Indian History: Modern

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History is normally presented to readers in chronological order. The discipline of writing history was developed in considerable part from the chronicles of pre-modern Europe. These chronicles, which were always records of influential people, told what happened in royal courts, papal palaces, battlefields, and such influential arenas. Chronicles attempted to relate those events more or less in the order in which they occurred. While the ostensible purpose of chronicles was to record events, sensible record keepers usually sought to flatter their employers and to aggrandize the institutions they served. Thus, the sometimes random succession of events became, in chronicle form, a connected narrative and vehicle for extolling the qualities of the central figure.

Trying to find meaning in the things that happen in a month, or a year, a lifetime, or a century is a familiar exercise till today. There is a deeply rooted human propensity to want to find order in everything, including nature and history. In the writing of history, the search for order has often forced some sort of mould on the events of the past. There are many examples of such forcing. Marxists, or historical materialists, have found a succession of class conflicts driving human society in a single direction, toward the resolution of all contradictions. The religious traditions derived from ancient Israel take a view of history as the progressive revelation of a divine purpose. American history has been interpreted as an unfolding of "manifest destiny", in which the advance of European colonization from the Atlantic to the Pacific coasts and the advance of America's world influence were interpreted as an inevitable process. The truth of the past is always more complicated and usually more interesting than the histories produced by these and other theories.

Perhaps because of their preoccupation with the organization of events in time, when Western historians attempted to work their arts on the history of India, they very often resorted to references to "timeless" or "immemorial traditions". The classical Hindu theory of the organization of time in very long cycles, Auğu, divided into yeges of progressively shorter duration marked by increasing duorder, was interpreted to mean that Hindus did not believe in history. A cyclical conception of time was thought to mean that people found no direction for purpose) in history, or that they did not think that history is a story of human progress.

Even a cursory examination of the events of the last century makes it plain that human progress, however it is defined, is by no means inesorable, and the direction of history, if there is one, is not any kind of straight line. It was the civilization of Europe and North America that gave the world two world wars, poison gas, the murder of six million Jews, nuclear bombs, racial segregation, and the war in Vietnam. After these experiences, the willingness of many to believe that history is characterized by some form of progress or a divine plan for the improvement of humanity has diminished.

In the latter part of the twentieth century, Indian historians began to exercise an increasing influence on the way historians around the world interpret the facts of the past. Although no one nation or region of the world will "own" the twenty-first century, it is very likely that Indian writing of history will occupy a central place in the intellectual firmament. Part of the reason for this shift is, importantly, the increasing importance of Indian intellectuals and scholars on the world seene. However, an equally significant reason is that world history appears different when seen from India than from Europe or North America, as also from elsewhere in Asia. One characteristic of the writing of history by modern Indian authors is a willingness to face a reality that is not always pleasing. They have told the stories of poor and oppressed people, and of caste and communal conflicts, as an integral part of history, and as facts that must be faced if India's commitment to egalitarian, secular democracy is to be realized.

India is a nation of nations. If it had come to political independence in nineteenth-century Europe, it might have emerged as fifteen separate countries that tolerated linguistic and religious diversity more poorly than does modern India most of the time. Arriving at its "tryst with destiny" in the middle of the twentieth century, with a commitment to egalitarian democracy and a pluralistic constitution, India has given rise to a generation of historians and social scientists whose research and writing is sought after throughout the world for insights into the nature and development of modern societies.

Indian history does not tell just one story. On the one hand, it tells very different stories of "Punjab, Sindhu, Gujarat, Maratha, Dravida, Utkala, and Banga"-the very distinct linguistic and cultural regions of India. On the other, it tells the story of the arrival and establishment of the Aryans, Hunas, Afghans, Turks, and Mughals, Parsis, Christians, Jews. It would be misleading to try to construct a master narrative out of all of these diverse episodes. Although the eras of pre-colonial unification of the subcontinent under Ashoka and, two millennia later, under Akbar, are seen as deeply significant moments, they are also exceedingly rare ones. The welding together of a democratic Indian nation after 1947 is a brilliant historical achievement that was accomplished by a conjunction of Indian intellectual power, and a commitment to democracy.

These new books about Indian history from Encyclopædia Britannica are constructed around the recognition of the many stories that together constitute that history. Each volume begins with an authoritative overview of the period it covers. However, the larger part of each book contains a series of discrete entries that examine the specific periods, places, and people that go together to make up Indian history. These articles can be read in any order and put together in various patterns to help understand historical episodes or social processes in India. The overview articles provide an orientation to a long time period, but the individual entries are rich sources of detailed information about the many histories that have figured in the making of India as we know it today.

Indian History: Modern

Indian history does not tell just one story. On the one hand, it tells the very different stories of "Punjab, Sindhu, Gujarat, Maratha, Dravida, Utkala, and Banga" - the very distinct linguistic and cultural regions of India. On the other, it tells the story of the arrival and establishment of the Aryas, Hunas, Afghans, Turks, and Mughals, Parsis, Christians, and Jews. It would be misleading to try to construct a master narrative out of all of these diverse episodes. Although the eras of pre-colonial unification of the subcontinent under Ashoka and, two millennia later, under Akbar, are seen as deeply significant moments, they are also exceedingly rare ones. The welding together of a democratic Indian nation after 1947 is a brilliant historical achievement that was accomplished by a conjunction of Indian intellectual power, and a commitment to democracy born out of Western education and experience.

This book is constructed around the recognition of the many stories that together constitute that history. The volume begins with an authoritative overview of the period it covers. However, the larger part of the text contains a series of discrete entries that examine the specific periods, places, and people that go together to make up Indian history. These articles can be read in any order and put together in various patterns to help understand historical episodes or social processes in India. The overview articles provide an orientation to a long time period, but the individual entries are rich sources of detailed information about the many histories that have figured in the making of India, as we know it today.