The kings who flipped the equation

A well-known digital distribution platform for PC games is yet to announce the release date of their much-anticipated videogame ‘Unsung Empire: The Chola II Legacy of Rajendra Chola’. Mustn’t this playful rendering of history be celebrated? Certainly, if only something it claims to be based on, the ‘Chola Navy’, had actually existed. “There are no actual Chola-era sources claiming that they had a navy,” notes the multi-award-winning historian Anirudh Kanisetti in his latest book Lords of Earth and Sea: A History of the Chola Empire (Juggernaut, 2025).

Consumerist products like the aforementioned videogame can create a strong impression on young minds about a particular period in history and its diverse impacts. What must be done to avoid falsehoods rendered as history from being leveraged by profit-mongering enterprises? In a conversation with DHoS at the Jaipur Literature Festival, Kanisetti argues that just because “[available] media satisfies people’s curiosity, we cannot be sitting in our fortified citadels blaming people for not having access to quality information.”

It benefits, he says, “to be aware that the media ecosystem works this particular way: it favours misinformation and emotive content. I think, world over, we’re seeing an urge and impulse to regulate social media. Or, at the least, to prevent the proliferation of hate and misinformation. I think it’s about time Indian policymakers begin to take this seriously because the citizens of a democracy need to be well-informed. It’s a two-sided problem. Both historians and, more broadly, regulators and the media ecosystem have a role to play in this.”

Sparked by Scottish historian William Dalrymple’s comment on the Indian academics’ “failure” to generate interest in history among laypersons leading to the “growth of WhatsApp history”, the role of public historians is being hotly debated. Alongside trying to pique the general readership’s interest in history, what are they doing to combat the proliferation of WhatsApp history?

In Kanisetti’s view, the divide between an academic and public historian is an “artificial one”. For “a thriving history ecosystem, you need to have both,” he says. Moreover, he adds, “You need to have the academic historians that public historians (like myself) can base our work on and you need the public historians to generate the public interest, funding, and enthusiasm for history that benefits academics.” He continues: “It’s a bit of a downstream effect. If you have better quality materials available to people, then the media that they’re going to produce is also going to be of a higher quality. I believe in the power of technology. It has helped me find my audience and make a career for myself as a public historian. So, the challenge in front of us is how to make it easier for people to access higher-quality information. I was quite lucky, for example, to work in a research institute, to access academic papers. How many Indians have that privilege? So, over the next decade, the next big thing for us historians is to look at how we can improve the accessibility of information upstream so that the materials in the subsequent downstream are better.” Kanisetti’s efforts in familiarising the influence of the Chola empire in a contextualised manner for his readers show that he’s leading by example.

During the conversation, he also noted how “the big river valley empires used to boss around the guys on the coast” and that “the Cholas were the first to flip this equation on its head.” He said, “Uniting a huge swathe of present-day Tamil Nadu, a big chunk of Kerala, and northern Sri Lanka, they extended their power all the way up to coastal Andhra Pradesh. This huge agglomeration of people, resources, ideas, and cultures — for the first time — overturned the dominance of the plateau. The Cholas’ imperial model was very different from their predecessors. For example, after defeating an enemy, the Chalukyas or the Rashtrakutas would reinstate them as their vassals. But when the Cholas conquered territory, they appointed a Chola prince to rule there.” Furthermore, highlighting how camphor, which “isn’t a product of Indian forests”, began “appearing in Tamil inscriptions at the time”, he underlined Cholas’ impact on commerce at the time.

He adds, “We have ideas from Tamil temple architecture having reached the shores of China. So what the Cholas did was something very new not only in the context of Indian history but also in the context of global history. They were the first primarily terrestrial Indian power to take a really deep interest in their diaspora.”

It’s this comprehensive and compelling analysis of Indian history that Kanisetti continues to deliver that helps him hold sway over his readership. In Lords of Earth and Sea, he yet again proves that if rendered thoughtfully, it’s possible to make history writing invigorating for all.