opinion of scholars of ancient history, based on archaeological and linguistic evidence, has been that Aryans had migrated to India, in all probability in small groups, over a period …

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