'History is under threat in India': Author Audrey Truschke

Dushyant

Historian Audrey Truschke’s new book, ‘India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent,’ is generating significant buzz and debate, with some critics finding controversy in its nuanced portrayal of the region’s past. As a sweeping narrative of India’s rich and diverse heritage, the book has sparked intense discussions about history, identity, and culture. In an exclusive interview with DHoS, Truschke discusses her approach to historiography, the challenges of writing about a complex past, and the relevance of history to contemporary debates, offering insights into her work and its impact on modern India.

How did you approach the challenge of condensing 5,000 years of Indian history into a single narrative, and what themes did you prioritise?

There is no single narrative of Indian history, and so I attempt to tell a series of discrete narratives with recurring themes, including diversity, migration, social stratification and climate change.

The book emphasises the diversity of human experiences on the subcontinent. Can you elaborate on how you incorporated the stories of marginalised groups?

We have more texts written by upper-caste men than any other premodern Indian community. To deal with this, I read texts against the grain to recover lost voices. Additionally, I searched high and low for less commonly known works by women and the marginalised classes and cited them alongside — sometimes instead of — works by dominant social groups.

The book covers the rise of Hindu nationalism in recent times. How do you see this phenomenon impacting the subcontinent’s future?

The history of Hindutva is clear, with its origins in fascist movements of the 1920s and its current popularity starting in the 1970s. I think Hindutva’s appeal is also clear, if horrific — it offers the majority more rights than everybody else. But Hindutva’s future is unwritten. The only thing of which I am certain is that Hindutva will fall apart, at some point, like all fascist movements. The real question is how many Indians get hurt before that happens.

The Silk Road and other trade routes played a significant role in shaping the subcontinent’s history. How do you think these global connections influenced Indian cultural, economic, and political developments?

The Indian subcontinent today is unimaginable without extensive global connections and migrations over millennia. Here is a short list of things that entered the subcontinent via premodern global networks — humans, Indo-European languages, a lot of gold, marigold flowers, tomatoes, chilis, and features of several religions (including Hinduism and Islam). The Indian subcontinent has also long been a robust exporter of cultural and material goods.

You highlight the significance of major texts in Indian history. How do you think these influence Indian society and culture today?

The Vedas have little direct impact on contemporary India, aside from select religious contexts. Far-right Hindu nationalists like to refer to the Vedas, but generally from a platform of total ignorance of their contents. The Mahabharata is another matter and constitutes an incisive commentary on the violence unleashed by states. I find it apt for considering modern conflicts, as do many others, judging from the continual retellings of this epic.

How do you believe your book can contribute to a deeper understanding of the Indian subcontinent’s complex history and its place in the world?

History is under threat in the modern nation of India, and, for Indian readers, I hope that my book stands as a strong testament to academic honesty in recovering the diverse Indian past. We hear a lot these days about politically generated controversies about the past, but those are actually about present-day anxieties. In contrast, India seeks to open up the riches of the South Asian past for those with genuine intellectual curiosity about earlier generations.

There’s often a divide between academic and popular historians. Do you think this divide is necessary? 

History is a big subject, and I think there’s room for all of us. I appreciate that popular historians have often cultivated interest in the Indian past. That said, professional historians are equipped with skills that our popular counterparts generally lack, including training in historical methods and causality as well as the ability to read primary sources in their original language(s). These things aren’t window dressing; they form the foundation for a thorough understanding of history.