Rewriting history in India
Finally India’s explorations into her own past are getting off the ground. Many decades ago, I remember discussing with a fellow passenger in a Bombay-Poona taxi, the dearth of ‘historical novels’ to bring our hoary and venerated past alive for a generation that derided history as a list of battles and dates only. Can’t blame them since our writers of history had done just that in the British era. That conversation started me off on a quarter of a decade of snooping that culminated in my historical novel MASTANI which blows away all the cobwebs and myths that surrounded this intriguingly romantic figure of eighteen century India, to establish her as a Bundela princess who facilitated the meteoric rise of the Peshwas to the center stage, instead of a muslim dancing girl earlier historians portrayed her as. Other writers in English have come up with masterpieces on eras much beyond that period. Start with Dr. Bhagwandas Gidwani, whose Sw...