‘A New History of India’: A book conceived with grand intentions that succeeds occasionally

Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Shobita Punja and Toby Sinclair have co-authored, A New History of India, a new book on the history of India. Claiming a timeline “from its origins to the twenty-first century”, this book presents itself as an ambitious project, condensing thousands of years of history into the span of a few hundred pages.

Let us take a look at the book through three questions: what it says; why it says what it says; and, if there is a need for a book of history such as this one.

The authors are a modern historian, an ancient historian, and a lens-based documenter, respectively. What is interesting is that they do not specify their individual contributions to the book, though their specialities suggest where they each of them might have come in. But by not demarcating this in any way, they make this book a combined work.

The authors write out a descriptive narration of “India” – from its geological processes to the beginnings of state formation, onward to the rise and fall of small and large states and then the arrival of colonial powers, ending in the politics of present day. The chapters are short and concise, complemented by multiple images and separate information boxes. One of the greatest positives of the book is that it is light and informative. And a profusion of images gives the reader something else to focus on besides the text.

Like many other books on Indian history, this one too is dominated by North India – but it does include a fair bit of South Indian history, especially in the earlier chapters. There are details, like on Tamil society in Chapter 9, that are usually ignored in larger histories.

Some questions

However, there were parts of the book that left me confused – such as bringing in geological history as part of a history of a country, the use of colonial names as the standard, or when modern cities are used as geographical reference points centuries before they existed. Some of the assumptions may also seem strange: for instance, the presence of Muslim rulers being an indication of Islamic conversion; Ambedkar’s education and not his lived reality being credited for his caste awareness; and the history of the early 20th century being turned into a history of independence, divided between Gandhian and “non-Gandhian”.

The narrative, while largely chronological, has an unexplained break in the middle with thematic chapters being introduced. Two chapters, on the North-East and on “India’s” connection with the world sit between the arrival of European trading powers and the advent of the East India Company.

A particular instance that I would like to highlight is the chapter on the North-East. It begins well by interrogating the term, but then collapses by “othering” the region right away, stating, “They do things
differently here”. Still, it makes amends by offering a brief history of the region, more than most other histories of India do.

What’s jarring for the reader, though, is the final quarter of the book, which takes an information-heavy turn dominated by a single region. The narrative, though considerably dramatised at times, is practically a history of Bengal and the freedom movement, focusing on specific figures and events without reference to a wider history. By the end, the book turns into a purely political, top-down history of a particular idea of the Indian state, a history that has been reiterated by historians many times.

A ‘new’ history?

Who is the intended audience? No citations and footnotes, lucid prose, and the use of an uncomplicated vocabulary in the first few chapters suggest a book written for the intelligent lay audience, outside academia. The multiplicity of images reinforced this notion. In choosing to write a history of all of India, the authors give themselves a vast canvas. Perhaps the only way to cover this is to stay simple and broadly outline the history. But strangely, after chapter 18, the book seems to assume a different readership, one with the knowledge needed to comprehend the highly economic and political details delved into.

But the authors do not define the kind of history they’re trying to explore. A strictly top-down history? A history of people? Of politics? By leaving this undefined, they give themselves room to manoeuvre. However, it is not a smooth transition when an overview of general history suddenly turns into an economic one centred round a particular theme three-fourths into the book.

Is there a need for a book of history such as this one? And what is new about this history? What these two questions address in their own way is: Does this book do anything more than any other histories of India written before, anything “new”?

The authors do not explicitly define “India”. They seem to consider the modern nation-state, with current boundaries, as their area of focus. But they impose the idea on regions defined in several other ways. Following the standard lines of Indian history writing at first, for the modern period they delve into an old-fashioned format of Indian history, presenting a restricted narrative of the history of land settlement, colonial Bengal and 1857, before delving into Gandhi and the freedom struggle, ignoring many other things that make India’s history.

Does the newness lie in the larger timeframe covered here compared to most books? If that is the case, can 400 pages do this history justice? More importantly, what does it add to our understanding of history? A history of a very long period requires thinking through grand concepts and broad patterns. It asks of a potential author to consider everything carefully, and to condense with care when needed, to pick the most crucial pieces.

Calling a book a “new” history also indicates that such a work has not been produced before. A perusal of the bibliography shows us only secondary sources – other writers’ work and effort (it could even be noted that it is a summary of only the biggest names that have been gathered together). The truly original points in this book are a few lines of analysis as well as a majority of the photographs used.

So, is this book what it claims to be? Conceived with good intention, it succeeds occasionally, but appears to not to take account of the multiple histories within this claimed area of “India”. While I must appreciate the stance the authors take in places – openly holding forth against injustices prevalent today that many choose to ignore, like caste and bigotry – the book is lopsided in content and constrained by its magnitude.

A New History of India: From Its Origins to the Twenty-First Century, Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Shobita Punja, and Toby Sinclair, Aleph Book Company.