Few things seem more contested today than history. From politics to Bollywood, this once sleepy school subject dominates headlines.

In an extensive chat with Shoaib Daniyal on the Scroll Adda podcast, however, historian Manu Pillai contextualises this. People of every age think they are living through unique circumstances. But maybe it’s not so different today as it was earlier.

That said, Pillai is clear that “Hindutva has understood and weaponised how Indians deal with history” in a way that the left has not. “Secular forces are fixated on a footnoted version of history,” he says. This makes it quite unappealing to people looking to history to construct an identity.

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Where does that leave the historian? Pillai agrees that he never thought he’d be in such a contentious field when he first started out. But in the end, he sees it as the price of being in the public eye. Historians are people too. The idea that a pure or virtuous history is possible, he suggests, may itself be an idealised position.

Producers:

Aryan Mahtta

Raghav Kakkar