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Qazi Nur Muhammad’s Jangnama: Powerful Lessons for Sikh and Indian Historiography
Qazi Nur Muhammad’s Jangnama is a crucial Persian war narrative for understanding eighteenth-century Punjab, the Durrani campaigns, and the rise of the Sikh misls. Its importance comes from the fact that it is a hostile source that still preserves evidence of Sikh courage, discipline, and military effectiveness. The text helps historians study post-Mughal state formation,…
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Mughal Nostalgia Exposed: Why Bharat’s Civilizational Memory Matters Now
This article examines the controversy around elite media nostalgia for the Mughal Empire and argues that Bharat’s historical memory deserves a fuller, more honest treatment. It explains why Mughal cultural achievements cannot be used to erase conquest, temple destruction, religious coercion, and civilizational disruption. The piece distinguishes between medieval imperial regimes and present-day communities, emphasizing…
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Beyond Dates and Dynasties: Why Dharmic India Chose Timeless Truth over History
Ancient India developed a distinct historiography that privileged timeless truth over exhaustive chronologies. Rather than ignoring the past, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism embedded history in genres like Itihāsa, Purāṇa, and Śāstra to illuminate Dharma and guide conduct. Epigraphy, coins, and temple records demonstrate rigorous documentation when it served justice, patronage, and community welfare. Examples…
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Unmasking the Myth of Tipu Sultan: Evidence, Kerala’s Trauma, and India’s Historiography Crisis
This essay evaluates Sandeep Balakrishna’s Tipu SultanThe Tyrant of Mysore, testing popular claims about Tipu Sultan against primary sources from Kerala and the Mysore Sultanate. It contrasts narratives of progressive reform with documented evidence of violence, coerced conversion, and economic collapse in Malabar. The analysis also interrogates the “freedom fighter” label by examining Tipu’s alliances…
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Reclaiming India’s Dharmic Sense of History: Evidence, Empathy, and Method
This essay offers a rigorous, empathetic roadmap to reclaim India’s Dharmic sense of history. It dismantles the colonial trope that Hindus lacked historical consciousness by surveying Itihasa, Puranas, caritras, inscriptions, and temple records across Ancient India and Medieval India. It explains why certain indigenous archives thinned during the medieval era and shows how to read…
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D.B. Parasnis: The tireless collector who transformed Maratha archives and Indian historiography
Dattatreya Balawant Parasnis stands out as a transformative force in Indian historiography, above all for rescuing and publishing primary sources at risk of loss. His acquisitionsfrom the Second Sikh War letters to Sir Frederick Currie, to Mughal and Deccani portraiture, to Marathi bakhar manuscriptselevated the evidentiary standard of research on the Maratha Empire and beyond.…
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From Debate to Kinship: How Jadunath Sarkar and K.A. Nilakanta Sastri Shaped Indian Historiography
This essay reconstructs the formative encounter between Jadunath Sarkar and K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, situating it within the Modern Indian Renaissance and the wider debate over English versus vernacular mediums in historical pedagogy. It explains how Sarkar’s multilingual triangulation of Persian chronicles, Marathi bakhars, and regional records complemented Sastri’s epigraphic and philological reconstruction of South Indian…
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How Sita Ram Goel Reframed Indian Historiography: Shivaji, Nehru, and the Mughal Myth
Sita Ram Goel’s Shaktiputra Shivaji offers a concise yet rigorous meditation on Indian historiography, foregrounding Shivaji as an indigenous state-builder. Drawing inspiration from Dennis Kincaid’s The Grand Rebel, it rejects simplistic Western misconceptions that fixate on the Mughals as Britain’s chief adversaries. The analysis critiques overreliance on marital alliances to explain “indigeneity,” urging methodological consistency…
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Master the Politics of ‘Official’ History: A Complete Indic Guide to Transform Collective Memory
This essay examines how centralized, “official” historywhether colonial, Marxist, or nationalistcan erode India’s decentralized, living memory. It contrasts Western, top‑down historiography with Indic ethos, where society, not institutions, traditionally safeguarded memory across Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and Sikh traditions. Citing the 1857 War of Independence and the Azamgarh Proclamation, it shows how living memory enabled coordinated…
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Swami Vivekananda on the Ahistoricity of Hinduism
This insightful blog post explores Swami Vivekananda’s perspective on the universality of Vedanta as a religion, contrasting it with Christianity and other religions that revolve around historical founders. Swami Vivekananda emphasizes the ahistoricity of the Vedas and the eternal principles they embody, which allows Hinduism to remain unshaken even if the historicity of its prophets…