How Indian was the Mughal Empire?
In 1937, elections were held for the Constituent Assembly of India. This was on top of Provincial Governments already being run by Indians, not to mention many municipalities and municipal corporations. All this More...
Aurangzeb as a ‘tolerant tyrant’: the case against ‘secular’ historiography
Aurangzeb was the last of the ‘great’ Mughals whose policies set into motion those forces, which would pave the way for the disintegration of the empire. Until the mid-20th century, there was scholarly consensus More...
The Need for a Resurgent Bharat
There is an ongoing battle occurring at many levels relative to the concept of India and what India is, was and is meant to be. This is not merely a scholarly debate to arrive at truth but resembles more a struggle More...
India’s Thought Cops are Angry with Modi
In the last week of September at Dadri not far from the Indian capital, an angry mob lynched to death Mohammad Akhlaq over allegations that a cow was slaughtered and he ate beef. In the 1970s and 1980s in Bihar More...
Maharana Pratap: The Braveheart of Mewar
In the context of the Rajasthan Government’s move to declare 20 May as a holiday to commemorate Maharana Pratap Jayanti, it is only pertinent to provide a short biography of this great, proud, and inspirational More...
Some History Lessons for Jawed Naqvi
In the 14 October edition of the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, Jawed Naqvi writes on how advocates of Hindutva can be shown to be hollow in their stands if we all just look at the ‘syncretic’ aspect of Indian history. Hindutva-run More...
Origins of the Moghul Tyrants of India
Introduction In the autumn of 1404 CE Timur-i-Lenk, after having spread the terror of Islam all over Asia for more than three decades, was poised to launch the final campaign of his life – the invasion of the More...
Dispelling the myth of Akbar the Great
Introduction The 15 July 2004 edition of the Ananda Bazar Patrika carried an article ‘Mata binimoyer mukto ganotantroei uttorener path,batlalen Amartya’ (‘Exchange of opinions as practiced in liberal democracy More...