Most histories ignore the Deccan. A new book reminds us of the years the Deccan ruled India

Most Indians today are unaware that the Deccan has such a dramatic and world-changing past. Our understanding of the history of this vast, diverse subcontinent is based on an obsession with “imperial moments” – often fleeting moments in history when north India is able to impose its dominance over other regions.

In our school textbooks – which retain a disproportionate influence in shaping our identities and sense of the past – we leap five hundred years from the Mauryas of the second century BCE to the Guptas of the third century CE. We then jump six hundred years from the end of the Gupta empire directly to the arrival of the Turkic sultans in north India in the twelfth century, and thence move neatly to the Mughals, the British and then Independence.

Somehow, in this subcontinent that is as large as, more populous than and exponentially more diverse than western Europe, we are used to ignoring the histories of entire peoples, eras and regions when thinking about how India became India.

This is a ludicrous way to contemplate the subcontinent’s history. Ignoring the history of the Deccan in recounting the history of India is like ignoring the history of France or Germany in telling the history of Europe.

This book aims to do something about that. It is the story of India between two north Indian “imperial moments”, the half millennium or so after the end of the Gupta empire and before the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate. In order to do so, it roots itself unabashedly in the Deccan. Yet it does not seek to replace a north Indian “imperial moment” with a south Indian one, but instead seeks to develop a more complicated and interconnected narrative of the history of this enormous and diverse land between the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean.

Our modern obsession with “imperial moments” makes it difficult to appreciate the scale and uniqueness of the subcontinent’s history. By now, every region of India has its legends of great and glorious monarchs who “made contributions” to a medieval or ancient culture implicitly connected to a contemporary political identity. This view reduces our past to a stale series of moralistic stories and figures who serve black-and-white conceptions of linguistic, regional or religious glory. In this view, Indian kings were not living, breathing human beings like you or I, but flawless paragons, images based on little more than tiresome sermonising as to what constitutes “greatness”.

On the other hand, a new trend in popular history attempts to paint them as sexy influencers similar to what one would find in HBO’s Game of Thrones; another makes them out to be enlightened crusaders for human rights a thousand years before the concept existed. These caricatures are boring substitutes for the vibrant and diverse lives that our ancestors actually lived.

This book takes a somewhat different approach to thinking about and writing about the past.

Imagine that somehow, in the year 3020, all that remains of India from 2020 are ads issued by the Union government in newspapers in Uttar Pradesh; Instagram posts from posh art galleries in New Delhi; and recordings of grand galas attended by the who’s who of society, industry and the art world in Mumbai.

Future historians decide to engage with this evidence from their past in three ways. One group diligently collects the government’s ads into a neat chronology, declaring it the most effective government that ever existed, the most flawless and intellectual political leadership ever, an exemplar in pandemic management, economic recovery and social harmony for all who came after.

Another pores over the Instagram posts and waxes eloquent about the amazing art that filled the museums and dreams, starry-eyed, of the generous patrons who must have showered money upon the talented artists who created them.

Another fashions gorgeously produced sensory experiences that hardly anyone can afford to purchase, filled with tear-inducing nostalgia about the lavish events and luxurious clothing of this long-forgotten golden age. Crowds of people shake their heads sadly and yearn to go back to those days.

Under such circumstances, it would be easy to ignore the humdrum struggles of the millions of other people who lived in India in the 2020s and didn’t get to leave behind the fragments of evidence that our imaginary thirty-first century historians are so enamoured with. It would be easy to forget about Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad.

This – fragmentary evidence fit into feel-good nationalist sermons or feel-cool romantic narratives – is the state of popular writing about medieval India today. A thousand years on, we have forgotten how to imagine a past India as searing and real as the India we inhabit today.

So how will this book be any different? We cannot magically conjure up more evidence than actually exists from more than a thousand years ago. Not a lot survives from the time this book explores, partially due to the lack of systematic archaeological study. As far as actual evidence goes, we’re mostly stuck with royal land grants full of kingly boasts of generosity, religiosity, and administrative, sexual, artistic and military prowess.

We have imposing temples covered with sculptures. We have literary and sculptural portraits of glittering court life. Like our imagined 2020–3020 scenario, a thousand years on, all the evidence we have from this distant time was shaped by a tiny and supremely well-off social elite and their self-promotion.

If we are to have a realistic understanding of our history, we need to interpret this keeping in mind that these are mere fragments of a vast and complicated world similar to ours, inhabited by individuals who shared the same fundamental human impulses – including the urge to pretend they were less imperfect than they actually were.

And so the kings and queens you will meet in this book are neither flawless paragons nor sexy influencers. Instead, they are much like people you might see around you today. This book will help you understand their activities – war, politics, intrigue, patronage – as they were intended and as they were perceived at the time, from battlefield savagery to temple building to literature and sculpture.

The book has no heroes or villains, no “superior” or “inferior” regions or cultures or morals. Instead, it is a tale of the grand forces of nature and randomness, and the tiny humans who dare to make history out of it all. It will explore the complexity of power and people in medieval India, so similar to our India. We will discern a close alliance of religion and politics; ruthless violence against dissenters and rivals; relentless narcissism and ambition; stark inequality; monumental architecture; seductive glamour; and ravishing, unparalleled, immortal art. It is not a dull, comforting history, but a vivid, fascinating past far closer to the reality we inhabit.

Excerpted with permission from Lords of the Deccan: Southern India from the Chalukyas to the Cholas, Anirudh Kanisetti, Juggernaut Books.