More than summaries, these essays are personal reflections on questions that continue to occupy historians today, including the meaning of history, historical method, recurring concerns, and the constant need for self-examination and improvement within the discipline.

Let’s just say re-reading R. G. Collingwood’s The Idea of History remains a demanding work. A book that would only reveal itself through repeated encounters, being denser and more philosophical than I remembered. As Anirudh Deshpande remarks in his preface to the 2021 edition (by Aakar Books):

Somewhere in his autobiography the Colombian writer Gabriel Gracia Marquez has written that one of his teachers revealed something profound to him with the injunction that we should read only those books which we want to read time and again.

This essay is therefore not a summary of The Idea of History. Nor is it an attempt to reconstruct Collingwood’s entire philosophy of history. Instead, it is a reflection on the ideas that have remained with me after a second reading.

Published in 1946, The Idea of History predates two of the twentieth century’s most influential reflections on historical method, namely, Marc Bloch’s The Historian’s Craft (1949) and E. H. Carr’s What is History? (1961). Reading these works together, one begins to notice how many of the questions that Bloch and Carr would later develop were already present, in different form, in Collingwood’s thought.

Like Bloch, Collingwood argued that the historian’s search for the past began not with documents but with questions, those that arose in the present and were organised around a central problem. At the heart of historical inquiry were human beings and their ideas. History was not merely concerned with the material progress of humanity but also with the ideas that moved people and became influential in their own time. To recover those ideas, the historian must approach historical sources critically. No source could be taken at face value; each must be interrogated in relation to the question being asked. In this sense too, Collingwood anticipated Carr. There was no source of which the historian could make a fetish. He preferred the word ‘evidence’, insisting that nothing was evidence except in relation to some definite question. The questions arose in the present, but they enabled us to reconstruct the past, which in turn explained the present and opened the possibility of illuminating the future.

What isn’t history: Against positivism

One of the central targets of Collingwood’s criticism was positivism. He rejected the subject–object dichotomy that entered the social sciences through the natural sciences in the nineteenth century. History, he argued, could not be practised as though the historian were a detached observer examining an object from the outside.

Logically following from this rejection of positivism was Collingwood’s insistence that self-reflexivity was among the historian’s foremost tasks. The historian must continually interrogate not only the sources but also the questions they brought to those sources. This, however, should not be mistaken for historical scepticism so radical that it made the writing of history impossible. Rather, it was an argument for cultivating greater self-awareness about the questions that shaped historical inquiry.

Collingwood was particularly critical of the positivist attempt to make history not a philosophy, but an empirical science. For the positivists, the philosophy of history meant discovering general laws governing the course of historical events. Collingwood disagreed. History, in his view, was not the search for universal laws that explain human affairs. Its task was to understand human action and thought in their particular historical contexts, something that could not be reduced to the methods of the natural sciences.

The philosophy of history

Collingwood began The Idea of History by describing it as ‘an essay in the philosophy of history’. He traced the origins of the term to Voltaire in the eighteenth century, for whom the philosophy of history meant a critical and scientific way of thinking about the past, whereby the historian made up his own mind instead of merely repeating stories found in old books. For Voltaire, philosophy meant independent and critical thinking.

The meaning of philosophy, however, was not fixed. For Hegel, it came to mean thinking about the world as a whole—universal or world history. Collingwood offered yet another understanding. For him, philosophy was fundamentally an act of self-reflection. As he wrote:

The philosophizing mind never simply thinks about an object, it always, while thinking about any object, thinks also about its own thought about that object. Philosophy may thus be called thought of the second degree, thought about thought.

Having established this definition, Collingwood asked a simple but profound question: if this was the general character of philosophical thinking, what did we mean when we spoke of a ‘philosophy of history’? In what sense was it different from philosophy in general or from the philosophy of any other subject?

His answer lay in the development of self-consciousness. Throughout history, people had always thought historically to some degree, but they had seldom reflected on the activity of historical thinking itself. We usually became conscious of our own methods only when they encountered difficulties. It was the emergence of ‘special problems’ that forced thought to reflect upon itself.

Collingwood illustrated this historically. Greek philosophy had emerged in response to the intellectual problems posed by mathematics, and theories of knowledge had therefore centred on mathematical reasoning. During the Middle Ages, philosophical reflection had revolved around theology. Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, natural science had become the dominant model of knowledge. Throughout all these periods, people had continued to write history, but historical thinking had remained comparatively rudimentary. It had raised few methodological problems and therefore had had little reason to examine itself.

The eighteenth century marked a decisive turning point. Historians began to think critically about the nature of historical knowledge itself. They realised that the past—made up of particular events that had occurred at specific moments in time and had now vanished—could not be understood through the methods of mathematics, theology, or the natural sciences. Mathematics dealt with abstract objects outside space and time. Theology concerned itself with a single infinite object, God. Natural science verified its conclusions through observation and experiment, whereas the past could never be observed directly or subjected to experimental verification.

History therefore required a different kind of inquiry altogether. The recognition of this problem gave rise to what Voltaire had named, and what Collingwood sought to explain in depth - the philosophy of history.

What is history?

Having argued that history required its own philosophy, Collingwood turned to an even more fundamental question, what is history? He began with a deceptively simple proposition. Man desired to know himself. Without some knowledge of himself, he argued, his knowledge of everything else remained incomplete. At the same time, by self-knowledge he did not mean knowledge of the body—its anatomy or physiology—nor even knowledge of the mind understood as feeling, sensation, or emotion. What mattered was knowledge of the mind as thought, understanding, and reason.

How, then, was such knowledge to be attained? Many philosophers, particularly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, believed that the human mind should be investigated in much the same way as the natural world. Just as we observed particular objects and events in nature before discovering the general laws that governed them, they argued, so too should we observe the behaviour of our own minds and those of others before establishing the laws that explained them.

Collingwood believed this to be a mistake. The mind, he argued, could not be understood through the methods of the natural sciences. The proper method for investigating it was history. This brought him to the fundamental question of what is history.

At a time when change itself was increasingly regarded as history, Collingwood insisted that the two were not synonymous. Not every process of change was historical. To illustrate this distinction, he compared the work of the archaeologist with that of the geologist. Although both studied stratified remains, the archaeologist interpreted artefacts as objects created for human purposes and therefore as expressions of human thought. The geologist, by contrast, interpreted rock strata and fossils as part of natural processes. Even when arranged chronologically, such evidence did not constitute history in the same sense. At most, it could be described as ‘quasi-historical’.

This distinction led to one of Collingwood’s most important claims, that is, history was the history of human affairs. But why, he asked, did historians restrict themselves to human affairs? His answer was that a natural process was a process of events, whereas a historical process was a process of thought. Human actions were historical because they embodied thought and intention. Man was therefore the proper subject of history, not simply because he acted, but because his actions expressed what he thought. The historian’s task was not merely to record what happened, but to recover the thought that made those actions intelligible.

What is causation in history?

If history was, for Collingwood, the study of human thought expressed in action, then the next question naturally followed, what constituted causation in history? This was a concern that Carr would later reflect upon in What is History?, but Collingwood had already developed a distinctive answer.

The historian, he argued, investigating any event in the past, distinguished between what he called the outside and the inside of an event. By the outside, he meant everything that could be described in terms of bodies and movements. For example, Julius Caesar, accompanied by certain men, crossing the Rubicon, or his blood being spilled on the floor of the Senate. By the inside, he meant everything that could only be described in terms of thought; Caesar’s defiance of Republican law, or the constitutional conflict between himself and his assassins. The historian was never concerned with one to the exclusion of the other. The crossing of the Rubicon became historically significant only in relation to Caesar’s challenge to Republican law, just as his assassination could only be understood in relation to the constitutional conflict that lay behind it. Historical inquiry might begin with the outside of an event, but it could never end there.

This understanding also distinguished historical explanation from scientific explanation. When a scientist asked, ‘Why did that piece of litmus paper turn pink?’, the question sought the general conditions under which litmus paper changed colour. When a historian asked, ‘Why did Brutus stab Caesar?’, the question was altogether different. It asked what Brutus thought that led him to make that decision.

For Collingwood, the cause of a historical event was therefore not something external to the event itself. It was the thought in the mind of the historical agent whose action brought the event about. In one of the book’s most memorable formulations, he concluded:

All history is the history of thought.

On sources and their use

Having argued that the historian’s task was to recover the thought behind historical action, Collingwood next turned to the question of sources. How was the historian to recover the past?

He began by challenging what he called the ‘commonsense theory’ of history. According to this view, the essential elements of historical knowledge were memory and authority. The historian simply believed someone else who claimed to remember or record the past. Historical truth already existed, ready-made, in the statements of these authorities, and the historian’s task was merely to transmit them faithfully. These statements became, in effect, sacred texts. The historian was expected neither to tamper with them, nor to contradict them, nor to add to them. To select, question, or reinterpret them was already to appeal to a criterion beyond the authority itself.

However, this view, Collingwood argued, quickly collapsed under its own weight. Authorities could be garrulous, discursive, prone to gossip, forgetful, or simply mistaken. They might omit facts, misunderstand events, or deliberately misrepresent them. If the historian accepted every statement uncritically, there was no way of distinguishing reliable testimony from error. In practice, every historian did precisely what the commonsense theory claimed was impossible. Historians constantly intervened in their sources. They selected what they considered significant and ignored the rest. They interpolated meanings that were not explicitly stated but could reasonably be inferred. They criticised their authorities, rejecting or amending statements they regarded as the result of misinformation or prejudice.

The bankruptcy of the commonsense theory was therefore, in Collingwood’s view, self-evident. The historian never approached sources as a passive recipient of information. Rather, he brought to them a criterion of his own, by reference to which the authorities themselves were examined, questioned, and judged. Historical sources did not speak for themselves; they became evidence only when interrogated by the historian.

Between history and literature

If the historian actively interrogated sources rather than merely compiling them, another question inevitably arose, what distinguished historical reconstruction from literary imagination? This had been a recurring concern for historians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and one that has acquired renewed significance in an age when the boundaries between history and literature are sometimes blurred.

Collingwood acknowledged that history, like literature, required imagination. Indeed, one of his best-known formulations described history as ‘the re-enactment of past thought in the historian’s own mind’. Needless to say, this was never a passive surrender to another person’s thinking. Re-enactment was an act of active, critical thought. The historian not only re-enacted past thought but did so in the light of his own knowledge, evaluating it, correcting it where necessary, and forming his own judgement about it. Such criticism was not secondary to historical inquiry; it was an indispensable condition of historical knowledge itself.

This understanding also explained Collingwood’s idea of what he called ‘constructive history’. Historical construction meant interpolating between the fragments left by the sources, but it was never arbitrary or merely fanciful. Construction involved nothing that was not necessitated by the evidence. Without it, there could be no history at all. His example was characteristically simple. If we looked out over the sea and saw a ship, and then looked again five minutes later to find it in a different position, we naturally imagined the intermediate positions it had occupied while we were not looking. Historical reasoning worked in much the same way. Historians bridged the gaps between what their authorities explicitly told them, constructing a continuous narrative from discontinuous evidence.

Historical imagination, therefore, was not ornamental but structural. It was, in Collingwood’s memorable image, ‘a web of imaginative construction’ stretched between the fixed points provided by the evidence. Because every thread remained anchored to those points, imagination was constrained rather than free-floating, and the resulting picture was constantly tested against the available evidence.

In some respects, the historian resembled the novelist. Both constructed narratives, described situations, explored motives, analysed characters, and sought to create a coherent whole. The crucial difference, however, was that the historian’s narrative was intended to be true. It had to be located in a particular time and place, remain internally consistent, and, above all, be accountable to evidence.

Reflections

Many of Collingwood’s arguments were shaped by the intellectual context in which he wrote. Again and again, he positioned history against the dominance of the natural sciences as the model of knowledge. His insistence that history dealt with human thought rather than natural processes, that evidence existed only in relation to questions, and that historical enquiry required critical self-reflection was, in part, a response to the prestige of scientific positivism in his own time.

Re-reading The Idea of History, I found myself returning not only to Collingwood’s arguments but also to his method of thinking. Writing this essay itself made me wonder whether it had become, in Collingwood’s own sense, an exercise in understanding the mind.

As he wrote:

The only way in which I can know my own mind is by performing some mental act or other and then considering what the act is that I have performed. If I want to know what I think about a certain subject, I try to put my ideas about it in order, on paper or otherwise; and then, having thus arranged and formulated them, I can study the result as an historical document and see what my ideas were when I did that piece of thinking; if I am dissatisfied with them, I can do it over again.

Perhaps that is one of the most enduring lessons I took away from this re-reading. Writing is not merely a way of communicating what we already know; it is also a way of discovering what we think.

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More than summaries, these essays are personal reflections on questions that continue to occupy historians today, including the meaning of history, historical method, recurring concerns, and the constant need for self-examination and improvement within the discipline.

The essay is also timely considering that Marc Bloch has been recently inducted into the Panthéon, commemorated as a French resistance fighter and acclaimed historian. It means, that he has now received France’s highest national honor, which is reserved for the country’s most celebrated citizens. He has been granted a resting place in the Panthéon mausoleum in Paris, a monumental secular temple dedicated to French national heroes.

Read more about this here.

The historian and his history

Few books on historical methodology were written under circumstances as extraordinary as Marc Bloch’s The Historian’s Craft. One of the founders of the Annales school (more on it in the next section), Bloch wrote much of the book during the dark years of the Second World War while living under Nazi occupation. Deprived of access to libraries and separated from his own books, he relied almost entirely upon memory and scattered notes. The manuscript remained unfinished. Soon afterwards, Bloch, who had joined the French Resistance, was arrested and executed by the Nazis in 1944.

The knowledge that this book emerged under such circumstances changes the way one reads it. It is not simply a manual of historical method; it is the testament of a historian reflecting upon the principles of his life’s work when he no longer knew whether he would ever return to it. He himself acknowledged the limitations under which he was writing:

The circumstances of my present life, the impossibility of reaching any large library, and the loss of my own books have made me dependent upon my notes and upon memory … Will it, one day, be granted to me to fill in the gaps? Never entirely, I fear.

There is something profoundly moving about this admission. Historians spend years building personal libraries, collecting notes, surrounding themselves with archives. Bloch had been stripped of all of them. Yet he continued to write wishing not merely to preserve facts, but to explain how and why historians practise their craft.

One of the first observations that struck me appears surprisingly contemporary:

Certainly the number of historians, both professional and amateur, has greatly increased in recent years, as has the quantity of historical writing—quality is another matter. We have histories of games and histories of mail-order houses, histories of diseases and histories of delusions, histories of transportation and histories of highways, as well as the old standard mixtures of political, economic, and social history.

It is remarkable how easily this passage could describe our own age. Never before have so many people written history. Digital archives have expanded access to sources. Social media has created new public historians. Universities continue to produce ever-growing numbers of dissertations and books. History appears everywhere, from podcasts and YouTube channels to newsletters and Instagram pages. However, Bloch’s observation remains as unsettling today as it must have been in the 1940s. The quantity of historical writing tells us nothing about its quality.

Bloch immediately adds another equally striking remark that ‘the increase in the number of books on historiography and historical methodology is proportionally far greater than the increase in the number of historians’. Historians have never ceased asking how history ought to be written. Every generation inherits the craft but must also rethink it.

The Annales school

Once described as an economic historian, Bloch never reduced human life to economics alone. Economic interests mattered, certainly, but societies were equally sustained by beliefs, customs, habits, emotions, and shared mental worlds. Human beings were never simply rational actors. This wider understanding of society became one of the defining characteristics of what later came to be known as the Annales school. Rather than focusing exclusively on kings, battles, or political events, Bloch sought a history that could encompass every dimension of human existence, including economics, geography, sociology, anthropology, psychology, religion, and everyday life.

He therefore rejected the idea that history advances only through dramatic turning points.

[It is believed that] the course of human evolution … [is] a series of short, violent jerks, no one of which exceeds the space of a few lifetimes. Observation proves, on the contrary, that the mighty convulsions of that vast, continuing development are perfectly capable of extending from the beginning of time to the present.

The quotation encapsulates the essence of the Annales vision. Behind revolutions and wars lie slower rhythms that unfold across centuries. Institutions, landscapes, beliefs, and habits often change so gradually that contemporaries scarcely notice them. Events matter, but they acquire meaning only within these deeper historical currents.

Moreover, Bloch possessed an extraordinary sensitivity to detail, yet he never mistook detail for history itself. Facts, objects, and documents mattered because they revealed larger structures of human society. Understanding history therefore meant understanding mentality, that is, the ways people perceived the world around them.

History as a craft

One of the themes that runs throughout The Historian’s Craft is that history is exactly what its title suggests, a craft. It is learned less through abstract formulas than through practice. Like any craft, it demands patience, judgement, experience, and constant refinement. Historians gradually acquire the ability to question documents, compare evidence, recognise patterns, and distinguish between probability and certainty.

Bloch captures this beautifully:

What craftsman, grown old in his trade, has not asked himself with a sudden qualm whether he has spent his life wisely?

The question is deeply personal. It is less about professional success than about vocation. Has one’s labour been worthwhile? Has one’s craft contributed something meaningful? Bloch’s language repeatedly returns to metaphors of craftsmanship. The historian belongs almost to a guild, learning through apprenticeship rather than rigid rules. Historical knowledge is not manufactured mechanically but is cultivated through years of disciplined practice.

Defining history

The word 'history' has become so old that people have sometimes grown weary of it, but have rarely gone so far as to wish to erase it from the vocabulary altogether, wrote Bloch. Still what exactly do we mean when we call something ‘history’? It is often said that history is the science of the past. To Marc Bloch, however, this was badly put. The very idea that the past as such can be the object of science seemed to him absurd. ‘How, without preliminary distillation, can one make phenomena that share no common characteristic except that they are no longer contemporary with us into the object of rational knowledge?’, he wrote.

Does this mean, then, that history is an art rather than a science? Bloch refuses such easy binaries (read also ‘History: Science or fiction’). Every science, he argues, has its own aesthetics of language. Human actions are delicate phenomena, many aspects of which elude mathematical measurement. Properly to translate them into words—and, hence, to fathom them rightly, for can one perfectly understand what he does not know how to express?—requires great delicacy of language and precise shadings of verbal tone. Where calculation is impossible, we are obliged to employ suggestion. To illustrate this, Bloch offers one of the most memorable metaphors in The Historian’s Craft:

Between the expression of physical and of human realities there is as much difference as between the task of a drill operator and that of a lutemaker: both work down to the last millimeter, but the driller uses precision tools, while the lutemaker is guided primarily by his sensitivity to sound and touch. It would be unwise either for the driller to adopt the empirical methods of the lutemaker or for the lutemaker to imitate the driller. Will anyone deny that one may not feel with words as well as with fingers?

It is a striking metaphor for the historian’s craft. Precision certainly matters, but historical understanding cannot be produced by precision alone. Like the lutemaker, the historian develops a sensitivity to the material through long familiarity with sources. Historical writing demands judgement no less than evidence, and nuance no less than accuracy. The historian’s tools are not only archives, but also language itself.

Bloch further complicates the definition by observing that we casually use the word history for any process of change through time. We speak, for instance, of the history of the solar system because the stars have not always appeared as they do today. But this does not make astronomy a branch of history. The real question is not whether something changes over time, but what kind of knowledge is being sought. What, then, determines the division of labour between disciplines? According to Bloch, it is the human element.

History, by its nature, concerns human beings. Bloch famously writes that history is the science of ‘men’. Like many of his contemporaries, his language was unmistakably gendered. Today we would simply say that history concerns human beings. Behind the features of a landscape, behind tools and machinery, behind even the most formalized written documents and institutions that seem detached from their founders, there are people. It is those people that history seeks to understand. As Bloch puts it:

The good historian is like the giant of the fairy tale. He knows that wherever he catches the scent of human flesh, there his quarry lies.

Few definitions of history are as memorable as this one. Archives, monuments, institutions, landscapes, and artefacts are never ends in themselves. They matter because they bear the traces of human lives. The historian’s task is to follow those traces wherever they lead.

At the same time, Bloch’s definition remains incomplete unless one adds the phrase ‘in time’. History, he argues, is not simply the science of men, but the science of men in time. Historians do not study human beings in the abstract. Their thoughts breathe freely only in the climate of their own time, that is, in the context that gives actions, beliefs, and decisions their meaning. Historical time is, in Bloch’s memorable phrase, ‘the very plasma in which events are immersed, and the field within which they become intelligible’.

The historian’s first duty, therefore, is to return sources to their original milieu, to immerse them once again in the mental climate of their own age and in problems of conscience often very different from our own. Only then can the past be understood on its own terms rather than judged by those of the present.

Uses of history

What is the use of history? Even if we are convinced that history has its uses, are we capable of writing the kind of history that can indeed be useful? But before attempting to answer the question, Bloch asks us to pause over a more fundamental one: what exactly do we mean by ‘use’? One answer is obvious. Whatever else history may or may not accomplish, its power to fascinate can never be denied. For Bloch, the pleasure of history is not something incidental to the discipline but one of the reasons people are drawn to it in the first place.

And why does anyone become a historian? Bloch answers with refreshing honesty. To anyone who is not, as he puts it, ‘a blockhead’, all the sciences are interesting. But every scholar eventually finds one discipline that absorbs him completely. It becomes his ‘vocation’, his ‘calling’. Curiosity, therefore, precedes knowledge. We do not pursue a subject because we already understand it; we pursue it because we are captivated by it. Bloch even reminds us that physics, now regarded as one of the most rigorous sciences, began with cabinets of curiosities, which were collections of rare, unusual, and exotic objects assembled in sixteenth-century Europe. Therefore, fascination comes first; disciplined inquiry follows.

The same is true of history. Like every intellectual discipline, it begins in curiosity but possesses a particular aesthetic pleasure of its own. The spectacle of human activity, Bloch argues, is more than any other designed to seduce the imagination. Distance in time and space only heightens its appeal, adorning the past with what he beautifully calls ‘the subtle enchantment of the unfamiliar’. History, in other words, has a poetic quality. This perhaps explains why so many of us first fell in love with history long before we learnt how to practise it professionally.

However, fascination alone cannot justify an academic discipline. If history were no more than an enjoyable pastime—Bloch compares it to fishing—would it warrant the extraordinary labour historians invest in writing it with integrity, truth, and the utmost possible penetration into its hidden causes? Either, he suggests, those capable of better employment must be persuaded to abandon the profession altogether, or history must establish its legitimacy as a genuine form of knowledge.

How, then, should that legitimacy be measured? Bloch rejects the positivist expectation that the value of history lies only in its immediate practical utility or its ability to prescribe action. Experience, he observes, has repeatedly shown that no one can foresee which apparently abstract investigations may one day prove immensely useful. One is reminded, perhaps, of how historical studies of the First World War came to shape later attempts to understand—though not prevent—the catastrophe of the Second. The usefulness of knowledge often reveals itself only in retrospect.

For Bloch, the value of history lies more fundamentally in the fact that it takes human beings and their actions as its subject. It enlarges our understanding of ourselves. Nevertheless, society persistently demands more of history. We expect it to guide our decisions, illuminate the present, and help us live better lives. We become frustrated, Bloch observes, whenever it appears unable to provide such guidance. The question, then, is not whether history is useful, but whether we have been asking the right kind of usefulness from it.

Relationship between the past and the present

Perhaps the most frequently quoted sentence from The Historian’s Craft is Bloch’s reminder that history is never concerned with the past alone:

Misunderstanding of the present is the inevitable consequence of ignorance of the past. But a man may wear himself out just as fruitlessly in seeking to understand the past, if he is totally ignorant of the present.

The first half of the quotation has become almost proverbial. Historians often invoke it to defend the study of the past. But the second half is equally important and is perhaps less often appreciated. Bloch is not merely arguing that the past helps us understand the present; he is also insisting that the present helps us understand the past.

For Bloch, the historian has an obligation to cultivate this faculty of understanding by remaining in constant touch with the world around him. The present sharpens historical imagination. Our own experiences of society, politics, emotions, conflict, labour, or everyday life restore colour to old texts that might otherwise remain lifeless on the page.

He illustrates this through the example of war. One may read countless accounts of battles, but only those who have witnessed the terrible reality of fear, exhaustion, uncertainty, and survival can begin to appreciate what such experiences meant for people in the past. The present does not provide direct access to history, but it offers analogies that, carefully and critically employed, help us ask better questions of historical evidence. By shading our own experiences with ‘new tints’, as Bloch suggests, we recover something of the humanity contained within old documents.

This is why Bloch warns against a purely antiquarian approach to the past. The scholar who has no inclination to observe the people, things, and events around him may deserve the title of ‘a useful antiquarian’, but, he says, ‘he would be wise to renounce all claims to that of historian’. Historical understanding demands more than the accumulation of facts; it requires an active engagement with the living world.

The same principle applies even to the most distant past. In order to interpret the rare documents that permit us to glimpse humanity’s earliest beginnings, to ask meaningful questions of them, and even to understand what we are talking about, Bloch argues that we must first fulfil a primary condition of observing and analysing our own present landscape.

There is, then, only one science of human beings in time. It does not separate the living from the dead but brings them into conversation. The historian moves constantly between the two, allowing the present to illuminate the past while refusing to let the concerns of the present distort it. That delicate balance, perhaps, is one of the defining responsibilities of the historian’s craft.

On historical sources

Can history be written in the absence of eyewitness accounts? At first sight, the answer might seem to be no. Unlike our knowledge of the present, our knowledge of the past is necessarily indirect. We cannot observe past events ourselves. However, Bloch argues that this apparent ‘indirectness’ becomes a problem only if we imagine history as little more than the reconstruction of dramatic episodes—a revolution, a battle, or a diplomatic encounter—in which every word and gesture of a handful of historical actors must be faithfully recovered. Such an understanding reduces history to a sequence of events.

For Bloch, however, the historian’s task is much broader. Historical knowledge is built not only upon eyewitness testimony but also upon what he calls ‘traces’ or ‘residues’ left behind by past societies. Archaeological remains, landscapes, tools, buildings, and countless other material survivals preserve aspects of human life that no eyewitness could fully record. Entire civilizations have emerged from such traces rather than from written chronicles alone.

As Bloch beautifully observes:

Vast areas of mankind have emerged from the shadows. Egypt and Chaldea have shaken off their shrouds. The lost cities of Central Asia have disclosed their now-unspoken languages and long-extinct religions. A civilization, all unsuspected, has but risen lately from its grave upon the banks of the Indus.

The passage captures one of the great revolutions in historical scholarship, that is, the archive is far larger than manuscripts. The past survives not only in words but also in objects, landscapes, and material remains.

Bloch further distinguishes between intentional and unintentional evidence. Some sources are deliberately created to communicate information and include chronicles, memoirs, official documents, inscriptions, letters, etc. Others reveal far more than their creators ever intended. A building, a household object, a tax register, or the language of an ordinary letter may inadvertently disclose patterns of everyday life, social relations, or economic structures. As historical research has developed, Bloch argues, it has increasingly learned to trust these unintentional witnesses, particularly in fields such as prehistory, economic history, and the history of social structures.

This, at the same time, does not mean that intentional evidence is somehow less valuable. On the contrary, both kinds of evidence are equally vulnerable to error, distortion, and falsehood. Every source, whatever its form, demands critical examination. Cross-examination is not an optional exercise but the very foundation of sound historical research. Even those texts and archaeological documents that appear the clearest and most accommodating, Bloch reminds us, will speak only when they are properly questioned. This emphasis on questioning is perhaps one of the book’s most enduring lessons. Documents do not simply yield historical truth. Historians must learn to ask them the right questions.

Indeed, Bloch insists that the range of historical evidence is almost limitless. The variety of historical evidence is nearly infinite. ‘Everything that man says or writes, everything that he makes, everything he touches can and ought to teach us about him’. The statement is extraordinary in its breadth. It transforms almost every trace of human activity into potential historical evidence. It is perhaps no coincidence that later developments such as social history, cultural history, and microhistory would build precisely upon this expanded understanding of the archive.

But how does one find these sources? Bloch answers with characteristic humour:

Despite what the beginners sometimes seem to imagine, documents do not suddenly materialize, in one place or another, as if by some mysterious decree of the gods.

You cannot help but smile at this sentence because it captures a universal truth. Archives are discovered through patient labour rather than fortunate accidents. Catalogues, library guides, museum indexes, archival inventories, and bibliographies become as indispensable to the historian as the documents themselves. Research begins long before the first manuscript is opened.

Bloch goes a step further. Simply listing the archives consulted is not enough. He suggests that every serious historical work ought to reveal something of the investigation itself, with its successes, failures, unexpected discoveries, and changing directions. Readers should not encounter only polished conclusions but also the process by which those conclusions were reached. Long before historians became interested in writing about their own methods, Bloch imagined historical research as a narrative in itself. In doing so, he encouraged future generations to make readers participants in the historian’s investigation rather than mere recipients of its results.

On the use of historical sources

If the historian’s archive is nearly infinite, Bloch is equally clear that no source should ever be accepted uncritically. Historical evidence does not speak the truth simply because it has survived. Experience, he reminds us, has taught historians that more than one manuscript has falsified its date or origin, that not every account is truthful, and that even physical evidence can be forged. As he bluntly puts it, ‘with ink, anyone can write anything’.

Concurrently, exposing a forgery is only the beginning of historical criticism. It is not enough to establish that a document is false; the historian must also ask why it was fabricated in the first place. Every forgery has a history of its own. Who created it? For whom? To what end? The task of the historian is therefore to seek, in Bloch’s memorable phrase, ‘the impostor behind the imposture’. Authenticity, moreover, can never be determined in isolation. A piece of evidence must be tested against other evidence. Historical method demands comparison, corroboration, and analysis. The historian selects, sorts, and evaluates sources, looking first for correspondences and patterns before drawing conclusions. Facts become historical knowledge only after they have survived this process of critical examination.

Bloch’s concern with historical honesty extends even to one of the least glamorous aspects of scholarly writing, the footnotes. He devotes several entertaining passages to what might be called ‘the great debate about footnotes.’ On the one hand, he gently mocks scholars whose fascination with the lower margin of the page borders on obsession. It is surely absurd, he remarks, to overcrowd footnotes with bibliographical references that could easily have been gathered into a bibliography, or worse, to banish lengthy discussions to the bottom of the page, so that ‘the most useful part of these works must be looked for in the cellar’.

Nonetheless, Bloch is equally impatient with those who dismiss footnotes as unnecessary clutter or complain that even a single note makes their head swim. Such objections, he argues, betray a disregard for the most elementary principles of intellectual ethics. Apart from the free play of imagination, no assertion has the right to exist unless it can be verified. A historian who indicates the source of a document, even as briefly as possible, is simply obeying what Bloch calls ‘a universal rule of honesty’.

Reading this today, in an age of misinformation, fabricated quotations, and AI-generated content, Bloch’s defence of verification feels remarkably prescient. Footnotes are not an exercise in pedantry; they are an ethical commitment. They allow readers to retrace the historian’s steps, examine the evidence for themselves, and judge whether an interpretation is convincing. Historical writing ultimately rests not on authority, but on transparency.

Reflections

Bloch explains at the outset that The Historian’s Craft is an attempt to answer a simple but profound question: how and why does a historian practise his trade? Whether that trade is worth practising, however, he leaves for the reader to decide. Can one devote one’s talents to a discipline that promises neither immediate practical conclusions nor the certainty of future progress? A discipline that may appear less like a science in the conventional sense than ‘a sort of aesthetic play, a hygienic exercise favourable to health of mind’?

What stayed with me most after re-reading The Historian’s Craft this time, therefore, was not simply Bloch’s methodology but his language. Few historians have written about their discipline with such richness of metaphor. History, in his hands, is at once a craft, a vocation, an aesthetic pleasure, a poetic pursuit, and a ‘hygienic exercise favourable to health of mind’.

The historian belongs to a guild of craftsmen, constantly engaged in the ‘incessant soul-searchings of our craft’. He resembles the giant of the fairy tale, following ‘the scent of human flesh’ wherever it may be found. Historical time becomes the ‘plasma’ in which events are immersed and rendered intelligible. Research itself is imagined through the language of husbandry, includings tasks such as ploughing, sowing, and harvesting. Even the relationship between disciplines is conceived as a division of labour, each with its own methods, language, and purpose.

These metaphors are more than literary flourishes. They reveal how Bloch understood history itself. Not as the mechanical accumulation of facts, but as a deeply human practice requiring judgement, imagination, sensitivity, and intellectual honesty. His historian is neither a collector of antiquities nor a passive recorder of events. He is a craftsman who learns through experience, questions every source, follows every trace of human life, and patiently reconstructs the worlds of the past.

Perhaps that is why The Historian’s Craft remains one of the enduring classics of historical methodology. It teaches us how to think historically, but it also reminds us why history is worth practising in the first place.

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However, writing history does not end when a book is published. Historians have an obligation to keep revisiting their own work, anticipating criticism, questioning their assumptions, and engaging with new methodological interventions. That continuous self-reflection is itself part of historical practice. In that spirit, I recently read Francesca Trivellato’s article, ‘“The Normal Exception”: Edoardo Grendi, Microanalysis, and Generalizations’ (History and Theory). In her words, she retraces ‘the meandering fate of the notion of “the normal exception” over the past half-century” while proposing new ways of understanding it. The article unexpectedly made me rethink one of the central methodological questions underlying my own book.

What is the “Normal Exception”?

Most readers of microhistory encounter the phrase through Carlo Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms. Menocchio, the sixteenth-century miller, appears to be an extraordinary individual whose cosmology was so unusual that it led to his execution. At the same time, Ginzburg famously reminds us that:

… even a limited case (and Menocchio certainly is this) can be representative: in a negative sense, because it helps to explain what should be understood, in a given situation, as being “in statistical majority”; or positively, because it permits us to define the latent possibilities of something (popular culture) otherwise known to us only through fragmentary and distorted documents, almost all of which originate in the “archives of repression”.

In other words, an exceptional individual may reveal what was normal precisely because he stands apart from the statistical majority.

This was also the way I approached my own protagonist, Abdul Jalil. As I wrote in The Sky Poured Down Candy:

It could be argued at the same time that Abdul Jalil could also be representative in an alternate sense … the outcome was ultimately favourable for Abdul Jalil. However, on the circumstances pervasive around him, Abdul Jalil commented that obtaining a revenue assignment had become an agonizingly tricky undertaking. This was to the extent that he wrote to his son that a great many people had bewildered themselves chasing the same. Yet, somewhat defiantly, he camped on the doorstep and remained adamant in his pursuit, making him an exception. Thus, through his experience of administrative decay, we do learn that a good statistical majority in eighteenth-century Mughal India may have been unable to tackle the system, may have exhausted all their resources in the process, and may have indeed remained assignment-less.

Here, Abdul Jalil’s eventual success is exceptional. His experience of navigating administrative decline, however, allows us to infer the frustrations faced by countless others whose stories have disappeared from the archive.

Trivellato’s intervention

Francesca Trivellato asks us to rethink this familiar understanding. Her central argument is deceptively simple. Perhaps ‘the normal exception’ does not primarily refer to exceptional individuals at all. Instead, it refers to exceptional documents. She argues that once we understand the concept in relation to archival evidence rather than eccentric personalities, its heuristic power becomes much greater. The task is not simply to find unusual people but to build historical generalizations from unusually revealing documents.

To make this argument, Trivellato returns to the origins of Italian microhistory. She traces the expression back to Edoardo Grendi’s work on microanalysis and to the intellectual project developed by Carlo Ginzburg, Giovanni Levi, and Simona Cerutti in the Microstorie series published between 1981 and 1991. Contrary to the common assumption that microhistory is simply ‘history from below’, the Microstorie series included studies of both humble and famous individuals. Therefore, we have Martin Guerre alongside Piero della Francesca, Galileo, and Annibale Carracci. What actually united these works was not the social status of their protagonists but their commitment to challenging broad explanatory models through close analysis of carefully chosen evidence.

This is where Grendi’s famous phrase enters the discussion. As Trivellato explains, in using ‘the normal exception’ Grendi was reflecting on the nature of historical sources. Historians rarely possess direct access to the lives of ordinary people because archives overwhelmingly preserve the voices of institutions and elites. Occasionally, however, historians encounter documents that are statistically rare yet extraordinarily revealing. Grendi described these as documents that become ‘exceptionally normal’. Carlo Ginzburg and Carlo Poni later elaborated this idea. Criminal court records, for instance, are exceptional because they survive under unusual circumstances. Nevertheless, they often preserve otherwise inaccessible details about ordinary lives. Likewise, genuinely rare documents may illuminate social realities that thousands of routine administrative records never reveal.

Seen in this light, the real protagonist of The Cheese and the Worms is not only Menocchio but also his judicial dossier. The archive itself becomes the methodological problem.

Rethinking my own book

This distinction struck me because I have often been asked at conferences whether Abdul Jalil is ‘representative enough’ and ‘subaltern enough’ to justify a microhistory. My own response has always been that although he is exceptional only in certain respects, his experiences reveal wider structures within late Mughal administration.

After reading Trivellato, I realised that I had accepted only half of the argument. Like many readers, including myself, I had understood ‘the normal exception’ primarily as referring to an unusual individual. But Trivellato reminds us that Grendi was equally concerned with unusual documents. And that insight resonates deeply with my own archive.

Abdul Jalil was not among the poorest members of Mughal society. He was a literate, well-read, middling gentleman who sought to conform to the norms of Mughal bureaucratic culture rather than reject them. In that sense, he is perhaps less exceptional than Menocchio. His surviving papers, however, are another matter entirely. Private letters and personal poems from early eighteenth-century Mughal India are statistically rare. Their survival in colonial archives is itself an archival accident. They belong precisely to the kind of ‘exceptionally normal’ documentation that Grendi had in mind, that is, rare sources capable of revealing everyday practices, anxieties, friendships, ambitions, disappointments, and negotiations that conventional administrative records seldom preserve.

Perhaps, then, the true ‘normal exception’ in The Sky Poured Down Candy is not simply Abdul Jalil himself. It is the archive that made his voice audible. And that, I think, is an even stronger methodological defence of the book than the one I had originally imagined.

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… history has become a multicultural domain, where different groupings struggle for intellectual supremacy on the battleground of ideas, courses and university history syllabuses. It is surely not out of place in this situation to plead for a little intellectual tolerance, and to warn any one particular orientation against the arrogant assumption that its own methods and procedures are necessarily better than those of its rivals.

- Richard J. Evans, In Defence of History

When Richard J. Evans published In Defence of History in 1997, he was responding to what he saw as a growing intellectual crisis within the discipline. History was not under attack from declining student numbers or a lack of public interest. On the contrary, history remained popular. Historical books sold well, university courses attracted students, and the public continued to consume narratives about the past with enthusiasm. However, Evans believed that history needed defending because of a more fundamental challenge of a growing skepticism about whether historical knowledge itself was possible.

The late twentieth century witnessed the rise of postmodernist critiques that questioned the historian’s ability to recover the past. Influenced by literary theory and philosophers of language, many scholars argued that historical narratives were simply textual constructions, no more capable of representing reality than novels or works of fiction (Read also History: Science or fiction?). The past, they suggested, could never be known directly with historians merely imposed meanings upon fragments of evidence. Some theorists went so far as to claim that documents possessed no fixed meaning and were endlessly open to reinterpretation. If all interpretations were equally valid, then historical truth became impossible to establish.

Evans regarded such hyper-relativism as a serious threat to the discipline. While he acknowledged that historians are shaped by their own contexts and assumptions, he rejected the notion that historical knowledge is therefore impossible. His book attempted to chart a middle path between naïve empiricism and radical relativism. He rejected the older belief, associated with historians such as Geoffrey Elton and (our favourite) Leopold von Ranke (Read also Rethinking historical objectivity: Rankean principles v/s Rajasthan’s bardic traditions), that historians could simply allow the sources to ‘speak for themselves’. Historical interpretation, Evans argued, is always an active process in which historians interrogate evidence through questions shaped by the present.

At the same time, he rejected the postmodern claim that the past is nothing more than a textual invention. Sources place limits on interpretation. Historians may disagree, but not every interpretation is equally plausible. Through rigorous research, critical scrutiny of evidence, and continuous debate, historians can arrive at conclusions that are provisional yet reliable. As Evans argued, objective history is not the elimination of subjectivity but the production of a ‘true, fair, and adequate account’ constrained by evidence and disciplined by professional standards.

One of the most important aspects of Evans’s Defence was his insistence that theory matters. Historians could no longer simply retreat into archives and leave questions of epistemology to philosophers. Every historian, whether consciously or not, makes assumptions about truth, evidence, causation, and interpretation. Becoming more theoretically self-conscious was therefore not a threat to historical practice but a necessary part of it.

Critics accused Evans of defending an outdated concept of objectivity, yet this criticism often misrepresented his argument. He rejected both Elton’s narrow empiricism and E. H. Carr’s more teleological understanding of causation (Read also Re-reading ‘What is History’ after a history PhD). He welcomed developments such as social history, women’s history, etc., which had transformed the discipline since the mid-twentieth century. His defence was not of a single school of history but of a broad and inclusive discipline united by a commitment to evidence-based inquiry.

Perhaps Evans’s most compelling argument remains his warning about the political consequences of extreme relativism. If every interpretation is equally valid, then historians lose the ability to challenge falsehoods. Holocaust denial, racist historical narratives, and political propaganda become impossible to refute on intellectual grounds. The abandonment of standards of evidence does not necessarily empower progressive voices, but can equally empower reactionary and extremist ones. In this sense, the defence of historical truth is also a defence of democratic public discourse.

Nearly three decades later, the intellectual landscape has changed, but the need to defend history has not disappeared. If anything, the challenge has become more urgent.

Today, historians face a different kind of relativism. The threat no longer comes primarily from academic debates about language and textuality. Instead, it emerges from a digital environment saturated with misinformation, algorithmically curated content, and politically motivated distortions of the past. Historical claims circulate widely on social media without regard for evidence or context. Viral posts, short-form videos, and AI-generated content can often reach larger audiences than years of careful scholarly research. In such a world, Evans’s insistence that not all interpretations are equally valid remains profoundly relevant. The question is no longer merely whether historians can know the past, but is whether societies still value evidence-based knowledge about the past.

As a historian, I find another aspect of Evans’s argument particularly significant, that is, his defence of historical research as a craft. The painstaking work of reading documents, reconstructing contexts, comparing sources, and evaluating evidence may appear old-fashioned in an age of instant information, yet it remains the foundation of historical knowledge. Archives do not yield answers automatically. Sources must be interrogated critically, translated across contexts, interpreted with care, and read against the conventions, silences, and power relations that shaped their creation and preservation. Historical understanding emerges through a dialogue between the historian and the evidence, not through the simple accumulation of information.

At the same time, the twenty-first century presents challenges that Evans could only partially anticipate. Historians today must defend not only the possibility of historical knowledge but also the value of historical expertise. Public history, digital archives, community memory projects, and heritage initiatives have expanded participation in the production of historical narratives. This democratisation has enriched the discipline by bringing previously marginalised voices into historical conversation. It has, however, also raised important questions about authority and responsibility. The challenge is not to defend professional historians against the public, but to demonstrate why historical methods remain indispensable in an era when everyone can publish interpretations of the past.

History therefore requires defence today for reasons both old and new. Evans defended history against the claim that objective knowledge was impossible. We must defend it against the claim that expertise is unnecessary. He argued against theories that dissolved the past into language. We confront technologies that can manufacture convincing historical falsehoods at unprecedented scale. He worried about the erosion of standards of evidence. We face a world in which evidence itself is increasingly contested.

Notwithstanding, the fundamental principle remains the same. History is neither a collection of unquestionable facts nor an exercise in limitless imagination. It is a disciplined attempt to understand the past through evidence, interpretation, critical debate, and rigorous engagement with sources. Its conclusions are never final, but neither are they arbitrary. In defending that principle, Evans was defending more than a scholarly discipline. He was defending the possibility that truth about the past, however imperfectly attained, remains worth pursuing. That is a defence that historians in the twenty-first century must continue.

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In one of my previous posts (read here), I discussed how E. H. Carr wrote about the historian and their facts. Beginning with the positivist notion that history could be approached as a science, and with the assumption that facts must first be established before conclusions are drawn, Carr traced in this the intellectual legacy of historians such as Leopold von Ranke and the generations of German, British, and French historians influenced by him from the 1830s onward. Their insistence on empirical fact rested upon the belief that the historian’s task was ‘simply to show how it really was’.

Carr, however, challenged what appears to be the commonsensical understanding of history. In the characteristic wit that ran throughout What Is History?, he remarked that ‘to praise a historian for his accuracy is like praising an architect for using well-seasoned timber or properly mixed concrete in his building’. Accuracy, therefore, was merely a necessary condition of historical writing, not its essential function.

However, it would be unfair to dismiss Ranke as a crude positivist. The nineteenth-century German historian who helped define what we still call ‘objective’ history transformed the discipline in ways that remain fundamental even today. He would certainly have recognised the clerk in our opening scene as a colleague. His method, built upon the critical examination of written records and the reconstruction of ‘what actually happened’, continues to shape our instincts about what counts as a proper historical source. But what do we do with the bard?

Rajasthan’s bardic literature—khyats (carries more or less the same meaning as histories), heroic epics, genealogies (vamshavalis), praise poems—and oral traditions preserved by Charans, Bhats, and other communities, sit uneasily within a Rankean conception of historical scholarship. On the one hand, these traditions are partisan, fluid, performative, and frequently embellished with miracle and myth. On the other, they preserve names, places, lineages, rivalries, memories, and social worlds that would otherwise be lost.

Taking Ranke seriously in the face of Rajasthan’s bardic traditions does not require us to dismiss them as legend. Rather, it invites us to rethink the meaning of historical objectivity itself.

What Ranke actually changed

Few historians have exercised a greater influence on the modern historical profession than Leopold von Ranke. A scholar of extraordinary productivity who authored more than sixty works during a remarkably long career, Ranke sought to transform history from a branch of literature and philosophy into an independent academic discipline. According to Richard J. Evans, his contribution was threefold.

First, he insisted upon the autonomy of history. Rejecting the tendency to use the past merely as a vehicle for moral instruction or philosophical speculation, he famously declared:

To history has been assigned the office of judging the past, of instructing the present for the benefit of future ages. To such high offices this work does not aspire; it wants only to show what actually happened.

The task of the historian was, thus, not to praise or condemn but to understand.

Second, Ranke sought to strip away what later historians have called the ‘condescension of posterity’. The past had to be understood on its own terms. Historical actors were individuals operating within their own intellectual, political, economic, and socio-cultural worlds.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, Ranke introduced into historical scholarship the methods that philologists had then developed for the study of ancient and medieval texts. Historians had to establish authorship, identify interpolations, compare manuscripts, expose forgeries, and evaluate the reliability of competing accounts. They had to investigate the provenance of documents, examine their internal consistency, compare them with contemporary records, and establish their authenticity. Eyewitness accounts and documents produced close to the events they described were privileged over retrospective narratives. Historians were expected to leave libraries and immerse themselves in archives, patiently working through vast collections of manuscripts preserved by states and institutions.

This was nothing short of a methodological revolution. Even today, historians continue to engage in this basic Rankean spadework. We ask who produced a source, why it was produced, under what circumstances it was produced, and how it relates to other available evidence. As Evans has argued, these procedures remain indispensable. Without them, history collapses into speculation.

But the success of the Rankean method produced an unintended consequence. It established an implicit hierarchy of evidence. Written documents came to be valued over oral traditions; archives over memory; administrative records over performance; and states over communities. It is precisely at this point that Rajasthan’s bardic traditions become difficult to accommodate.

When historical truth was sung

Long before the arrival of modern historical scholarship, Rajasthan possessed a rich historical culture of its own. Charans, Bhats, and other bardic communities functioned as custodians of memory. Attached to courts, lineages, and local communities, they preserved genealogies, narrated military exploits, celebrated acts of loyalty and sacrifice, and articulated ideals of kingship and honour. Their compositions ranged from heroic epics and praise poetry to khyats and genealogical records.

These texts do not fit comfortably within the categories established by modern historiography. They are neither straightforward chronicles nor pure works of imagination. Many were transmitted orally before being committed to writing. Their wording could vary across performances. Their narratives were shaped by patronage and audience expectations. To a strict follower of Ranke, the problems are obvious. How does one establish an original text when multiple revisions exist? How does one verify miraculous events or divine interventions? How should one treat narratives composed centuries after the events they describe? What does one do when historical figures stand alongside mythical ancestors?

From a Rankean perspective, such sources appear deeply suspect. However, the problem is not so simple. A bardic narrative may exaggerate a battle, but it often preserves details about kinship networks, territorial rivalries, political alliances, and social values absent from official records. A genealogy may contain mythical elements, yet simultaneously provide invaluable evidence regarding status claims and lineage formation. These sources tell us not only what happened but also what communities believed had happened, what they considered worth remembering, and how they understood themselves.

The question, therefore, is not whether bardic literature qualifies as history. The question is what kind of history it represents.

The nineteenth-century crisis of historical truth

The tension between bardic traditions and modern historical scholarship was not first encountered by contemporary historians. It was already unfolding within Rajasthan itself during the nineteenth century. As Shankar Goyal demonstrates in The Past Before Us: Historical Traditions in the Historiography of Rajasthan (2021), bardic historiography entered a period of decline soon after much of its literature began to be committed to writing during the eighteenth century. The reasons were historical rather than literary.

British paramountcy transformed Rajasthan’s political landscape. Western education introduced new standards of evidence and rationality. Institutions associated with the heroic tradition—such as jauhar, sati, and unquestioning loyalty to patrons—came under increasing scrutiny. The heroic worldview that had sustained bardic literature for centuries no longer possessed the same authority. The result was a profound crisis of historical imagination.

For instance, commenting on Suryamal Mishran’s Vir Satasai (1857), a collection of seven hundred verses composed during the upheaval of 1857, historian M. S. Jain observed:

Vir Satasai, excepting the date of its composition, betrays little relevance to the outbreak of 1857 ... [It] was a loud proclamation that the appeal to chivalry and dynastic pride was not only ineffective in persuading the feudal aristocracy to come out of its indolence, lethargy and luxury but was also unpleasant to their ears. This failure of Mishran was not personal; it was the failure of the entire past tradition.

Jain’s observation is revealing. What failed was not merely a poem but an entire way of understanding the past. As concepts of documentary accuracy gained prestige, the poet’s conception of historical truth increasingly came under attack. The materials employed by heroic poetry may have been historical, but their arrangement, adaptation, and embellishment were often imaginative and romantic. Once factual accuracy became the dominant criterion of historical legitimacy, the older conception of truth nurtured by heroic literature rapidly lost ground.

Bankidas, Dayaldas, and Shyamaldas

The transition becomes visible in the careers of individual writers. Bankidas, the celebrated court poet of Man Singh of Jodhpur and author of the three-volume Bankidas Granthavali (1803-33), remains famous for his poem Aya Ingrez Muluk ra Oopar. Writing about British expansion, he lamented the submission of Rajput rulers and condemned the loss of martial virtues. The poem stands as a powerful critique of colonial domination, but it also reflects an older heroic conception of history in which honour, bravery, and loyalty remained central categories of understanding.

On the other hand, Dayaldas of Bikaner confronted a different challenge. Responding to James Tod’s characterisation of Bikaner as a state of secondary importance, he sought to restore the prestige of the ruling house through his Bikaner re Rathoran ri Khyat (also known as Dayaldas ri Khyat). He highlighted the role of Bikaner rulers at the Mughal court and supplied information ignored by Mughal chroniclers. Despite writing in the second half of the nineteenth century, he all the same remained deeply embedded within the older dynastic tradition and sought to glorify the Rathor rulers of Bikaner.

Shyamaldas occupied a more transitional position. His Vir Vinod (1886), a monumental history running to nearly 2800 pages, adopted a more documentary style and incorporated a wider range of written evidence; and a basic internet search may have us believe that it was the a foundational text in the trend of positivist history writing in Mewar of the nineteenth century India. However, subjectivity marked by patronage bias crept in with the author utterly unconscious of the decadence which had sent in the socio-political system of the state.

Taken together, these figures reveal a historical culture struggling to adapt to changing standards of truth.

Ranke’s heirs in Rajasthan

The influence of Rankean principles became even more visible among professional historians of twentieth-century Rajasthan. G. H. Ojha’s monumental works, including Rajputana ka Itihas (Vols I-V, 1924-40) and Udaipur Rajya ka Itihas (Vols I-II, 1928-31), embodied a commitment to factual accuracy that would have pleased Ranke himself.

Like Ranke and Indian orientalist R. G. Bhandarkar, Ojha believed that facts constituted the lifeblood of history. He possessed an extraordinary concern for dates, chronology, documentary verification, and comparative analysis. However, as Goyal points out, Ojha’s commitment to objectivity too had its limits. A loyal servant, unfortunately first of the colonial state and later of Udaipur, his own assumptions shaped his interpretation of more recent events. His distrust of oral traditions sometimes prevented him from appreciating the grains of historical truth contained within bardic narratives. Moreover, his overwhelming focus on political history left social, economic, and religious developments largely unexplored.

R. P. Vyas—with his Rajasthan ka Brihat Itihas (1702-1818 A.D.) (1986) and Adhunik Rajasthan ka Brihat Itihas (1818-1950) (1995)—represented a later generation. Although influenced by the documentary tradition associated with Bhandarkar and Ranke, he was also receptive to newer developments in historical scholarship. He recognised the importance of social and economic history and approvingly cited historians such as Carr and Marc Bloch. For Vyas, history was not simply a collection of facts. It was, as he put it, ‘a search for truth, an approximation rather than a final formulation’. Echoing Carr, he described history as a dialogue between the past and the present.

The shift is significant. The historian was no longer merely recovering facts but interpreting them.

Listening to the bard

Having detailed the historical impact of Ranke in western as well as Rajasthani scholarship, one can perhaps insist on the significance of Rajasthan’s bardic literature as historical sources, despite its poetic exaggerations. After all, the exaggeration itself is historical evidence. It reveals what qualities were admired, what forms of conduct were celebrated, what political ideals were upheld, and what communities considered worthy of remembrance. A historian who approaches a bardic text solely in search of dates and events will inevitably be disappointed. But a historian interested in memory, legitimacy, political culture, social values, and historical consciousness will find a wealth of material.

The answer to the Rankean principles v/s Rajasthan’s bardic traditions conundrum, therefore, is not to abandon Ranke. The questions he taught historians to ask remain indispensable. Who composed a text? For whom was it composed? Under what circumstances? How was it transmitted? What interests did it serve? At the same time, Rajasthan’s bardic traditions remind us that historical evidence is not confined to the archive. Ranke taught historians to distrust the bard. Rajasthan teaches us to historicise him.

The challenge is hence not to choose between the archive and the bard. It is to develop a form of historical objectivity capable of reading an archive and listening to a song, both at the same time.

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One classroom discussion remains particularly memorable. Students, somewhat overwhelmed by the density of the methodology course, confessed their difficulty in grasping even the basic contours of historiography. In response, the professor remarked that the purpose of the course was not mastery, but initiation into the lifelong process of learning and unlearning how to practise history. It was in that moment that What Is History? came to be understood not as a text to be completed once and set aside, but as a work to which one must return repeatedly over the course of a lifetime, with each reading yielding new questions, and occasionally, a few more answers.

On the beginning

The 2018 edition published by Penguin Classics opens with an introduction by the historian Richard J. Evans, whose In Defence of History has now found its way onto my ‘to read list’. I was not only curious but almost compelled to understand the perspective of someone offering such a pointed engagement with a text as canonical as What Is History?. However, I also found myself mildly annoyed at encountering the critique before the text itself as part of me wanted to approach Carr unmediated, uncoloured by Evans’s opinions. But, lacking the discipline to skip ahead, I read the introduction anyway and moved through the book in the only way I seem capable of, from beginning to end, even if that means surrendering, at least in part, to another historian’s interpretive lens before forming my own.

I do understand the need for such an introduction. After all, Carr himself urges us to know the historian before we know his history, reminding us that every historian is a product of their age, shaped by the intellectual currents around them. In that sense, it becomes important to situate Carr within his own context, and so as Evans notes, he was very much a figure of the 1960s, who ‘approached history from the angle of someone who spent his life working for the Foreign Office and for a national newspaper’.

This background, Evans suggests, shaped Carr’s historical priorities. Questions of state-building and the formulation of policy took centre stage in his work. In his multi-volume History of Soviet Russia, for instance, Carr is described as taking ‘state-generated documents, formal policies, constitutions and paper legislation very much at face value’, a tendency Evans attributes, in part, to Carr’s training within bureaucratic structures. At the same time, Carr’s approach drew criticism from contemporaries like Isaiah Berlin, who accused him of viewing history through the eyes of the victors, to the extent that ‘the losers have for him all but disqualified themselves from bearing witness’. In words of Evans:

Nowhere did Carr’s elitism, his identification with the government rather than the governed, come out more strongly that in his dismissal not only of the losers in history but also of the vast majority of human beings throughout recorded time as being uninteresting to the historian because they had contributed nothing to the process of historical change.

Evans adds that Carr’s somewhat patrician understanding of ordinary people was soon rendered outdated by shifts within the discipline of history itself. From the mid-1960s onward, historians increasingly turned towards recovering the experiences of the poor and marginalised, seeking, in the memorable words of E. P. Thompson in The Making of the English Working Class, to rescue them ‘from the enormous condescension of posterity’. Significantly, Thompson’s work appeared only two years after Carr’s lectures were published in 1961, marking a rapidly changing historiographical landscape.

Evans pushes this further by linking Carr’s intellectual formation to his professional life. Since his formative intellectual years were spent not in the ivory tower of academia but in the practical world of diplomatic service, for Carr, he argues, there was nothing of ‘direct interest unless it made a contribution to the formation of policy’. Therefore, he ‘could never free himself from the assumption that history was primarily designed to provide a guide to policy’.

The introduction also offers a particularly engaging glimpse into Carr’s process of writing, an insight, I would say, into the working mind of the historian:

It has often described how he would occupy a chair in his sitting-room, surrounded by scraps and sheets of paper that would accumulate around it as he put his thoughts down and began to stitch them together. Anyone who wants to get an idea of just how disorderly this seemed only has to open the folders of notes for the never-completed second edition of What is History? in the Carr papers at Birmingham University library, with their seemingly random scribblings on pieces of paper of varying sizes, all in no obvious order.

Disorganised as it may appear, the principle of history-writing that Carr advanced, of research and writing as a continuously interactive process, is one that many later historians would both recognise and endorse.

Despite the author’s now well understood contextual limitations, what then makes Carr’s work enduringly relevant? After all, his What Is History? continues to be a classic!

On historian and his facts

Beginning with the positivist notion that history could be approached as a science (read also ‘History: Science or fiction?’), and with the assumption that facts must first be established before conclusions are drawn, Carr traces the intellectual legacy of historians such as Leopold von Ranke and the generations of German, British, and French historians influenced by him from the 1830s onward. Their insistence on empirical fact rested upon the belief that the historian’s task was ‘simply to show how it really was’. Carr, however, challenges what appears to be the commonsensical understanding of history. In the characteristic wit that runs throughout What Is History?, he remarks that ‘to praise a historian for his accuracy is like praising an architect for using well-seasoned timber or properly mixed concrete in his building’. Accuracy, therefore, is merely a necessary condition of historical writing, not its essential function.

For Carr, facts do not speak for themselves, they speak only when the historian calls upon them. This immediately raises questions of selectivity and, therefore, subjectivity. As he famously writes:

The belief in a hard core of historical facts existing objectively and independently of the interpretation of the historian is a preposterous fallacy, but one which is very hard to eradicate.

Carr therefore argues against what he calls the ‘fetishism of facts’, often accompanied by a corresponding ‘fetishism of documents’. Documents, whether decrees, treaties, official correspondence, or private letters, do not transparently reveal what actually happened. Rather, they tell us what their authors believed had happened, what ought to happen, what they feared or hoped would happen, or even what they wanted others to believe had happened. Documents acquire meaning only through the historian’s labour of interpretation.

This, for Carr, highlights the importance of what he terms an ‘imaginative understanding’ of historical actors and their worlds. Such understanding, however, should not be mistaken for sympathy, ‘lest sympathy should be supposed to imply agreement’. Equally significant is Carr’s insistence that the past can only be understood through the eyes of the present, since historians, like the historical figures they study, are themselves products of their own times.

At the same time, Carr does not abandon the possibility of objectivity altogether, nor does he reduce history to whatever a historian chooses to make of it. Historians remain bound by facts in the sense that they must strive to incorporate all known or knowable evidence relevant to the subject under investigation and to the interpretation they advance. Interpretation, in this sense, becomes not the enemy of history but, as Carr suggests, its very ‘life-blood’.

What, then, is history? Carr argues that the historical process begins with a provisional selection of facts and an equally provisional interpretation by the historian. As research and writing progress, both the arrangement of facts and their interpretation evolve through their constant interaction with one another. This process also entails an ongoing reciprocity between past and present, since the historian belongs to the present, while the facts belong to the past. History, therefore, is above all an unending dialogue between the present and the past, sustained through the continuous interaction between the historian and their facts.

On history as social process

Carr also challenges another “commonsensical” understanding of history, the idea that history is simply written by individuals about other individuals. While this perspective had been encouraged by nineteenth-century liberal historians and was not entirely incorrect, Carr regarded it, by his own time, as overly simplified and increasingly inadequate. Neither historical actors nor the historians who study them, he argues, exist as isolated individuals detached from their social contexts. Both are shaped by the societies in which they live, learn, and act; both are, in Carr’s formulation, social phenomena and, in some sense, spokespersons of their age.

In one of the book’s evocative metaphors, Carr compares history to a moving procession:

The historian is just another dim figure trudging along … And as the procession winds along, swerving now to the right and now to the left, and sometimes doubling back on itself, the relative positions of different parts of the procession are constantly changing … New vistas, new angles of vision, constantly appear as the procession—and the historian with it—moves along … The point in the procession at which he finds himself determines his angle of vision over the past.

The metaphor captures Carr’s larger argument that historians are never outside history, they move within it. Consequently, historians must remain conscious of the assumptions and biases of their own age, many of which inevitably and often unconsciously shape their writing. As Carr observes, ‘the historian who is most conscious of his own situation is also more capable of transcending it’, and better able to appreciate the differences between their own society and those of other times and places, than the historian who insists upon complete individuality and detachment. Thus, Carr’s famous insistence that one must study the historian before studying their history acquires an additional dimension, that is, one must also study the historian’s social and intellectual environment.

As far as the study of “great men” in history as extraordinary, isolated individuals is concerned, what may appear self-evident today seems to have required explicit emphasis in Carr’s own intellectual context. Carr argues that no great individual exists outside the social forces of their time. Even a rebel, he suggests, represents either already existing historical forces or new forces that emerge through their challenge to established authority. Great individuals do not stand apart from history, they are embedded within it.

At the same time, Carr reminds readers that the greatness of those figures who appear far ahead of their age is itself dependent upon historical recognition. Their significance exists because later generations identify and acknowledge it. In this sense, an outstanding individual is simultaneously both a product and an agent of the historical process, that is, at once shaped by social forces and capable of reshaping them in turn. Such figures become both representatives and creators of the forces that alter societies, institutions, and ways of thinking.

The broader conclusion that emerges from these reflections is that history, both in meaning and as a mode of enquiry, is fundamentally a social process in which individuals participate as social beings. To Carr’s earlier definition of history as the reciprocal interaction between the historian and their facts, as an unending dialogue between the present and the past, must therefore be added another dimension. The dialogue is not between abstract or isolated individuals, but between the society of the present and the society of the past. History, therefore, becomes ‘the record of what one age finds worthy of note in another’.

Is history a science?

As I have already detailed in my essay ‘History: Science or fiction?’ (read here) when confronted with the question that is history little more than a fallback for those who find literary classics too demanding and science too serious?, Carr insisted that history was far too difficult than classics and every bit as serious as science. To quote from ‘History: Science or fiction?’:

According to Carr, the initial distinction often drawn between the two rested on the claim that history dealt exclusively with the unique, whereas science dealt with the general. However, Carr pointed out, even in the physical sciences no two geological formations, no two species, and no two atoms were truly identical. Similarly, in history no two events were identical; but to overemphasise their uniqueness was equally misleading, since the very use of language inevitably involved a degree of generalisation. For instance, the Peloponnesian War (431–04 BCE; fought between Athens and Sparta and their respective allies for the hegemony of the ancient Greek world) and the Second World War (1939–45) were vastly different and each unique in its own right, yet both were described as ‘wars’. British essayist and historian, Edward Gibbon did something similar when he grouped together the establishment of Christianity and the rise of Islam under the general category of ‘revolutions’. Modern historians continue this practice when they write of the English Revolution, the French Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, and others. Therefore, Carr’s point was that ‘the historian is not really interested in the unique but in what is general in the unique’.

Both the reader and the writer of history were, in his view, habitual generalisers, constantly applying insights from one context to another. This did not mean, however, that historians should construct some vast overarching scheme into which all events must be forced. On the contrary, each event must first be studied in its own terms and only then compared with others; it was through this interplay between singularity and generalisation that a richer historical understanding could be achieved.

The second ground of distinction lied in the claim that history taught no lessons. In the decade preceding the First World War (1914–18) hostility towards historical consciousness—and towards the historian—had grown so widespread that James Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (and later a central figure in Ulysses), described history as a ‘nightmare’ from which Western man must awaken if humanity was to be served and saved. By then, the accusation against history had acquired a moral dimension: scientists accused historians of methodological or intellectual failure, while artists charged them with a failure of sensibility or will. The catastrophe of the First World War further discredited the profession. History, long expected to provide training for life by offering instructive examples, seemed to have done little to prepare humanity for the devastation of global conflict. The past, in the popular imagination, came to be seen as a burden, worse even than religion.

But is it true that the past is incapable of teaching lessons? Carr argued otherwise. For him, the very act of generalisation was itself an attempt to learn from history, to apply insights drawn from one set of events to another. A striking example was the case of the makers of the Russian Revolution of 1917, who were profoundly influenced and indeed obsessed by the lessons they drew from the French Revolution, the revolutions of 1848, and the Paris Commune of 1871. The effort to read meaning across different events, Carr suggested, was precisely what makes history a source of instruction.

Thirdly, closely related to the question of lessons, was the claim that history, unlike science, could not predict the future. Yet even science, since the twentieth century, had grown less confident about universal ‘laws of nature’ that supposedly enabled prediction. Carr illustrated this with the law of gravity, which no longer proved with certainty that an apple will fall to the ground, since one could always imagine the possibility of someone catching it in a basket. Modern physics, accordingly, had shifted its focus from absolute laws to probabilities. In much the same way, when historians generalised, they did not make specific predictions but provided a general guide for future action.

The fourth distinction concerned the charge that history was subjective. Carr noted that the dichotomy between the subjective and the objective arose during the age of the birth and development of modern science, when ‘man’ as subject was set sharply against the external world as object in order to grapple with and master it. But even in science this distinction did not remain tenable for long. The so-called external world and its forces came to be seen less as hostile objects than as phenomena to be harnessed and worked with for human purposes. For Carr, therefore, the argument that history was not a science because it was subjective was no longer convincing. In science itself, there was no longer a rigid divorce between subject and object, nor should there be in history.

Lastly, it was often argued that history, unlike science, necessarily involved questions of religion and morality. Carr acknowledged that history inevitably engaged with religious issues, but this did not imply that divinity intervened directly in any specific events. No serious historian could invoke divine agency as an explanation for the occurrence of historical events. Carr put it succinctly that God could not be the joker in the pack, and history was a game that must be played without this joker. Regarding morality, the historian’s task was equally distinct from that of the moralist. Historians did not need to pass judgment on the private lives or public actions of historical figures. Their standpoint, Carr insisted, was fundamentally different from that of the moralist; historical analysis required detachment and explanation, not ethical evaluation.

Carr ultimately maintained that history ought to be regarded as part of the sciences, arguing that the perceived divide between history and science stemmed largely from a long-standing intellectual prejudice. At the same time, he was cautious about describing history as a science in an uncomplicated or rigid sense, since doing so, in his view, risked reinforcing the separation between the so-called ‘two cultures’ of the humanities and the sciences. What united the historian and the scientist, Carr believed, was not method in a narrow technical sense, but a shared commitment to explanation and enquiry. Both proceed through the process of asking and answering questions, driven above all by the fundamental question, why?

Answering the why

For Carr, the study of history was, in the simplest terms, the study of causes. Historical events may emerge from a multiplicity of causes, yet the historian’s task, Carr argues, is to bring order to this complexity by establishing some hierarchy of causes. A historian must determine how different causes relate to one another and, where possible, identify the more decisive or underlying cause among them. As Carr succinctly puts it, ‘every historical argument revolves round the question of the priority of causes’.

Closely connected to this concern with causation was Carr’s engagement with the role of accident or chance in history, a subject he believed his contemporaries often exaggerated. Taking recourse, once again, to his characteristic wit, he offers the following example:

Jones, returning from a party at which he has consumed more than his usual ration of alcohol, in a car whose brakes turn out to have been defective, at a blind corner where visibility is notoriously poor, knocks down and kills Robinson, who was crossing the road to buy cigarettes at the shop on the corner.

Carr suggests that what he calls the ‘devotees of chance’ might conclude that Robinson died because he happened to be a smoker; had he not run out of cigarettes that evening, he would not have crossed the road at that moment. But, for Carr, such reasoning mistakes coincidence for historical significance. While multiple circumstances may contribute to an event, the historian’s responsibility lies in distinguishing which causes are historically meaningful.

In this example, historically significant causes might include drunk driving, defective brakes, or unsafe road conditions, that are factors from which broader social conclusions or preventive measures may be drawn, such as stricter traffic regulations, improvements in automobile safety, or better urban planning. Carr’s larger point, therefore, extends beyond merely asking ‘Why?’ about the past. Historical inquiry, for him, also contains an orientation towards the future. The historian not only asks why events occurred, but also, in Carr’s words, asks ‘Whither?’, that is, towards what direction societies are moving and what lessons may be drawn from the past for the future.

History as progress

Distinguishing between evolution and progress, Carr argues that the two operate on fundamentally different scales. Evolution unfolds over millions of years, whereas progress may be observed within generations. For Carr, the essence of progress lies in humanity’s capacity, as rational beings, to develop and expand its potential through the accumulation and transmission of experience from one generation to the next. History, therefore, becomes progressive insofar as acquired knowledge, skills, and social experience are inherited, preserved, and reworked across time.

At the same time, Carr does not imagine progress as linear, uninterrupted, or universally uniform. Progress, in his formulation, remains an abstract and uneven process rather than a steady march towards perfection. No final state of complete fulfilment or perfectibility can ever truly be attained. Despite these qualifications, Carr retains a fundamentally optimistic outlook. Rejecting both historical pessimism and fatalism, he advances the idea of an open-ended and potentially unlimited progress in history, grounded in humanity’s continuing ability to learn from and build upon the experiences of the past.

Reflections

What has perhaps changed most over the years is the way this writer now reads Carr, and, indeed, historians more generally. As a postgraduate student first encountering What Is History?, Carr’s arguments appeared almost inscribed in stone, to be absorbed with complete sincerity and intellectual obedience. Returning to the text now, after years of research and the experience of pursuing a doctorate in history, the limitations of Carr’s framework appear far more visible.

Carr was undeniably shaped by the world he inhabited and by the intellectual and institutional structures within which he worked. His conception of history remained deeply elitist in important ways. He was explicit in his belief that those who, in his view, contributed little to the making of historical change, such as, women, pre-literate communities, or politically unorganised masses, did not occupy the centre of historical enquiry. The history he privileged was overwhelmingly male, political, and state-centric, and concerned primarily with the actions of the powerful and the victorious rather than with the lives of the marginalised or dispossessed.

However, recognising these limitations does not diminish the continued significance of Carr’s work. If anything, it demonstrates the very principle Carr himself insisted upon, namely, historians are products of their own times. His blind spots today become, paradoxically, another lesson in historical methodology. To read Carr now is not to accept his arguments uncritically, but to engage with them by questioning them and sometimes even resisting them. Perhaps that is precisely why the book continues to endure. Despite its exclusions, What Is History? remains valuable because it compels readers to think seriously about what history is, who gets to write it, whose experiences are considered worthy of remembrance, and how the relationship between past and present is continually negotiated.

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When reflecting on the framing of this piece, it became evident that the subject at hand might more accurately be described as ‘the making of identity immediately after Partition’. The years under consideration, 1947 to 1949, constitute not a retrospective meditation on a long-past event but rather an exploration of the immediate aftermath of Partition, when questions of belonging, memory, and cultural identity were still unsettled and fluid.

The theme of museums and memory, in this piece, therefore, is approached not as a static commemoration of a distant history but as a dynamic process unfolding in real time, that is, in the first years after the division of the Indian subcontinent. This perspective deliberately moves away from contemporary imaginings of the museum, such as the Partition Museums in Amritsar or Delhi, which now curate material remains and testimonies from a temporal distance of nearly eight decades. Instead, it seeks to interrogate what the concept of a museum meant in 1947 itself, in the wake of migration, loss, and resettlement.

Existing scholarship (monographs) and public history initiatives (heritage walks, oral and material history collectives) on Partition have largely centered on themes of pre-Partition life and shared culture, religious and cultural coexistence, the violence and displacement of migration, personal recollections, family heirlooms and artifacts (such as letters, documents, photographs, utensils, jewellery, etc.) carried across, intergenerational memory, women’s experiences. What is proposed here, however, is a shift in focus, specifically from commemoration to the very act of collecting in the immediate aftermath of Partition. Drawing inspiration from Mrinalini Venkateswaran’s recent work, Compelled to Collect, the emphasis is placed on collecting not simply as a means of preserving objects but as a formative cultural act through which identity and heritage were actively being shaped in the fragile years of 1947–49.

While this discussion builds upon Venkateswaran’s insights into ‘collecting’ as a political and socio-cultural—and, as will be argued, also economic—act, the approach taken is shaped by a dual vantage point. Emerging from the training of a historian of early modern South Asia and the present practice of a heritage professional, the analysis seeks to foreground a distinction often unthinkingly blurred in public discourse today, that between history and heritage.

Both are best understood through their practices—history as writing, with its emphasis on archival sources, chronology, context, interpretation, and narration; and heritage as documentation, privileging preservation and curation. The boundary between the two, however, is exceedingly thin. It is precisely in this overlap that this intervention is situated, so as to demonstrate how the collecting practices of 1947–49 illuminate not only processes of identity formation, but also the ways in which heritage practices and historical consciousness were mutually constitutive in the immediate shadow of Partition.

Why Punjab?

While any region of the subcontinent could serve as a case study for understanding Partition and its aftermath, Punjab occupies a particularly distinct position. As a frontier province, it was not only divided abruptly in 1947 but also experienced what has been described as a “long Partition”, with its effects stretching across nearly two decades after independence. The borders between East and West Punjab, as well as those separating West Punjab from the emerging states of Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, continued to function as shifting sites of displacement, tension, and negotiation.

In the immediate aftermath of 1947, what remained of Punjab in India was far from a cohesive unit. Alongside partitioned East Punjab lay a mosaic of princely states—Patiala, Kapurthala, Jind, Nabha, Faridkot, Malerkotla, Kalsia, and Nalagarh—which federated in 1948 to form the Patiala and East Punjab States Union (PEPSU). The hill states of Chamba, Mandi, Suket, and Sirohi—known collectively as the Punjab Hill States or Shimla Hill States—were reorganised as Himachal Pradesh, though the Kangra Valley remained with Punjab. In 1956, PEPSU was merged with East Punjab, and finally, in 1966, these territories were reconstituted into the three states of Punjab, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh.

This prolonged and fragmented experience of reorganisation made Punjab a crucible in which questions of identity, belonging, and cultural reconstruction were especially urgent. Examining Punjab, therefore, provides a revealing lens through which to study how the practices of collecting shaped both the reimagining of community identity in the shadow of Partition and the province’s perceived place within the new nation of India.

The museum as a ‘process’ and role of individuals

To understand the place of museums in the years immediately following Partition, it is necessary to set aside contemporary associations of the museum as a neutral institution housing curated collections from a distant past. In 1947–49, the very idea of a “museum” was unsettled and provisional, shaped by political and cultural urgencies such as those outlined in the previous section. In this moment, museums cannot be conceived as fixed institutions; rather, they must be understood as processes involving acts of gathering, preserving, and displaying that were as much about nation-making as they were about cultural memory.

At the moment of independence, the central state’s first museum-building efforts were directed toward assembling a “national” collection. This collection sought to represent India’s civilisational depth, displaying art and archaeological heritage from antiquity through the medieval period rather than addressing the violence and dislocation of the recent past. Yet, as Venkateswaran has argued, it is precisely in the making of this “national” collection that one can find clues to an early understanding of both the museum and the nation. The museum did not only confer authority upon material objects—Harappan pottery, for instance, as evidence of an ancient and continuous civilisation—it also raised more fundamental questions, such as, what did it mean to collect in this new political and cultural moment? What compelled the Indian state, and Indian Punjab in particular, to collect? And equally, who was to undertake the task of collecting?

Individual actors played a critical role in shaping the museum in East Punjab. “The preservation of the relics of the past is an essential requirement of all civilized society and a museum thus is a primary cultural need of a progressive society… East Punjab must not lag behind,” wrote B. C. Mitra, formerly gallery assistant at the Cultural Museum, Lahore, and in 1948 officer on special duty for securing East Punjab’s share from the Lahore Museum. For Mitra, the necessity of a museum in East Punjab was self-evident; he devoted his energies instead to identifying potential sources that could “yield a collection of a fairly respectable size at a surprisingly low cost”. These included two broad categories: government sources—such as acquisitions under the Treasure Trove Act of 1878 (retained by independent India governing ownership of treasure found in the soil), reciprocal exchanges between India and Pakistan, surplus coins, and free copies of government publications—and private sources, through gifts or loans. By the end of 1949, East Punjab’s share of the Lahore Museum collections, along with records from the Central Records Office, had reached Amritsar, forming the nucleus of a future provincial museum.

The years that followed saw further institutional experimentation. Between 1950 and 1956, the “museum” and the Central Records Office were amalgamated into the Historical Records Office at Shimla, under the charge of G. L. Chopra. This umbrella institution exercised authority over paintings, coins, manuscripts, and records, fulfilling multiple functions simultaneously—museum, library, and archive. The definition of a museum in this period was therefore rudimentary, encompassing a broad range of collecting and curatorial practices that had yet to crystallise into distinct categories.

Not long after independence, collecting also acquired a more personal and aesthetic dimension, as illustrated by the activities of M. S. Randhawa and W. G. Archer, former Indian Civil Service officers who developed a friendship around their shared passion for “Pahari” painting from the Western Himalayas, often described (at this time) as the Punjab Hills. Through their active collecting and advocacy, both in India and abroad, they were instrumental in securing an exalted place for this art form in the emerging national and international canon.

To conceive of the museum in this transitional moment is therefore to view it not as a finished structure but as a process (and even a grand vision) of gathering and safeguarding material culture at a time when identities were fragile and the past was being actively rewritten.

Evacuee property and the politics of representation

The politics of representation is central to understanding the museum in this transitional moment. Who and what is represented—or excluded? Who decides what is said, and which objects are endowed with heritage value? In this sense, the museum can be seen not a neutral site of preservation but a field of power, shaped by assumptions about who has the authority to define the nation and to determine what counts as an “authentic” national story.

Closely related to these questions is the issue of evacuee property. The Evacuee Property Ordinance, promulgated on 18 October 1949, “effectively nationalised, at a stroke, all property vacated by Muslims in India… and authorised the use of such property for refugee rehabilitation or other ‘public purposes’”. While most scholarship on evacuee property focuses on immovable assets, such as houses and land, movable property—books, manuscripts, coins, artworks—was no less significant, and has featured in recent studies.

In Punjab, the Historical Records Office began acquiring such movable evacuee property: “a large quantity of historical material [books and manuscripts]” was selected “with a view to bringing a portion of it which might be suitable” and eliminating “on the spot” what was deemed irrelevant.

Chopra’s inspections led to a notice issued on 5 February 1947 (circulated to officials down to the district level), directing them to identify and report all items of historical interest in their custody within two weeks:

The Historical Records Office, East Punjab is interested in books, papers and other items of moveable property lying in evacuee stores that may be of historical importance. You may therefore, intimate immediately if you have some books and other such papers in your stores … to the office of the Historical Records, East Punjab, The Manse, Simla, so that a representative of the department may call at your office and inspect the books and the documents. Such of the books and documents that may be of interest to that department, may immediately be transferred to that department and in due course the valuation of the same will be done.

The instructions leave no ambiguity. This was a government-sponsored project, as confirmed by the file title in which the letter was archived: “Salvaging objects of historical interest from the belongings of Muslim evacuees throughout Punjab.”

Chopra also monitored press notices of auctions to ensure that his office was not deprived of coins and other artifacts—what he described as “safeguarding historical objects”. By the end of 1949, the Historical Records Office had amassed over half a million files and cases, 4,500 books, 400 manuscripts, 1,022 coins, and 100 other documents.

It is striking that such quantities of books and manuscripts were found among evacuee property. It seems implausible that fleeing refugees would have prioritised carrying books over jewellery or cash, or that looters would have targeted them. The rationale, however, was often emotional. In other words, for many, books and manuscripts were symbols of lineage, learning, or faith. Some were valuable first or only copies, occasionally illustrated, unlike the mass-produced printed works of today.

Yet, in being “salvaged”, such personal and intellectual possessions were absorbed into the state’s project of cultural reconstruction, stripped of their former ownership and context. Individual evacuees were rendered nameless and faceless, dehumanised in bureaucratic language that referred to their belongings as “evacuee dumps”. The irony is stark: evacuee—later, enemy—property formed the material foundation of national and regional identity.

Today, whether in the Holocaust Museum in Berlin or at the Auschwitz concentration camp, the emphasis lies on identifying, naming, and acknowledging individuals. In the early years of Partition, by contrast, the state’s collecting practices dispossessed and rendered countless evacuees nameless, with no conceivable mode of redress.

Other sources of acquisition

Private individuals in East Punjab, primarily Hindu and Sikh, possessed comparatively greater agency in determining the fate of their collections. Their names appear in official correspondence and inventories, and more importantly, they often received compensation for their contributions to the collective cultural effort.

To supplement official transfers, the government launched vigorous awareness campaigns urging citizens to recognise the value of historical materials in their possession. Advertisements were placed in leading newspapers, appealing to public sentiment and national pride. These efforts met with considerable success, bringing to the notice of the Historical Records Office numerous collections of books, manuscripts, paintings, and coins.

Chopra, writing on behalf of the department, actively pursued, persuaded, and negotiated with private individuals to loan or sell their materials. Template letters were issued to potential donors, such as the following:

I am directed to invite your very kind attention to a matter of our national concern. As you are aware the old Punjab Historical Records Office with its museum, situated in Anarkali’s Tomb has been left behind in Lahore. It is very doubtful if our East Punjab Government will get any share of the contents of that Archive, but our government have decided to build up de navo a historical archive in Simla worthy of our cultural heritage.

The letter went on to describe the “uphill task” this enterprise entailed, enumerating the types of material sought and appealing to the recipient’s “fine national and cultural sense”. Chopra expressed hope that those addressed would “appreciate the nature of the endeavour” and extend their “active help”, even if only by allowing copies to be made of their documents.

These exchanges reveal how, in the absence of established institutional infrastructure, museum- and archive-building depended as much on persuasion and civic appeal as on administrative decree. Collecting thus became not only a bureaucratic activity but also a participatory process of civic engagement, in which individual acts of donation and negotiation were recast as contributions to the making of the nation’s cultural heritage.

Why collect; and collecting in the circumstances

It is striking that the idea of building a historical archive remained on the agenda of the East Punjab government, despite the immense strain it faced in maintaining law and order, effecting partition, resolving countless disputes, and responding to the urgent needs of refugees. The division of assets between India and Pakistan and the desire to offset the material losses of partition are often cited as reasons for this initiative. Yet, more was at stake than restitution. The effort to collect was also about making sense of a new beginning and about constructing an identity for East Punjab out of the fragments left behind.

As Venkateswaran observes, the province’s need to establish its “civilisation credentials” was particularly acute given the international criticism directed at both India and Pakistan, and Punjab in particular, for the violence that accompanied partition. The impulse to counter this image by assembling proof of culture, by gathering objects that testified to a long and illustrious past, and by displaying them in a museum may well have driven many of those involved, even if only subconsciously.

What is equally remarkable is the scale and seriousness with which this was pursued. The East Punjab government’s efforts to consolidate historical material ran parallel to, and at times competed with, the administration’s overwhelming task of managing the refugee crisis. The desire for a deep and tangible past, anchored in objects, records, and relics, occupied both the imagination and machinery of the state. Collecting was, therefore, not only a cultural project but also an economic one. The infrastructural and financial commitment it entailed was immense. At a time when the provincial and national governments were spending millions on rehabilitation, a significant portion of funds and administrative energy was also channelled towards the acquisition of historical materials. Collecting far from being a peripheral concern, was hence a priority pursued with determination and purpose.

The urge to collect and archive can be understood in several ways. Museums offered a means to project continuity, depth, and civilisation for a region that had just been torn apart. Local dynamics, too, shaped this impulse. As A. Murphy notes, Sikh objects held layered meanings through which the past was experienced and verified, and history performed for a transnational community—religious, cultural, and political all at once. The rise of historical museums within gurdwaras reflected this sensibility, familiarising citizens with the idea that their heritage could and should be preserved and displayed.

For newly independent Indian citizens, especially those on the frontier, it was perhaps natural, in the wake of partition, to search for roots and belonging in an established past. Collecting thus became more than an act of preservation. It was a way of imagining East Punjab itself, that is, a material expression of citizenship, memory, and the desire for continuity after rupture.

Lessons from heritage and history

The story of museum-making in post-Partition East Punjab reveals that history and heritage are parallel or more often than not overlapping ways of engaging with the past. Both seek to make sense of what has been lost, to impose coherence on fragments, and to translate memory into meaning. However, where history often asks why and how things happened, heritage asks what must endure and how we choose to remember.

The years immediately following 1947 show how deeply intertwined these impulses could be. The state’s desire to collect was not simply about documentation. It was an act of repair, a means of asserting continuity in the wake of rupture. In this sense, collecting was both historical and heritage-making. The historian’s impulse to preserve evidence met the curator’s impulse to construct belonging. The result was a provisional but potent framework for imagining a shared cultural past, one that could ground a newly divided people in the language of civilization.

The challenge for scholars and practitioners alike lies in acknowledging this entanglement—treating history not as distant record, nor heritage as static inheritance, but both as evolving conversations through which societies continue to define who they are and how they came to be.

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Sanghera recounts how, in an attempt to take a break, he once travelled to Barbados for a beach holiday, only to find himself unable to stop thinking about how the island had been a ‘leading sugar colony and the jewel in the crown of England’s western empire’. It is a familiar affliction based on the inability to un-see history once you have learnt how to look.

I digress. Or perhaps not entirely.

***

When I decided to visit Delhi Art Gallery’s recent exhibition, The Indian Picturesque: Landscape Painting 1800–1850, I did what most historians do out of habit, I read about it first. What struck me immediately was its willingness to revisit the fraught relationship between colonial ‘ways of seeing’ and our own enduring aesthetic attraction to these images.

Postcolonial scholarship has long taught us to read British landscape painting in India as more than benign representation, but as a visual technology of empire. These works rendered land legible, mappable, and therefore, in a sense, ownable. They aestheticised the ‘Orient’ even as they participated in its control.

And yet, the exhibition poses a more uncomfortable question: why do these images still resonate?

Part of the answer, I suspect, lies in what they offer us—a version of the landscape stripped of the visual noise of the present. No concrete flyovers, no glass towers, no metro lines slicing through old neighbourhoods. What they present instead is a composed, harmonious world that aligns uncannily with our own aesthetic longing. To admit this is not to absolve their politics, but it does complicate them. It tempts us, however cautiously, to extend a certain ‘benefit of doubt’.

This tension deepens when we consider that the ‘picturesque’ (from the theme of the exhibition) was not merely a colonial imposition but also a circulating aesthetic. The landscape school that emerged in this period went on to influence Indian artists themselves, unsettling any easy reading of art as a one-directional tool of imperial control.

The exhibition leans into this ambiguity by returning to the eighteenth-century meaning of the term ‘picturesque’, literally, ‘like a picture’. Emerging in the 1790s, it referred not simply to beauty, but to a particular kind of visual harmony, that is, architecture nestled within a bewitching landscape, composed for the eye. It was, in effect, a way of seeing that would go on to shape painters, architects, and even landscape gardeners of the successive centuries.

But can such images, so entangled in the history of empire, really be granted the ‘benefit of doubt’?

I had to see for myself.

And what did I conclude? That I could not quite shake off the colonialism embedded in these works. If the landscapes invited a certain aesthetic generosity, the people within them resisted it. They appeared as rustic, simplified, and at times almost staged in their ‘backwardness’, quietly reinforcing the same visual logic that made the land seem available for intervention, even justifying, in subtle ways, the so-called ‘white man’s burden’ to civilise.

If anything, the exhibition left me exactly where it found me, caught between admiration and unease.

Perhaps that is the historian’s predicament: to recognise beauty, but never without its baggage; to look, but never innocently.

The picturesque, in the end, does not let us choose between aesthetic pleasure and political critique. It demands that we sit with both and accept that some ways of seeing can never be entirely unlearned.

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Tracing a lineage of Black dandyism, a movement where fashion became a statement of identity and resistance, it drew from Monica L. Miller’s Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity.

As the Met Museum’s official website elaborated, the theme:

… presents a cultural and historical examination of Black style over three hundred years through the concept of dandyism. In the 18th-century Atlantic world, a new culture of consumption, fueled by the slave trade, colonialism, and imperialism, enabled access to clothing and goods that indicated wealth, distinction, and taste. Black dandyism sprung from the intersection of African and European style traditions.

This exploration of ‘the importance of style to the formation of Black identities in the Atlantic diaspora’ prompted me to reflect on a resonant narrative: the embodiment of dandyism in colonial India. Central to this reflection is my research on the Mirzanamas, late-seventeenth century advice manuals outlining norms of ‘gentlemanly conduct’ for the ‘ideal man’, the mirza.

While I have previously written about the Mirzanamas’ classed and gendered articulations (see ‘Revisiting the Mirzanama: Class Consciousness and the Mughal Middle Classes’ and ‘The Politics of ‘Becoming’ a Mirza: Shifting Masculine Norms and Gender Binary in the Mughal Society’) there is a curious marginal note in the British Library (BL) manuscript that, especially in light of the Met Gala, deserves renewed attention.

A curious piece of colonial annotation suddenly brings the manuscript into conversation with the Met Gala. The BL Mirzanama bears a handwritten ‘subtitle’ referring to the text as a manual of ‘Manners of the Dandies’. It was added not by the author but by the anonymous collector in whose collection the manuscript probably existed and later found its way to the British Museum, which is now the British Library (see image below).

That scribble is revelatory, isn’t it? In my view, this annotation suggests a perceived alignment between Mughal etiquette and Victorian dandyism, a connection anchored in a shared attention to decorum, distinction and stylised masculinity. The Victorian period (c. 1837–1901) overlapped with the height of colonial rule in India, and this marginalia invites us to ask: What aspects of the Mirzanama mirrored the dandy ideals of Victorian Britain?

While the Oxford dictionary defines a dandy as ‘a man unduly concerned with looking stylish and fashionable’, perhaps Fanny Parkes, writing from colonial India between 1822 and 1846, offers a more revealing lens. In her journal, later published as Begums, Thugs and White Mughals (ed. William Dalrymple, 2002), she wrote in October 1834:

All natives, from the highest to the lowest, sport the moustache and pride themselves upon its blackness … The 16th Lancers, on their arrival in India, wore no moustache; after the lapse of many years, the order that allowed them the decoration arrived in India, and was hailed with delight by the whole corps. The natives regarded them with much greater respect in consequence, and the young dandis of Delhi could no longer twirl their moustaches and think themselves finer fellows than the lancers. As a warlike appendage it is absolutely necessary; a man without moustaches being reckoned na-mard, unmanly. A dandified native generally travels with a handkerchief bound under his chin and tied on the top of his turban, that the beauty and precision of his beard may not be disarranged on the journey.

How can one read that and not picture Indian performer Diljit Dosanjh’s now-iconic Met Gala look: turban, tailored suit and the quiet confidence of someone who understands that style is never just aesthetic but an identity?

Nevertheless, in this discussion, the Mirzanama’s middle-class associations are crucial, considering that the rise of the Victorian dandy has been attributed to the growth of industrialisation, giving birth to a middling class of gentlemen, a point made by James Eli Adams in Dandies and Desert Saints: Styles of Victorian Manhood (1995).

According to Adams, the dandy was a mimicry of aristocratic life and therefore, an early mark of its decline, as those of “humbler origins” found in dandyism a mode of self-fashioning meant to attract the public gaze. But, in my opinion, the Mirzanama also complicates this picture. Its emphasis on grace, polish and moral cultivation speaks to an emergent Mughal middling masculinity that, like the Victorian dandy, was both aspirational and more importantly, ambivalent.

After all the Mirzanama states:

[A mirza] should avoid the company of such [self-proclaimed], self-opinionated, bastard mirzas who tie their turbans with great delicateness, who talk with the movement of head or with the gestures of body or of eyebrows, who are over-emphatic in speech … who turn away with affected delicacy from whatever is invigorating, who do not clean their teeth without looking in the mirror, who clad themselves in the single layer of a thin and transparent upper garment and wear trousers of satin and khamkhab (many-coloured, embroidered cloth), and who have the habit of eating pan frequently and blackening their teeth with missi [a black powder].

As I have argued in ‘The Politics of ‘Becoming’ a Mirza’, ‘[t]hat such mannerism was being associated with what was thought of as essentially feminine is clear from the statement that follows the above quote’:

Mirzahood is to be mirza-khan or mirza-beg; not to be mirzada-begum or mirzada-khanum.

Thus, it is imperative to give due attention to the Mirzanama’s gendered aspects, particularly the ideas of the gender binary and consequently effeminacy, as in Victorian imagination, the dandy was also often viewed as an emblem of idle, aestheticised masculinity, even effeminacy. This is interesting in the context whereby in the Met Gala, women were overwhelmingly seen in tailored suits, creatively re-imagined versions of the traditional “men’s wear”.

Anyway, as Adams notes again in his essay ‘Dandyism and Late Victorian Masculinity’ (in Oscar Wilde in Context, ed. Powell and Raby, 2013), the dandy could subvert or uphold the gender binary. And as Mrinalini Sinha has shown in Colonial Masculinity: The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the ‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the Late Nineteenth Century (1995) and her 1999 essay ‘Giving Masculinity a History: Some Contributions from the Historiography of Colonial India’, British colonial discourse often cast Indian men as effeminate in contrast to the “manly Englishman”. In that light, the Mirzanama becomes not just a text about manners. It is a map of contested masculinity and one that fed both colonial fantasies and indigenous negotiations of gendered respectability.

Additionally, in the context of Victorian dandyism, one immediately thinks of Oscar Wilde and his experiments with performative ‘dandy-ness’ including aspects such as costume, speech, bodily actions and literary aspirations. What Wilde did was to embrace the stigma of effeminacy based on the affiliation of a dandy with the traditionally considered feminine characteristics of excessive concern with external regard. This was perhaps a bit more provocative with consequences such as ‘suspicions of his “effeminacy” became more pointedly associated with homosexuality’.

On the other hand and quite similarly, the Mirzanama reflects Mughal middle classes navigating their own codes of masculinity and comportment. The manuscript’s emphasis on grace, eloquence and presentation, not to mention literary refinement, parallels the dandy’s pursuit of elegance as a form of self-definition. Both figures navigate the fine line between visibility and vulnerability. If the Victorian dandy was suspect because of his polish, the mirza of the Mirzanama risked being feminised for his refinement.

And that is what I find striking: how the dandy, in both worlds, becomes a figure of contradiction, elegant yet suspect, admired yet mocked, both a spectacle and a strategy.

So when I saw the 2025 Met Gala invite the world to rethink the dandy as diasporic, defiant and stylishly subversive, I could not help but return to this Mughal manuscript with its colonial footnote. Fashion, after all, doesn’t just dress bodies and style has always been about more than just looking good. It is about being seen, especially, on your own terms.

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This is not my first bollywood-history essay. A while ago I wrote a very satisfying one titled What do two microhistories and one bollywood film have in common? and even a fun poem, Sweet nothings between two historians. Clearly, films keep opening little historical trapdoors in my mind, and I keep falling through them with great joy.

Recently, while revisiting the medieval Indian history classic M. Athar Ali’s Mughal India: Studies in Polity, Ideas, Society and Culture (2006), a short chapter on ‘Nobility under Muhammad Tughluq’ unexpectedly brought me back to a dialogue from Shah Rukh Khan’s Chak De! India (2007). The film, as everyone knows, is a sports drama about Kabir Khan, a disgraced former hockey star seeking redemption by coaching a women’s national team to international victory.

In one memorable scene (memorable at the least to this historian in me), senior player Bindiya Naik, irritated by Kabir Khan’s sternness and his choice of a younger player as captain, snaps (in rough translation from Hindi): ‘Have you heard of Muhammad bin Tughluq? He was that mad emperor who replaced gold coins with copper ones’. A classic bollywood historical reference and who among us doesn’t have a weakness for those?

But that throwaway line got me thinking. Why is Muhammad bin Tughluq (r. 1325–51) such a touchstone of ‘madness’? Why does his name so easily stand in for erratic leadership?

Athar Ali calls him ‘a controversial figure’, someone described by contemporary chroniclers with phrases like ‘devilish hypocrisy’ or ‘a genius seeking pleasure in human distress’. Modern historians, of course, have been more cautious, insisting that one must read his policies in terms of ‘the requirements of the actual situation rather than in primitive psycho-analysis’.

Under Muhammad bin Tughluq, the Delhi Sultanate reached both its largest territorial extent and its deepest administrative crisis. The crisis, Ali argues, had its roots in bureaucratic factionalism: an elitist bureaucracy, not at all loyal to the Sultan, and certainly not bound to his vision of a reorganised state. In fact, chronicler Ziyauddin Barani, who was himself part of this very elite faction, complained almost bitterly about the ‘intransigence of officers’ who suddenly appeared to dominate the closing years of the Sultan’s reign.

Well, to give him the benefit of the doubt, Muhammad bin Tughluq did inherit a bureaucracy that did not trust him, and that he, in turn, did not trust. His response? Fill high offices with his favourites, many of them former slaves, Hindu converts and men of relatively humble origin. Barani records (with a tinge of horror, of course) that although the Sultan publicly denounced ‘men of low birth’, he appointed large numbers of them to influential posts. Add to this the wide-open door he kept for Persian and Central Asian immigrants, and we begin to see a pattern.

Ali suggests that this policy was not merely eccentricity, though that is the popular interpretation. It was a deliberate attempt to create a heterogeneous bureaucracy, one that was dependent on the Sultan, unrooted in old oligarchies and capable of reshaping the state’s political culture. If this sounds familiar, it should. It is precisely the kind of composite polity that would later be perfected under Mughal ruler Akbar, and to what much of his success is attributed.

And suddenly, the Chak De! reference doesn’t feel so random anymore. Kabir Khan, after all, builds a composite team. The film goes out of its way to show the federation of differences with women players from Haryana, Chandigarh, Jharkhand, Manipur, Mizoram, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh and beyond. They bring with them their accents, tempers, insecurities and pride. The older players, like Bindiya Naik, feel alienated and the younger ones, often from smaller towns or marginalised regions, are elevated. What the selectors see as chaos, Kabir Khan sees as possibility. It is a modern, fictional—and successful, one might add—experiment in heterogeneity.

Tughluq’s experiment was real, risky and historically overdetermined. Kabir Khan’s is fictional, cinematic and ultimately redemptive. But both men, separated by centuries and worlds of context, pursue a somewhat similar vision, that is, diversification of ranks. The difference is that Chak De! gives us a triumphant ending, while history gives us a collapse that later chroniclers happily pinned on the Sultan’s ‘madness’.

Now, let me linger briefly on the name Kabir Khan. This is where the historian in me refuses to let anything slide. Kabir, the name, comes from the fifteenth-century mystic poet Kabir, beloved across India for his refusal to be categorised. He rejected religious binaries and composed verses that insist on the ultimate sameness of Hindu and Muslim devotional universes. He wrote:

Hindus call Him Ram, Muslims Khuda.

Says Kabir, Whoever lives,

never bothers with this duality—

Ka‘bah then becomes Kashi, Ram becomes Rahim.

Moreover, when Kabir died, both Hindus and Muslims claimed him as their own.

And then, of course, there is Shah Rukh Khan’s Kabir Khan played by an actor who himself occupies an unusually capacious place in India’s cultural imagination. SRK is one of those rare figures claimed, loved, defended and celebrated across communities. Much like the saint Kabir, he becomes a shared emotional vocabulary.

So what do Muhammad bin Tughluq and Kabir Khan have in common? More than a scriptwriter’s joke, it turns out. Both—one historical, one fictional—attempted to build new orders out of heterogeneity and in response, were judged, in their own ways, through the anxieties of their times.

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In the concluding pages of the saga of the Mughals, the fate of the descendants of Bahadur Shah Zafar (r. 1837–57), the last Mughal emperor, is a subject deserving more historical attention than it has so far received. One could perhaps count Rana Safvi’s translation of Khawaja Hasan Nizami’s Begumat ke Aansoon as a contributing work. There is perhaps no better way to draw this attention than through critically analysing a late nineteenth-century account left by a displaced prince himself. Titled Sawanih-i Dehli, literally, the occurrences in the city of Delhi, the work was first published in Urdu at Dariba Kalan, Delhi, as a nine and a half into six and a half sized book. Its fifty pages, as its original title page claims, record ‘all the tragedies of Delhi (now decayed, forgotten, or buried in time)/Dehlī ke tamām saniḥat-i (karam-ḵẖurda) darj hain’. It is authored by Prince Mirza Ahmed Akhtar Gorgani, the eldest son of Mirza Dara Bakht, the crown prince of Bahadur Shah Zafar.

Dwelling in the town of Kairana, in the district of Muzaffarnagar (in present Uttar Pradesh), the displaced prince declared that his motivation for the composition of the account was to make his sons, Muhammad Shah, Mahmud Shah, and Masud Shah, ‘aware’ (āgāhī) of certain events associated with the city of Delhi as it became the seat of power under various monarchies. The explicit impulse seems to be, therefore, information as well as edification. As far as the period of its composition is concerned, the year mentioned on the title page is illegible. However, from the text itself, we learn that it may have been composed during Lord Lansdowne’s term of office as the Viceroy of India. Ahmed Akhtar recorded that Lord Lansdowne took over as Viceroy in 1888, a position he occupied till Akhtar’s own time. While Lansdowne held the Viceroyalty from 1888 to 1894, another reference from the text suggests that it may, in fact, have been committed to paper in the last year of his office. In the words of Akhtar, by his time, the British government had successfully tested the loyalty of the Mughal royal family for thirty-seven years after the ‘mutiny’ (g̠adr) of 1857. Hence, one can argue that it was in the year 1894 that Akhtar, ‘the unworthy, destitute, and wandering soul’ (na-kāra khānamān āwāra tehrīr), concocted his work on Delhi’s past and present (māẓī wa ḥāl).

With Sawanih-i Dehli as the primary source for reconstruction, this essay is a study of a modest literary legacy left by a displaced Mughal prince for his sons. The source having been already introduced, the essay concentrates on the various themes that emerge from the text itself before returning to the central research theme: what may have been the implicit motivation for its composition? The focus is not so much on the historical accuracies and inaccuracies of the text. However, some of the inaccuracies have been pointed out and other details have been elaborated upon wherever appropriate. In the context of the star of the Mughal empire having already waned, the essay’s purpose is to highlight the greater significance of Akhtar’s account in understanding the fate, but more importantly, the psyche of the later Mughal descendants.

The empire and the city

Ahmed Akhtar presented a chronological description of the evolution of the city of Delhi. As we shall see, the evolution is traced in terms of its ruling monarchy with power changing hands frequently. At the same time, Akhtar recorded historical facts concerning the various names given to the city, at different times, and certain modifications introduced in its urban archaeological fabric.

Right from the beginning, the holiness of the city of Delhi, as per Hindu mythology, has been recognised. Citing chronicles which were supposedly scribed by ‘ancient Indian historians’ (qadīm muʼarriḵẖīn hind), Akhtar acknowledged that the city was believed to be the abode of Gods. Thus, Delhi could be counted among the major pilgrimage centres of India (Hindustan), alongside Benaras, Allahabad, and Haridwar. For centuries, both living and dying in Delhi were seen as acts of spiritual merit. It was believed that the site where the Hindu sage Vishwamitra once lived, meditated, and worshipped lay just a few miles from the city. Formerly known as Prabhaskund, this site was, by Akhtar’s time, widely recognised as Surajkund, with the surrounding settlement called Sohna, meaning ‘lovely’. Eventually, the city came to be known as Indraprastha, named after the Hindu deity Lord Indra, as it was believed to be the sacred location where Indra, along with other gods, had once celebrated an event called rahas, a festivity associated with joy and revelry.

At a certain point in time, the city came to be known as Delhi, a name said to mean ‘heart-touching’. One tradition attributes the name to a ruler named Raja Dalpal, while another suggests it was derived from dal-dal, meaning marshland. However, as Akhtar notes, the city was actually located on a hilly terrain, making the marshland explanation seem improbable. Here the author may have been referring to the epic-Puranic king, Dilipa. As Upinder Singh observes, writers from later periods often sought to legitimise historical figures and locations by linking them to the epic-Puranic tradition. One such instance was the association of king Dilipa with legends recorded in medieval texts which wove narratives about the origins of Delhi’s name. Thus, sifting through the legends associated with the city’s name to arrive at the facts, Akhtar believed, was nearly impossible. Nevertheless, he praised the city as a place worthy of respect and reinforced his view by citing the Mahabharata, which recounts that the Pandavas moved their capital from Hastinapur to Delhi. Again, Singh emphasises the long-standing belief that Delhi, particularly the site of Purana Qila, corresponds to ancient Indraprastha, the capital of the Pandavas in the Mahabharata.

On the question of the city’s age, according to Akhtar, an attempt to ascertain that should take into consideration the many buildings that continue to tower over its landscape, in addition to the ruins of several others. The fort is often the central point of reference for any pre-modern city. Therefore, unsurprisingly, the author turned the readers’ attention to it. He recorded that during the days of the ‘Hindu rulers’, the old fort used to be called Inderpat. In this context the views of K. A. Nizami hold relevance as he notes that excavations near Purana Qila, located just outside Old Delhi, provide substantial evidence of the city’s antiquity. Based on archaeological assessments, the remains discovered at the site are linked to the ancient city of Indraprastha, which is believed to have existed around 1000 BCE. Furthermore, Persian historical records also refer to this settlement as Inderpat. This suggests that not only the fort but the entire city of Indraprastha was recognised by this name in certain historical traditions. According to Akhtar, it acquired the name of Shergarh during the period of Sher Shah (r. 1540–45) but was renamed Dinpanah in the reign of Humayun (r. 1530–40; 1555–56). Here once again, the author seems to have confused the names of the city, Shergah and Din Panah, with the names given to the fort. Across epochs, the fort, or more appropriately, the city was, therefore, given different names.

Among various contributions to the urban archaeological fabric of the city, Akhtar recognised that of emperor Ashoka. The author seems to be struggling to record the city’s authentic history in this period, and on this he remarked that authoritative records are unavailable. Thus, he looked at the period as somewhat ‘a dark age’ (tārīḵẖ-i hind ki tārik ḥālat), marked by non-availability of historical records but went on to say that still ‘some history books’ (kitāb-i tārīḵẖ) did confirm that long after the Pandavas and Kauravas, under the rule of Raja Anagpal, the construction of a fort as well as a city surrounding it was undertaken. He further recorded that in Prithviraj’s time not just a fort but also a palace and an orchard were built, along with other buildings meant for leisure. The remains of these additions to the urban fabric of the city were extant in the times of Akhtar himself, scattered in the village of Mehrauli. He also claimed that Prithviraj’s palace and his place of worship had also endured. Interestingly, he noted that, according to a few historians, it was Prithviraj who constructed the first storey of the Qutub Minar, supposedly to carry out his daily sun-worship ritual before having his first meal of the day. However, in the absence of concrete historical records, the author placed these claims in the realm of conjecture.

One could pause and reflect on Akhtar’s treatment of the history of the city of Delhi under those whom he sweepingly called ‘the Maharajas of Delhi’. His attitude was marked neither by hate nor indifference, even when he mentioned the rituals observed by Prithviraj. In fact, he seemed open to accepting, though only if it was historically verifiable, that it may have been Prithviraj who began work on the famous Qutub Minar, constructed during what has been conventionally called ‘the Islamic period of history’. Sectarianism was, in fact, rarely a part of the Mughal psyche. The only thing he found somewhat ironic is that the history of this period was not well documented. The irony, one could judge, may have been in the fact that there was, in comparison, no dearth of mythological accounts, some of which the author alluded to as his sources of knowledge.

Akhtar’s ascription of some facts to ‘ancient chronicles’, or the accounts of ‘old Indian historians’, or ‘some history books’, or ‘several historians’, reveals his acute awareness of, and the importance attached by him to, a sense of history. It was this sense of history that, according to his account, marks the departure from ‘Hindu rule’ to the advent of Islam in India. He wrote that it is only after Islam came to India that detailed historical accounts became available. It was also this sense of history that he had inherited, and perhaps, one can safely assume, in writing Sawanih-i Dehli he wanted to pass on the same to his sons. Information, as well as edification, as a direct motive, thus, becomes even more apparent.

Returning to the city’s evolution after the advent of Islam in India, Akhtar first highlighted the contributions made by Iltutmish (r. 1210–36), ‘the slave’ (g̠ulām) of Qutbuddin Aibak. His remarks on the personalities of the various rulers of the Delhi Sultanate, in addition to their monarchical achievements, hold significance. The implications would make themselves apparent when we shall later compare them to his commentary (or lack of it) on his own ancestors, the Mughals. But first, according to Akhtar, Iltutmish made ‘earnest efforts for the welfare of his subjects and launched campaigns to further expand and strengthen the newly established empire’ (āsāyish-i raʻāyā aur fataḥ-i mamālik mein koshish-i mawfūr kī). He was the one who constructed the Qutub Minar, naming it in honor of his mentor, Qutbuddin Aibak.

The author viewed the reign of Nasiruddin Mahmud (r. 1246–65) as a time of general prosperity for the people, largely due to the effective administration of his wise and capable minister, Ghiyasuddin Balban. Balban (r. 1266–87), he noted, brought order to the entire state and significantly improved conditions in Delhi. He also gave the city a new name, Marzghan. Additionally, during this time, numerous princes and deposed rulers from Central Asia, fleeing the Mongol threat, arrived in Delhi seeking asylum. Under Balban’s supervision, they were resettled in various parts of the city. Dedicated localities and colonies were established for them, often named after their ethnic or regional identities. Furthermore, during the reign of Kaiqubad (r. 1287–90), a grand and expansive new city named Kilokheri was established on the banks of the Yamuna River.

After the Sultanate came under the control of the Khaljis, the first ruler of the dynasty, Jalaluddin Khalji (r. 1290–96), delegated the responsibilities of governance to his nephew Alauddin Khalji (r. 1296–1316) and withdrew into a life of comfort and indulgence. However, his contribution to resurrecting the deserted city built by Kaiqubad and renaming it Kaushak Mahal has been recorded. He also built a grand fort and palace, naming it Kaushak-i Sabz. But, like his uncle, he was given to debauchery and spent his time in dalliance with his beloved Koladevi Rani, according to Akhtar. Akhtar also derisively referred to Allaudin’s son Khizr Khan as someone who idled away his time with his cherished companion Deval Rani. The overall result was a combination of mismanagement and moral decay that led to the downfall of the Khalji dynasty and cleared the path for the rise of the Tughlaq dynasty.

Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq (r. 1321–24) has been credited with the foundation of the city of Tughlaqabad, with his son and successor Muhammad Bin Tughlaq (r. 1324–51) having completed the construction of its imposing fort. Muhammad Bin also built a magnificent palace with a thousand pillars and many other buildings. Akhtar added that the city eventually ‘fell casualty to the vicissitudes of time’ (gardish-i zamāne se wo shahr tohmata gaya). Yet, during his lifetime, the fort of Tughlaqabad remained standing, albeit in a dilapidated condition, as a somber testament to the relentless effects of time. Firuz Shah Tughlaq (r. 1351–88) earned acclaim for fostering economic growth and abundance, along with implementing various measures to support and advance art and culture. The city of Firuzabad was founded during his reign. The author also noted that during his reign, the iconic pillar now known as the Ashokan pillar was brought from central India (in fact, present-day Haryana) and erected near the city. Alongside it, an impressive mansion was constructed to enclose the pillar, along with a magnificent mosque. Among other rulers of the Delhi Sultanate, Sayyid Mubarak Shah (r. 1421–34) has been mentioned for having built a fort, giving the city the name of Mubarakabad.

The first Lodi Sultan, Bahlul Lodi (r. 1451–89), found mention in connection with his efforts to preserve Delhi’s grandeur by keeping it as his capital. However, when his son and successor, Sikandar Lodi (r. 1489–1517), shifted the capital to Agra, Delhi lost its esteemed status. Akhtar portrayed Ibrahim Lodi (r. 1517–26) as a harsh and oppressive ruler, which prompted the governor of Lahore, Daulat Khan, to invite Zahiruddin Babur to launch an invasion of India. For his ancestor Babur, he wrote that he was the one who broke through the ranks of Ibrahim Lodi’s army at the Battle of Panipat (in present-day Haryana). With the establishment of the empire, Mughal authority spread extensively, a new currency was introduced, and a proclamation (ḵẖut̤ba) was issued declaring that the new emperor, Babur, had arrived to govern India. Poetically, it was documented in history in these (Persian) words:

Zahīr al-Dīn Muḥammad Shāh Bābur,

Sikandar-dawlat o Bahrām-ṣawlat,

Ba-dawlat kard fataḥ kishwar-i Hind;

Ki tārīkh āmadash ‘Fataḥ-ba-Dawlat’.

Zahīr al-Dīn Muḥammad Shāh Bābur,

Alexander in sovereignty, Bahrām in martial prowess,

By the grace of fortune, he conquered the land of Hind;

The chronogram of his arrival reads: ‘Victory with Fortune’.

True, the description of the foundation of the Mughal empire is punctuated with a verse, evoking together two emblematic figures of power and conquest, yet it seems celebratory only in a restricted sense. The briefness with which Akhtar discussed his ancestors becomes even more pronounced in the case of Humayun. In a matter-of-fact manner, he wrote that Humayun ascended the throne with Agra as his capital, but Delhi continued to retain its glory and prominence. From here, he then swiftly shifted focus to Sher Shah, who established Delhi as his capital and reconstructed the old fort, giving it the name Shergarh. Sher Shah’s son, Salim Shah, built a strong citadel naming it Salimgarh, and other structures built by him include a step-well (bāʼolī) and a mosque at Lahori Gate. After re-establishing his rule, Humayun introduced certain reforms—though Akhtar did not delve into their details—and improved the appearance of the fort, bestowing upon it the grand name Dinpanah. Following his untimely death within a year, the young Akbar ascended the throne at Kalanaur (in present-day Haryana). After defeating Hemu’s forces at the Battle of Panipat, Akbar effectively eliminated the remaining Afghan power. However, Akbar preferred Agra to be his capital. Peculiarly, Jahangir has not been mentioned at this point in the text. The spotlight moved on to Shah Jahan, who began restoring Delhi’s former glory, but only in the twelfth year of his reign. Akhtar aptly noted that he essentially rebuilt the city’s foundations.

The period of the early Mughal monarchs is hence dealt with rather hastily, with Jahangir not finding even a single mention. One can perhaps argue that since Akhtar in this part of his account was focusing only on the evolutionary development of the city of Delhi, the shift of capital to Agra during the reign of Akbar justifies the abridgement. However, the argument is contradicted when compared to a more detailed chronology as we find in the case of the Delhi sultans with their virtues and vices, achievements and failures, recorded with much meticulousness. The possible reasons for this shall be further discussed in the next section. Here it suffices to highlight how the Mughal contributions are summarised conclusively in a line: several Mughal emperors had established grand towns and cities across the empire, each marked by exceptional distinction and architectural brilliance.

Proceeding with the chronology, Akhtar documented that under Shah Jahan, the construction of the majestic fort (Red Fort) was undertaken, which, along with a new city complex, took ten years of tireless labour and titanic amounts of money to be completed. The city, however, remained unprotected and imperfect without a boundary wall, which was soon built. According to Akhtar, the boundary wall was built in the year 1650, with bricks and mortar, at an expenditure of rupees one lakh and fifty thousand. However, it soon collapsed during the rainy season. In the year 1651, a sturdy wall of solid stone and rock, which was 6610 yards long, four yards wide, and nine yards high, replaced it at a cost of rupees three lakh and fifty thousand. It featured twelve gates, four large windows, fifty-six watchtowers, and 168 ramparts and fortresses, providing ample defense positions for troops to guard against any potential enemy attack. By Akhtar’s time, many of the gates and windows had vanished and only a few survived. Leaving aside the chronology for a moment, Akhtar mentioned that Calcutta Gate, the one built by the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, remained standing.

Describing Nehr-i Faiz, a canal located in the pargana (a Mughal administrative unit) of Safedun and originally developed during Firuz Shah’s reign, Akhtar noted that it was later lengthened under Akbar’s orders with Shahabuddin, one of his key officials in Delhi, overseeing the project, and renamed Nahr-i Shahab. However, it soon fell into disuse before another chief, Ali Mardan Khan, hoping to win Shah Jahan’s favour, carried out extensive repairs to it. The canal was eventually extended to flow through the palaces and into the Hayat Baksh Bagh, the garden located within the fort. Its remains were visible during Akhtar’s times, though its water did not flow through the channels of the fort anymore.

Aurangzeb, wrote the author, pushed the expansion of the capital city of Delhi and, by constructing new buildings, added to its endless charm. Owing to the magnetism that the city possessed, there occurred a large influx of people from various provinces. As a result, the splendour of the city magnified manifold. After spelling out the evolution of the city during the reigns of various Mughals, up till Aurangzeb’s rule—except a line mentioning the construction of Calcutta Gate by Bahadur Shah—the narration returned to the author’s own time. More significantly, a tone of decline set in. Akhtar wrote that the city that was the pride of the world and challenged the beauty of paradise fell victim to the vicissitudes of time.

Delhi’s decline has been attributed to a combination of foreign invasions, notably by Nadir Shah and Ahmed Shah Abdali, as well as internal conflicts and power struggles. According to Akhtar, this, along with the destruction wrought by the Marathas, ultimately led to the tragic events of 1857. Citing the 1891 census, he noted that the city’s devastation was reflected in its population shrinking from two million to fewer than two hundred thousand. Despite this, Delhi retained its charm and grandeur, continuing to captivate people who were willing to risk anything for just a glimpse of it. Its magnificent reputation remained deeply etched in the collective memory of the people. Akhtar also observed that the city regularly attracted numerous archaeology enthusiasts, alongside a steady stream of historians and scholars.

In the words of Akhtar, fitting Delhi’s esteemed reputation, Lord Lytton, the Viceroy from 1876 to 1880, held the grand court (darbar) in the city in 1877. The event marked the assumption of the title of Qaisar-i Hind (the Caesar of India) by ‘Her Majesty’ Queen Victoria. The account intelligibly takes pro-British overtones by mentioning that the rulers and dukes of various states were ‘honoured’ by being invited to attend the magnificent court. In such nuances of the text lie the author’s implicit motivations that may have urged him to compose the text, a theme we shall soon return to.

Before going ahead, one can conclusively argue that Akhtar’s biographical account of the city of Delhi is defined by the rise and fall of various monarchies. The history of the city’s evolution is woven inextricably with a chronological narration of monarchical rule, extending from the most ancient of times to his own ancestry. Besides, the narrative is interspersed with observations on changes in Delhi’s urban fabric, in terms of buildings constructed and renovations undertaken, for instance, with regard to its water resources and gardens. Thus, it can be said that the city has been understood predominantly in terms of it being a seat of power.

Lineage and patronage

As mentioned in the last section, Ahmed Akhtar’s account seems to be relatively brief regarding his lineage, the Mughals. While the foundation of the Mughal empire by Babur has been treated commemorative-ly only in a minimal manner, Humayun’s period was dealt with hurriedly by explaining his conflict with Sher Shah and the subsequent re-establishment of the empire in a few lines. We find no portrayal of Babur or Humayun comparative to that of Iltutmish. ‘Certain reforms’ by Humayun, which may probably have been in relation to architecture, have been alluded to but not elaborated on, creating a sharp contrast with Iltutmish’s numerous welfare schemes introduced for his subjects and campaigns undertaken to expand and consolidate his empire. It can be argued that the reign of Babur and Humayun were short, with Humayun’s reign characterised primarily by instability. A retrospective comparison to Iltutmish’s regnal achievements, thus, seems far-fetched. However, contrary to expectations, even Akbar’s reign did not receive any glorification when compared to that of Iltutmish or Firuz Shah. So much so, Jahangir did not even find mention. Certainly, Shah Jahan’s contributions have been highlighted in a more detailed manner. However, post-Aurangzeb the story became one of decline, of both the city and the empire, linked intricately, as already mentioned.

The author, of course, traced his lineage to Amir Timur, whom he called ‘the lord of the auspicious conjunction and the gracious ancestor of the Mughals’ (ṣāḥib qirān, jadd-i buzurg), who arrived in the city of Delhi during the reign of Mahmud Tughlaq. Although he successfully conquered it, he chose not to remain there, instead appointing Malik Mardan to govern in his stead. A tendency to not indulge in excessive ornamentation while discussing his lineage continued to define Akhtar’s narrative, even when he presented a separate account of the ‘Islamic monarchs’.

Akhtar recorded that following his victory at the Battle of Panipat, Babur entered Delhi in triumph. As the new emperor, he bestowed titles and honours upon members of the nobility. He then instructed Prince Humayun to proceed to Akbarabad (Agra) to manage affairs there. In Agra, Humayun encountered the family of Ibrahim Lodi, including his wife and two sons. Babur ensured their welfare by allocating an annual pension of seven lakhs of rupees for their maintenance. Five years later, upon Babur’s passing, Humayun ascended the throne. However, destiny had other plans, and he was soon confronted by the formidable challenge posed by Sher Shah. Once again, the text offered a brief account of their confrontation before noting that, in due course, the tide turned and Humayun regained control over his lost dominions. The foundation of the Mughal empire having thus been traced, Akhtar chose not to discuss the reigns of either Akbar or Jahangir. Having already discussed Shah Jahan’s reign, even though restrictively in terms of the role he played in according high status to the city of Delhi, the author added a somewhat general statement summarising Mughal achievements. According to him, the Mughal dynasty founded by Babur ruled for many centuries, and the grand structures erected by this Timurid-Chagatai line stood as remarkable monuments, reflecting the immense wealth and refinement of their patrons.

Furthermore, the dynasty has been bound in a single thread of continuity with the help of a popular tale concerning the Mughal ancestor Timur and the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah. Akhtar brought to light a strange coincidence. By a twist of fate, both Timur and Bahadur Shah were born on the same date, the former just before dawn and the latter after dusk. Furthermore, Timur had a son named Shahrukh Mirza, while Mirza Shahrukh was also the name given to one of Bahadur Shah’s sons. This not being all, he added that the crown princes of both the patriarch and the last emperor were also namesakes. Hence, we had Jalaluddin Miran Shah in the case of Timur and Mirza Dara Bakht Miran Shah in Bahadur Shah’s case.

In these few words, Akhtar condensed the glorious Mughal dynasty, of which he was a surviving descendant. One is forced to ask what led to such an abridgement. As mentioned in the last section, the text already had pro-British undertones. The synopsising was indeed then a safety measure necessitated by the fact that already in his lifetime the author had witnessed the British becoming the real masters of the subcontinent, and the Mughal monarchy being abolished. Hence, Akhtar understandably could not afford either the glorification of his dynasty or bejewelling his ancestors’ biographical details. He reserved his admiration instead for the British under whose governance, he wrote, there prevailed peace and tranquillity; both the safety and liberty of the people were preserved; their rule was just, leaving their subjects happy and contented.

We get another glimpse of Akhtar’s reflections on his lineage in the section on ‘the decline and ruin of Delhi’. He started from the period of Shah Jahan, who was once again credited with breathing new life into Delhi by declaring it his seat of power. As a consequence, numerous princes and distinguished nobles chose to settle in the city. Alongside them, a host of intellectuals, literary figures, and scholars contributed to shaping Delhi into a capital admired across the world. However, this atmosphere of brilliance gradually gave way to decline with Aurangzeb’s accession. His preoccupation with military campaigns in the Deccan diverted attention and resources, leading to a noticeable decline in Delhi’s former splendour. Widespread factionalism among the nobility and its role in the weakening of the very fabric of the empire has been recognised. In the end, both the city and the once-mighty empire failed to recover their former grandeur. Rulers such as Rafi ud Darajat (r. Feb 1719–June 1719) and Rafi ud Daula, also known as Shah Jahan II (r. June 1719–Sep 1719), occupied the throne only briefly, and even then, their rule was nominal. Akhtar did not acknowledge them as true emperors, viewing them instead as mere shadows of royalty.

Describing the rule of Muhammad Shah (r. 1719–48), Akhtar dismissively commented on his personality as of ‘vivacious disposition’ (raṅgīli t̤abʻīyat). One wonders why he chose to highlight the negative while ignoring the formidable personalities of his other ancestors whose achievements he must have been well aware of. Was he setting the stage for a narrative justifying the British occupation of India? Perhaps, yes. He wrote that a period of deceptive calm prevailed for some time before the invasions of Nadir Shah and Ahmed Shah brought about the downfall of both the Mughals and the city of Delhi. Under Shah Alam II (r. 1760–1806), the Marathas under the leadership of Mahadji Sindia (r. 1761–1794) grasped control.

According to Akhtar, although Sindia was working in association with Shah Alam II, the author believed the virtual Maratha authority to be ‘a storm of calamity’ (t̤ūfān muṣībat). In validating the English occupation, the author portrayed Lieutenant General Gerard Lake as a liberator who freed the emperor from Maratha control and allowed him to retain the ceremonial title of monarch. Therefore, in September 1803, after Sindia’s troops were defeated in the battle of Patparganj (located on the outskirts of Delhi), the East India Company took over both the administration of the city and the management of imperial affairs. Shah Alam was restored as the nominal ruler. On the surface, imperial authority appeared intact: the emperor retained possession of the fort, continued to bestow honours and titles, received feudal lords at court, maintained the circulation of royal currency in the provinces, and accepted tributes and gifts from across the realm. Although this authority was largely symbolic, the author viewed it as offering a semblance of continuity and dignity. Our protagonist’s account of the battle seems to be in tune with colonial historiography, which as pointed out by Amar Farooqui glorified the event to such an extent that not only was its historical significance exaggerated but it eulogised the Company as a saviour, ‘welcomed with open arms by Shah Alam who … was eager to be rid of Sindia’s officials’.

Nevertheless, soon Shah Alam became a pensioner of the English, receiving what was contentiously called peshkash. In accordance with the scheme of payments established by Lieutenant Colonel Ochterlony, as appointed by Lake before his departure from Delhi, ‘to attend the person and receive the commands of the emperor’, the few villages in Delhi constituting the personal estate of the emperor called tuyul or the crown lands were left undisturbed alongside the numerous jagirs (land revenue assignments) also in Delhi assigned by Shah Alam to various members of the royal family. As per Akhtar’s account, in addition to the lands, the emperor was supposed to receive a sum of rupees 80,000 per month, and the heir apparent rupees 10,000. Further, the emperor’s son Prince Mirza Izzat Baksh was to receive rupees 5000. For two other minor sons of the emperor, the amount fixed was rupees 2000 and rupees 1500. For fifty young children of the emperor, a total of rupees 10,000 was allotted. The royal treasurer, Shah Nawaz Khan, was to receive rupees 2500, and the agent of the government attached to the emperor, Sayyid Raza Khan, rupees 1000. Should the lands granted to the emperor fail to meet the royal expenses, it was agreed that the monthly remuneration might be raised to rupees one lakh. Plus, a sum of rupees 10,000 per annum was to be paid to the emperor for various other expenses such as the celebration of festivals.

After Shah Alam’s demise, though left unmentioned by Akhtar, his son Akbar Shah II (r. 1806–37) came to occupy the throne and was allowed to rule by the English under similar conditions. However, ‘[t]hroughout his reign Akbar Shah’s major preoccupation, in his relations with the East India Company, was with the quantum of the peshkash’. In fact, eminent scholar and social reformer, Rammohun Roy—having received the title of ‘Raja’ from the emperor himself—was nominated the emperor’s elchi or ambassador to the British monarch, William IV, to represent the emperor’s interests, though with limited success. Akbar Shah was succeeded by Bahadur Shah Zafar (r. 1837–57). In his time, records Akhtar, the emperor’s pension was raised to one lakh, following an increment of rupees 20,000. Besides, an amount of rupees 10,000 was granted for the maintenance and repair of the fort and other buildings. Aslam Parvez notes that, following in his father’s footsteps in selecting Roy, Bahadur Shah appointed the learned George Thomas, an Irish mercenary in his service, as his envoy to advocate for an increased pension. In addition to the fixed annual pension of rupees twelve lakh, Bahadur Shah, through Thomas, requested extra funds to cover celebrations for the two Eids, Nawroz, and his birthday. This effort too was unsuccessful at first, and it was only after persistent and intensive lobbying that, in 1844, the authorities agreed to an increase of rupees three lakh annually (or rupees 25,000 per month). However, this concession came with numerous conditions that further diminished the emperor’s authority. It was also in Bahadur Shah’s time that the revolt of 1857 ensued, which seemed to the author as nothing but an act of ‘misguidedness’, and thus, is presented as such in the text.

The ‘mutiny’

Ahmed Akhtar wrote that the events of 1857 unfolded with great suddenness when soldiers at the Meerut Cantonment protested against the use of cartridges that offended their religious beliefs, sparking the mutiny (g̲adr). After overpowering and killing their British officers, the troops marched toward Delhi. According to Akhtar, the royal guards at the city gates made the unwise decision of allowing the rebel forces to enter. As a result, the uprising brought immense destruction to Delhi, subjecting the city to widespread violence and suffering. Bahadur Shah’s apparent ignorance of, and the abrupt nature of, the events that were about to unfold appears to be a reasonable assessment, especially when considered alongside the testimony of Ghulam Abbas, Zafar’s representative to the Company, during his trial.

Declaring that the emperor Bahadur Shah had no role in the act whatsoever, Akhtar further quotes the rebels who apparently announced that the crown could be put on anybody’s head, making him the emperor. According to the text, they even were in favour of shooting the old emperor so as to replace him with their own representative. Thus, Bahadur Shah had been portrayed as a hapless emperor, dependent on the mercy of the agitators. His actions, as well as movements, were all subject to their control, and at the age of eighty-four, he had no might to get rid of the rebel force. Akhtar added that the city and its people were the ones who suffered the most. Objectively, however, the emperor may not have fully understood the situation at first but was eventually persuaded by the troopers. As Farooqui argues, had Bahadur Shah rejected the rebels’ plea, it would have amounted to a denial of the very notion of sovereignty he had inherited from his father and grandfather, and one he had consistently upheld throughout his reign.

The stage having been set, the author presented the English as saviours. At the critical time of famine and distress, Akhtar praised the remarkable generosity and kindness displayed by the English authorities. Among their generous actions was the granting of a lifelong monthly pension of rupees 2000 to the family of Mirza Ilahi Baksh, a trusted associate of Bahadur Shah and the father-in-law of his son, Mirza Fateh ul Mulk (also known as Mirza Fakhru). The family also received substantial financial compensation, amounting to several lakhs, for their losses. Their property was safeguarded and all traditional privileges were preserved. Akhtar noted that even in his own time, the descendants of Ilahi Baksh continued to benefit from these provisions. It is crucial to recognise, however, that what has been framed as an act of extraordinary British generosity was, in reality, a calculated reward for Ilahi Baksh’s role in enabling the unresisted arrest of the emperor after the uprising.

Furthermore, the author also highlighted the case of Prince Firuz Shah, the grandson of Bahadur Shah, who had joined the rebel forces and fought against the authorities at various places before straying into the wilderness, in Bukhara, Iran, Turkey, Russia, etc. After he died in Mecca, Akhtar recorded that the British granted a pension of rupees hundred per month, from the Bombay treasury, to his widow. The provincial governors and princes, including the Maharajas of Patiala, Jind, and Nabha or even the Begum of Bhopal, similarly received favourable treatment and were allocated fiefdoms. Another prominent rebel, Amir Ayub Khan, eventually sought refuge with the British after a long period of wandering. He was granted a substantial pension of rupees 20,000 per month. Similarly, as Akhtar noted, Maharaja Dilip Singh’s case followed a comparable trajectory. Though initially opposed to the British, he found himself with limited options and ultimately reconciled with them. He was taken under their patronage, and his children were given appointments to various official positions.

More importantly, we are told that pensions of rupees 250 per month were also granted to the elder members and the widowed women of the Mughal royal family. It seems that during the period in which the text was composed, Akhtar was himself a pensioner, probably surviving on the meagre dole handed out to him. The status of later Mughal descendants as pensioners can be corroborated from the historical facts associated with the lives of Akhtar’s own uncles (brothers to his father), Jawan Bakht Khan and Prince Shah Abbas, and their kin, who had accompanied Bahadur Shah in exile to Rangoon (present Yangon in Myanmar). In exile, Jawan Bakht received a monthly pension of rupees 200, which was raised to rupees 300 in the year 1866. He seems to have accepted the same amount until his death in 1884. On the other hand, Shah Abbas was granted a small monthly pension of rupees twenty-five. Another of the author’s uncles, Mizra Kochak Sultan, who had gone into hiding after 1857, but was soon exiled in 1865, also received a pension of rupees twenty-five per month. The amount was increased to rupees seventy-five in 1873, and he continued to collect the same till his death in 1882. A monthly pension of rupees ten was also issued to Mirza Kochak’s daughter, Akhtar Zamani Begum, up till her marriage, whereas his wife was allocated with a monthly lifetime pension of rupees twenty-five unless she remarried. By Akhtar’s time, the difficulty with which the Mughal descendants must have been making their ends meet thus can be speculated.

To return to the central theme being addressed in this essay, first in fashioning his lineage in an unimpressive manner, second in belittling revolt of 1857 while denying Bahadur Shah’s association with it, and third in presenting the English as liberal rescuers, lie the hints about the author’s implicit motivations for the composition of the text. Continued British patronage, as well as safeguarding the source of an almost negligible income—that is, the pension—seem to be the incentives. This is further confirmed by his assertion that the event of 1857 must be remembered for the annexation of the Indian empire by Queen Victoria, whom he addresses as ‘Her Majesty’. According to him, in fact, ‘Her Majesty’ honoured India by taking it under her blessed protection. As mentioned in the beginning, Akhtar believed that the British had successfully tested the Mughal royal family’s loyalty for thirty-seven years after the ‘mutiny’. He noted that within the Mughal royal family, there was a prevailing belief that the government had shown them compassion, and they relied on it to continue their patronage. With the same trust, and perhaps with the last ounce of hope, the author may have thought it appropriate to produce such a work.

We also know that in the course of the revolt of 1857, Bahadur Shah emerged as a symbol of resistance. The British had recognised in this symbol the potential of uniting the country against the colonial occupation. Therefore, the pronouncement of a death sentence was avoided so as to not convert the last Mughal emperor into a heroic martyr of the revolution. It was decided that banishment (exile) was a more appropriate solution aimed at a ‘complete eradication of the Mughal dynasty from the popular psyche’. However, an interpretive study of Akhtar’s work, points towards a possibility that as a direct descendant of the Mughals, Akhtar still held legitimacy with the population. Thus, Akhtar may have been, in fact, commissioned by the British to compose such a work conferring legitimacy on their rule. The task of erasing the Mughals from the popular imagination, as also argued by Farooqui for both Akbar Shah II and Bahadur Shah, may not have been easy. Indeed, the work of obliteration seems to have been still in progress by the late-nineteenth-century.

The present

With the dual motive of supporting the colonial propaganda and seeking continued patronage, Ahmed Akhtar declared it to be the good fortune of the country to have a compassionate government. Thus, he considered it an obligation to follow the British commands and pledge loyalty to them. According to him, since it was a universal principle that there can exist no equality between the people in authority and their subjects, such egalitarianism should not even be expected. Once again, the exemplary kindness and sympathy of the British were highlighted when the author wrote that he had first-hand experience of the same. He went on to call himself a poor and worthless soul, perhaps undeserving. Thus, he felt that one should be content with one’s circumstances, which he believed were marked by sufficiency.

The affirmation of the Mughal descendants having accepted a lower status and the declaration of a clear, and in some ways, desperate financial need, perhaps, not seeming adequate, Akhtar went on to quote the royal proclamation that was issued after the annexation. Speaking, it seems, on behalf of all Mughal descendants, Akhtar commented that whatever firm promises were made in the proclamation, they believed had been fulfilled by the Queen, whom he here addressed as ‘the sovereign’ and ‘our mother’. He added that they had also observed that the people’s happiness and well-being were of prime concern for the government. He was perhaps not exaggerating when he remarked that several educational institutions had been opened all over the country under the British. That the author quotes the royal proclamation, besides declaring to have sourced some of his other information from ‘a book of history in English’ brings up the question of English language learning among the displaced descendants of the Mughals. It was very much possible that Akhtar learnt the language like his uncles Mirza Jawan Bakht and Mirza Shah Abbas.

As it happened, when the charge of the political prisoners in the Rangoon exile was handed over to Captain Nelson Davis in 1859, he reported to the authorities that while the princes, Mirza Jawan Bakht and Mirza Shah Abbas, had little education, they were desirous of learning English and even of visiting England. As a result, Davis wrote a detailed letter to the British authorities conveying the same, with a recommendation that it be officially sanctioned, so as to grant the princes a unique opportunity to get acquainted with English culture. Another preferred outcome of this would be an unconscious break from their own Mughal culture. As per Davis’s communication to the governor-general dated July 1861, the princes were progressing steadily in their learning, being instructed by Brigadier Sergeant Fess Norkin. Davis’s successor James Talboys Wheeler, too, held the view that the government should make provisions for some English education for Jawan Bhakt and his nine-year-old son, Jamshed Bhakt. Jamshed Bhakt, in fact, received private school education first followed by college education at the Rangoon College established in 1878.

To return to the text, once more, the author overemphasised the kindness and patronage of their ‘mother-like Queen’. He, finally, added a prayer for her long life and pleasure, wishing she would champion the seven worlds on earth, and asked the almighty for the well-being and happiness of her children, family, and all her functionaries.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while the explicit reason stated by Ahmed Akhtar for the composition of such a biographical account of the city of Delhi was his desire to leave a modest literary legacy for his sons, the implicit motivations differ. By the later nineteenth century, the fact that British patronage was a requisite for survival seems to have been well-entrenched in the psyche of the later Mughal descendants.

No doubt, the text fulfils the expectations from a biography of a city—tracing the evolution of the city—though, for Akhtar, its being the seat of monarchical power was what holds the most significance. Yet, in dimming the sparkle of his own dynasty, the text’s other undertones make themselves plainly visible. Nowhere does it become more apparent than in the near invisibility of Jahangir in his work. The emperor, whose rule, one could argue, was not insignificant, finds mention only once towards the end of the text. Inaccurately, the author recorded Thomas Roe’s arrival in the subcontinent as the envoy of the English monarch, Queen Elizabeth I, as being during the reign of Akbar instead of Jahangir. However, as specified by the text, it was during the reign of Jahangir that Roe attained royal approval for trade relations. Henceforth, the English East India Company opened its offices at Surat, Ahmedabad, Madras, and Calcutta. Akhtar justified the opening of such trade operations by stating that they yielded positive results to India’s advantage. This, in turn, led to several further concessions granted to the Company, so much so that the Mughal court decided to forego taxes altogether. One can also not help but observe that there was absolutely no mention of Bahadur Shah’s exile. Thus, the need for patronage and financial aid may have led Akhtar to write a text with an extremely positive portrayal of the British, placing them under the very flattering light of benevolence.

Finally, it needs to be highlighted that the author’s opinions on his own dynasty seem reserved rather than genuine; the biographical descriptions purposely abbreviated. This becomes distinct when he sculpted the English as saviours but did not go to the extent of presenting Bahadur Shah as a seditious ruler who conspired with the rebels in 1857, for which he was tried and later exiled. The last Mughal emperor was instead presented as a hapless ruler, a puppet in the hands of the rebel forces.

Thus, in this way, a displaced Mughal prince’s modest literary legacy—marked undoubtedly by certain oversights, deliberate or unintentional—helps to not just draw some well-deserved attention towards the fate of the later Mughal descendants but also adds an illuminating appendix to the history of the Mughal empire.

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Is history little more than a fallback for those who find literary classics too demanding and science too serious? English historian E. H. Carr did not think so. He insisted instead, in his seminal work What is history?, that history was far too difficult than classics and every bit as serious as science (Carr 2008, 85).

Historians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, grappling with this persistent question of whether history was a science or an art, often prefered to occupy a middle ground. History, they argued, had never claimed the status of pure science, since it depended on both intuitive and analytical methods. Historical judgements, therefore, could not be evaluated by the standards of mathematics or experimental disciplines.

But can we then conclude that history is a kind of art? When pressed on this, historians tended to retreat to the idea that history was at best a semi-science. Unlike art, historical data did not lend themselves to complete imaginative freedom, or “free” artistic manipulation, and the form of the narrative was not a matter of choice alone but was shaped by the nature of the surviving evidence (White 1986, 27).

According to the American historical theorist and literary critic Hayden White, while this middle ground helped to disarm the critics of history and allowed historians to claim that it was only in their discipline that art and science meet in a harmonious synthesis, it also burdened them with a particular task: mediation between the past and the present through the fusion of two modes of comprehension—art and science (Ibid, 27–29).

Historical background

How and why did the question of history being a science or fiction become important? What emerges through the writing of White is that prior to the French Revolution (1789–99), historiography was conventionally regarded as a literary art or a branch of rhetoric, and its “fictive” nature was generally recognised. There existed a rigid distinction between fact and fancy but history wasn’t seen to be the representative of facts separated from elements of fancy. In the representation of real events, the recourse to fictive techniques like rhetorical devices, tropes, figures, and schema of words and thoughts, was considered inevitable. Truth, thus, wasn’t considered equal to fact but it was a combination of fact and the conceptual matrix. Truth was, thus, the product of historical narrativisation.

But this changed during the course of the nineteenth century. It was a moment when art, science, philosophy, and history were united in a shared effort to comprehend the upheavals of the French Revolution. Intellectuals across these fields showed a remarkable willingness to cross disciplinary boundaries in search of understanding. By the mid-century, however, another shift occurred. This was not because artists, scientists, and philosophers abandoned historical questions, but because historians themselves adopted stagnant conceptions of what art, science, and philosophy ought to be. They cast themselves as custodians of antiquated ideas, clinging to the notion that history was a synthesis of “romantic” art and “positivist” science—or, as White put it, “bad” art and “bad” science. The “badness” lay in their insistence on objectivity: the belief that facts were simply “given”, waiting to be collected and arranged.

This faith in the “givenness” of facts produced an uncritical reliance on chronological frameworks for historical narratives. Fact started to be considered opposite of truth and history came to be set over against fiction (especially the novel), as the representation of the “actual” to the representation of the “possible” or only “imaginable” (Ibid, 42–43, 123).

Placed within this context, the question of history’s status—as science or as fiction—inevitably made its way into the intellectual discourse.

Is history a science?

According to Carr, the initial distinction often drawn between the two rested on the claim that history dealt exclusively with the unique, whereas science dealt with the general. However, Carr pointed out, even in the physical sciences no two geological formations, no two species, and no two atoms were truly identical. Similarly, in history no two events were identical; but to overemphasise their uniqueness was equally misleading, since the very use of language inevitably involved a degree of generalisation.

For instance, the Peloponnesian War (431–04 BCE; fought between Athens and Sparta and their respective allies for the hegemony of the ancient Greek world) and the Second World War (1939–45) were vastly different and each unique in its own right, yet both were described as “wars”. British essayist and historian, Edward Gibbon did something similar when he grouped together the establishment of Christianity and the rise of Islam under the general category of “revolutions”. Modern historians continue this practice when they write of the English Revolution, the French Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, and others.

Therefore, Carr’s point was that “the historian is not really interested in the unique but in what is general in the unique” (Carr 2008, 62–63). Both the reader and the writer of history were, in his view, habitual generalisers, constantly applying insights from one context to another. This did not mean, however, that historians should construct some vast overarching scheme into which all events must be forced. On the contrary, each event must first be studied in its own terms and only then compared with others; it was through this interplay between singularity and generalisation that a richer historical understanding could be achieved (Ibid, 64–65).

The second ground of distinction lied in the claim that history taught no lessons. In the decade preceding the First World War (1914–18) hostility towards historical consciousness—and towards the historian—had grown so widespread that James Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (and later a central figure in Ulysses), described history as a “nightmare” from which Western man must awaken if humanity was to be served and saved.

By then, the accusation against history had acquired a moral dimension: scientists accused historians of methodological or intellectual failure, while artists charged them with a failure of sensibility or will.

The catastrophe of the First World War further discredited the profession. History, long expected to provide training for life by offering instructive examples, seemed to have done little to prepare humanity for the devastation of global conflict. The past, in the popular imagination, came to be seen as a burden, worse even than religion (White 1986, 31–38).

But is it true that the past is incapable of teaching lessons? Carr argued otherwise. For him, the very act of generalisation was itself an attempt to learn from history, to apply insights drawn from one set of events to another. A striking example was the case of the makers of the Russian Revolution of 1917, who were profoundly influenced and indeed obsessed by the lessons they drew from the French Revolution, the revolutions of 1848, and the Paris Commune of 1871. The effort to read meaning across different events, Carr suggested, was precisely what makes history a source of instruction (Carr 2008, 66–68).

Thirdly, closely related to the question of lessons, was the claim that history, unlike science, could not predict the future. Yet even science, since the twentieth century, had grown less confident about universal “laws of nature” that supposedly enabled prediction. Carr illustrated this with the law of gravity: it no longer proved with certainty that an apple will fall to the ground, since one could always imagine the possibility of someone catching it in a basket.

Modern physics, accordingly, had shifted its focus from absolute laws to probabilities. In much the same way, when historians generalised, they did not make specific predictions but provided a general guide for future action.

The fourth distinction concerned the charge that history was subjective. Carr noted that the dichotomy between the subjective and the objective arose during the age of the birth and development of modern science, when “man” as subject was set sharply against the external world as object in order to grapple with and master it. But even in science this distinction did not remain tenable for long. The so-called external world and its forces came to be seen less as hostile objects than as phenomena to be harnessed and worked with for human purposes. For Carr, therefore, the argument that history was not a science because it was subjective was no longer convincing. In science itself, there was no longer a rigid divorce between subject and object, nor should there be in history (Ibid 68–73).

Lastly, it was often argued that history, unlike science, necessarily involved questions of religion and morality. Carr acknowledged that history inevitably engaged with religious issues, yet this did not imply that divinity intervened directly in any specific events. No serious historian could invoke divine agency as an explanation for the occurrence of historical events. Carr put it succinctly that God could not be the joker in the pack, and history was a game that must be played without this joker (Ibid, 74–75).

Regarding morality, the historian’s task was equally distinct from that of the moralist. Historians did not need to pass judgment on the private lives or public actions of historical figures. Their standpoint, Carr insisted, was fundamentally different from that of the moralist; historical analysis required detachment and explanation, not ethical evaluation (Ibid, 75).

Carr conclusively argued that history should be counted among the sciences, since the supposed dispute between them reflected little more than an old, time-honoured prejudice. He did not, at the same time, advocate calling history a science in the straightforward sense, precisely because doing so would risk perpetuating the rift between the so-called “two cultures”(Ibid 84–86).

Is history fiction?

On the other hand, for White, facts were never simply out there; the construction of a narrative always depended on the kinds of questions historians posed, the choices they made about what to include, and what they left out. Truth, in his view, was not discovered but produced through historical narrativisation; a feature history shared with fiction.

If one considers why the shift occurred—from historiography conventionally regarded as a literary art, with its “fictive” nature, to a discipline increasingly treated as a realist science—it could be traced to the persistent blaming of mythical or ideologically shaped interpretations for the excesses and failures of revolutions, by both the political left and right. The prevailing notion became that historians must rise above any impulse to interpret the historical record through the lens of party prejudice, utopian expectation, or sentimental attachment to traditional institutions. The intellectual demand of the time was for a standpoint of social perception that could be considered truly “objective” and “realist”, enabling observers to navigate the conflicting claims of political factions emerging during and after revolutionary upheavals.

In short, demythification came to be equated with defictionalization: history was increasingly defined as a realist science, set against fiction, which was treated as the study of what is merely imaginable. This perspective was shared by many, including German historian Leopold von Ranke, who believed that remaining faithful to the facts would produce knowledge as authentic as that generated by science. What was overlooked, however, was that facts do not speak for themselves; it is the historian who speaks for them, fashioning fragments of the past into a coherent whole (White 1986, 123–25).

This concept of the “whole” was elaborated in the writings of Louis O. Mink, a philosopher of history, who emphasised the use of the terms “historical understanding” or “historical comprehension” rather than “historical knowledge”. For Mink, comprehension was a mental act of seeing things together. Distancing himself from three orthodoxies—realism, idealism, and pragmatism—he identified three modes of comprehension that are irreducibly different and autonomous, each equally valid: the theoretical mode, the categorical mode, and the configurational mode. Historical understanding belongs to the configurational mode, in which a number of instances are comprehended as elements of a single sequence or complex whole.

According to Mink, the task of the historian was first to make a “synoptic judgment”, in which chronologically separate events are recognised as part of a complex whole, and then to create a narrative that expresses this judgment. This aligns closely with White’s view that truth is produced through historical narrativisation. The particular challenge for the historian, therefore, was not merely selecting what to communicate, but organising it so that the narrative itself became a cognitive instrument for conveying understanding (Mink 1987, 11–15).

The techniques and strategies employed by historians and novelists in composing their narratives were, White further argued, substantially similar. While the novelist may present a notion of reality indirectly, through figurative or literary techniques, the historian presented it directly, by recording a series of propositions intended to correspond, point by point, to events in the extra-textual world. The resulting image of reality often bore a striking resemblance.

White emphasised that readers of both histories and novels cannot fail to notice these similarities; indeed, many historical narratives could pass for novels, and many novels could pass for histories. Hence, in White’s view, both the historian and the imaginative writer must meet the standards of coherence and correspondence to produce an account that is acceptable as a representation of human experience in the world (White 1986, 121–22).

Where does it leave us?

A plausible reflection is that the function of history, as distinct from both art and science, is to provide a specific temporal dimension to humanity’s awareness of itself. Both science and art, being dynamic in nature, offer history the opportunity to adopt new perspectives on the world (Ibid, 49–50). However, as long as history refuses to engage with the insights that modern art and modern science can provide, it remains a blind citizen of a world where, as the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel warned, “the pallid shades of memory struggle in vain with the life and freedom of the present” (Hegel 1956, 6).

References

Carr, E. H. 2008. What is History. Penguin Books.

Hegel, G. W. F. 1956, The Philosophy of History. Dover Publications.

Mink, Louis O. 1987. Historical Understanding. Cornell University Press.

White, H. 1986. Tropics of Discourse. Johns Hopkins University Press.

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The courier arrived looking like any other package. Brown cardboard, strips of tape, corners slightly frayed. Yet inside lay something that was not just another delivery. It was my book, my first book, arriving quietly in multiples, wrapped in its own smell of ink and paper, ready to be held, opened, and, most disorienting of all, claimed as mine.

Unboxing a book is not the same as opening an email with proofs, or scrolling through a PDF draft. This was no set of files that could be annotated, corrected, or endlessly revised. This was the final form, bound and sealed. A spine with my name. A cover I had stared at on screens now breathing in print. Pages that would outlast my nervous tapping at the keyboard.

The moment asked me to encounter myself in a new guise: as author.

Of course, the phrase “my book” had been uttered before, casually in conversations, with friends, or in passing self-reference. But to see it made material is to meet that “self” in the flesh. It is to feel the uncanny doubling of being both subject and object: the one who wrote and the one who now beholds.

Historians love beginnings, but rarely do we dwell on these private thresholds of arrival. What must it have felt like for a medieval poet to receive a freshly copied manuscript, the gold still drying on its illuminations? Or for a novelist, especially a female one, in the nineteenth century to open a parcel from the printer and glimpse, for the first time, their name marching across a title page? Across centuries, the first book must always unsettle its maker, because it reveals the distance between intention and embodiment.

As I turned the pages, I was struck by a subtle shift. This book was no longer simply mine. It had already become an object in circulation, destined for shelves, libraries, reviews, perhaps even future footnotes. What I held in my hands was both personal and public, intimate and already escaping into other people’s eyes, thoughts, and not to forget, judgments.

The unboxing of an authored book, I would say then, is not just about opening a package. It is about opening oneself to this new, doubled identity made of the one who labours alone and the one whose work now lives beyond them.

The “self as author” is never a stable figure. It flickers, appears, and vanishes in moments like these, reminding us that writing is both an act of self-assertion and an act of letting go.

And so, this book is mine, and it is no longer mine.

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In response to Nupur Amarnath’s article, “Microhistory goes mainstream: How Instagram and heritage walks make the past personal” (The Economic Times, 7 September 2025), I want to first humbly acknowledge the effort by the author to highlight how digital platforms are changing the way people engage with history.

As a historian specialising in Early Modern India, and an author of a book on microhistory in Routledge’s microhistories series (The Sky Poured Down Candy; Routledge, 2026), I do appreciate the intent behind the article. However, I must caution against conflating social media’s bite-sized content with the intellectual rigor and methodological depth that defines microhistory as a scholarly discipline.

The article’s focus, as I interpret it, is more about how history is being “brought to our homes” and made more relatable, what the author aptly terms “the social media-fication of history”. Perhaps that would have been a more precise framing than using the term microhistory, which carries with it a distinct historiographical tradition rooted in centuries of debate and methodological refinement. It seems that “microhistory” was deployed more as a buzzword than as an analytical category. True somewhere in the article it is defined as “[studying] the past by zooming in on small units—people, events, communities, objects—that reveal the complexities of everyday life often missed in large-scale studies”, yet there looms an oversimplification of the very historical method.

Microhistory is not simply local or oral traditions or intangible heritage, nor is it a catch-all for historical content that is short, consumable, or visually engaging. It is a method that seeks to reconstruct the lived experiences of individuals—often those at the margins of grand narratives—and uses those experiences to illuminate broader social, cultural, and political structures. Its purpose is not to produce “bite-sized history”, but to uncover how people in the past perceived themselves, how they navigated their world, and how their actions interacted with larger historical processes.

Heritage vs microhistory

A further instance of conflation is the author’s reliance on a creator’s statement that “India is steeped in history. Material history is already popular as it’s easier to access but we have intangible histories of songs, perfumes, food that need to be told.” While the importance of tangible and intangible heritage (note: not history) cannot be understated, this example blurs the lines between heritage documentation and microhistorical inquiry; ignoring, at the same time, the basic difference between history - a deeply analytical study of the past based on evidence, and heritage - the inherited aspects of that past, with heritage studies involving the documentation and preservation of these aspects.

The distinction is clear from a creator’s perspective on architectural (material) heritage itself, quoted in the article - “The mission remains the same—document every modern house in the city”; emphasis on ‘document’.

Intangible heritage, in specific, refers to practices, expressions, knowledge systems, and cultural forms that communities inherit and transmit, such as oral traditions, culinary practices, music, and craft techniques. Documenting these forms is crucial to preserving cultural memory, but it is not equivalent to microhistory, which is an interpretive and analytical method of historical reconstruction.

Microhistory is not simply about collecting fragments of cultural practices or local customs. It is about rigorously situating those fragments within broader historical processes, exploring how individuals experienced, interpreted, and acted within their worlds. In other words, intangible heritage provides material for historical inquiry, but microhistory is the method through which historians analyse, contextualise, and narrate these materials within frameworks of power, structure, and lived experience.

Without this distinction, we risk reducing microhistory to a trendy label attached to curated fragments of cultural life, stripping away the analytical depth that allows us to understand how people of the past navigated meaning, conflict, and change.

The intellectual roots of microhistory

The origins of microhistory lie in a profound critique of traditional historiography. For centuries, historians operated within frameworks that sought universal explanations and grand narratives of human events. This was epitomised by the positivist belief that a single, all-encompassing history of the world could be written if enough empirical data were gathered. The cultural turn in history challenged these grand narratives by emphasising meaning, symbols, and discourse, but in doing so, it often risked becoming trapped in surface-level interpretations of past consciousness.

Microhistory emerged as a response, combining the strengths of both cultural and social history. As John Brewer observes, “social and cultural history unite in the micro-processes of everyday life”. How? Both social and cultural history share the goal of exploring the past, but they approach it from different angles using distinct methods.

Cultural history, for example, treats society as a web of meanings and symbols, with historians aiming to uncover how people made sense of their world. Yet this method has its limitations, as it often remains confined to the perspectives and understandings of the historical actors themselves. To overcome this, it is necessary to incorporate broader frameworks, like those used in social history, that seek to explain wider patterns and structures.

Microhistory, as a field, skillfully bridges these two approaches by closely examining how individuals experienced life, how they perceived themselves, and the meanings they attached to events, while also situating these experiences within larger historical forces and processes that shaped their world, often beyond their conscious awareness.

Unlike superficial portrayals of the past, microhistory, thus, embraces ambiguity and complexity. It does not seek to confirm preconceived notions, nor does it flatten the past into easily digestible narratives for contemporary consumption. Instead, it has at its foundation the key features discussed as under.

Features of microhistory

Micro-analysis: This involves an intensive study of a small unit—be it an individual, family, locality, or community—or even a singular event, to understand historical dynamics at the ground level. Notable examples of such work include Carlo Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms and Natalie Zemon Davis’s The Return of Martin Guerre. My own research on a minor Mughal official, as explored in The Sky Poured Down Candy (read more about it in What is my book 'The Sky Poured Down Candy' about?), exemplifies this approach. By closely studying one petty official Abdul Jalil’s correspondence, the administrative challenges he faced, and his everyday struggles, and by bringing to the fore his socio-cultural world (from familial relation to his passion for collecting books and his poetic pursuits), I indeed traced broader patterns of Mughal imperial politico-economic decline.

Contextualisation: Importantly, microhistory is not simply anecdotal storytelling, as the author of the article would have us believe; it situates the subject within broader historical, political, and economic frameworks. A petty official like Abdul Jalil’s personal frustrations, for example, may be rooted in systemic issues like fiscal strain, factional rivalries, or shifting imperial priorities. In fact, Ginzburg famously transformed what might have been a mere footnote in a broader study of the Protestant Reformation in Europe into an entire book keeping its context very much intact. Similarly, Indian microhistorical work A Princely Impostor? by Partha Chatterjee retold the Kumar of Bhawal case unfolding in colonial Bengal. On the face of it, it is a recollection of an event and maybe a biographical account of an individual, but at its contextual heart it is known to be the “secret history” of Indian nationalism. Whatever the form, the context remains intact.

Narrative reconstruction and agency: The microhistorical approach seeks to tell a story that is coherent yet faithful to the fragmentary nature of historical sources. It wrestles with gaps, silences, and ambiguities rather than glossing them over, thereby preserving the texture of lived experience. Perhaps most crucially, microhistory restores agency to individuals often overlooked in grand narratives. It recognises that historical actors were not passive recipients of events but interpreters, decision-makers, and participants in shaping their lives and societies.

Microhistory and the “micro” misunderstanding

The prefix “micro” in microhistory does not refer to the length of content. To quote from Amarnath’s article:

One of the founding members … started making what he calls micro documentaries. “I knew I had to make short content after noticing how my daughter uses social media. We keep it under 59 seconds,” he says.

However, the “micro” of microhistory refers to the scale of inquiry—a singular event or an ordinary individual, for instance—how deep, how granular, yet how interconnected the analysis is. A social media post may be “micro” in size, but it rarely meets the complete criteria of micro-analysis, contextual depth, narrative integrity, and restoring agency.

Oversimplifying microhistory into reels and posts risks turning it into a hollow label, stripped of the critical, analytical, and ethical commitments that define it.

Let us then refrain from believing that short-form content about quirky local histories or isolated anecdotes constitutes microhistory. I appreciate this attempt to re-define the “micro” in microhistory, but in doing so, in my opinion, it diminishes the discipline and ignores the labour, rigour, and interpretive frameworks that historians bring to bear when uncovering the past’s complexity.

***

The mainstreaming of historical content through platforms like Instagram and heritage walks is an exciting development that broadens access and democratises history (I too wrote a hopefully relatable essay on this very platform, What do two microhistories and one Bollywood film have in common?) However, it is imperative that we distinguish between content that is simply “small” or “relatable” and scholarship that is methodologically grounded.

Microhistory is a powerful tool for illuminating the textures of lived experience and the structures that shape them. Therefore, it deserves more than being reduced to a catchy term; it demands no less than thoughtful engagement, contextual understanding, and critical analysis.

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In What is my book ‘The Sky Poured Down Candy’ about?, I detailed that in my research I chose to look at Mughal decline from the point of view of a petty Mughal official named Abdul Jalil Bilgrami, concentrating on his lived experience of serving the empire. My primary sources included the letters he wrote to his son, his poems that have survived in the works of later scholars, especially his grandson’s biographical works, and his various other writings.

However, one aspect I was unable to explore in depth in the book was the materiality of letter-writing itself—the tools, textures, and practices that shaped it.

***

Set against the backdrop of shifting class dynamics, the rise of mass consumerism, expanding educational opportunities, and the emergence of a more mobile society, Nigel Hall investigates how letter-writing paraphernalia (such as ink-pots, reed pens, quills, penknives) was portrayed and understood, particularly in Victorian Britain. He examines the meanings ascribed to these objects and their role in society.

He further suggests that it is the everyday nature of the tools used for writing, along with the user’s focus on the content rather than the instruments themselves, that results in these objects being overlooked to the point of near invisibility (Hall 2000, 83, 107).

Consequently, in western scholarship, once the study of writing and writing-related tools did gain traction, the focus largely remained on categorising and analysing their physical functions.

However, this approach often overlooked broader perspectives, such as their usage, social origins, and cultural implications. Hall, at the same time, points to an exception in this trend: H. Petroski’s The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance. Petroski’s work on the engineering history of the pencil, in Hall’s opinion, is a groundbreaking study that vividly unravels the intricate technological evolution of an otherwise unassuming object (Petroski 1989).

While the materiality of writing has not received extensive scholarly attention, it nonetheless asserts itself in various ways, sometimes even disrupting a writer’s creative process. Hall illustrates this with the example of English journalist and novelist, Rudyard Kipling, who, in his autobiography, recalls:

In Lahore for my Plain Tales I used a slim, octagonal-sided agate pen holder with a Waverly nib. It was a gift, and when in an evil hour it snapped I was much disturbed (Kipling 1977).

Such moments, Hall argues, reveal how materiality, though often unnoticed, becomes most apparent, that is, when its technical function fails.

In his words:

[M]ateriality is at its most visible when the technology doesn’t work or does not work well: the quill that blunts or breaks, the paper that tears or is pierced, the ink that has dried up, the fountain pen that splatters, the ball point pen that leaves blobs of waxy ink, the ruler whose edges have become chipped, the pencil lead that keeps breaking, the sharpener that will not sharpen clearly, the propelling pencil that fails to propel, or the envelope that simply will not stick (Hall 2000, 85).

Another way in which materiality becomes apparent is when an object is chosen or acquired for a specific purpose. This moment involves an individual making ‘deliberate choices’, which are often influenced by their lifestyle, self-image, and personal comfort.

A third way materiality manifests is when an object is designed with aspirations toward becoming an art or craft form. Historically, many items were crafted from exceptional materials, ensuring they were of the highest possible quality. Hall notes that while no one truly requires more than a functional, inexpensive fountain pen to write a letter, there is evidence suggesting that even the priciest pens do not always serve their intended purpose of writing. However, objects like finely crafted quills, inkwells, pen cases, and quill cutters were made by goldsmiths, silversmiths, and other artisans. While these objects were likely rarely used by their owners, they symbolised social status more than practical necessity (Ibid, 86–87).

It is also interesting to think about something as simple as choosing the right paper for letter-writing, a choice we often take for granted today. However, as Hall points out, the widespread use of paper for personal correspondence is the result of centuries of experimentation with different materials. Throughout history, people across the world have used clay, bark, papyrus, and parchment. The practical benefits of these materials in specific cultural contexts eventually led to the rise of paper.

Hall also finds the development of paper technology intriguing, imagining the lengthy efforts to create a material that was light, durable, affordable, and could handle ink or pencil equally well, all while maintaining a pure white appearance and a surface that was not too absorbent (Ibid, 98).

***

Historians have often argued that the Mughal empire was deeply influenced by what has been called the ‘rule of paper’ (Sarkar 1920, 15; Alam and Subrahmanyam 1999, 31). Paper played a crucial role in mediating authority and managing resources across the empire’s vast territories. This is evident from the fact that it was on paper that crucial documents such as imperial orders, news-reports, and land grants—the financial instruments that connected the imperial center to its distant peripheries—were circulated on a daily basis.

In hindsight, for my study, it would have been valuable to further analyse the production and use of paper (and maybe, ink) within the Mughal domains. Following Petroski’s approach, which traces the ‘complex technological history’ of seemingly simple artifacts, I now see how focusing on these materials could have enriched the narrative.

At first glance, one might assume that it was the widespread availability of paper (and ink) that allowed Abdul Jalil, posted in the distant province of Bhakkar (in Sindh, present-day Pakistan), to maintain regular correspondence with his son, stationed a thousand kilometers away in their hometown of Bilgram (in present-day Uttar Pradesh, India). However, a deeper exploration into the role of these materials would have highlighted their significant impact on the lives of low-ranking bureaucrats (mansabdars) like Abdul Jalil, whose daily routines were shaped by the need to secure documents confirming their rank (mansab) and revenue assignment (jagir). In doing so, I could have strengthened the argument that letter-writing was not just an individual act for Abdul Jalil, but a deeply social practice ingrained in the larger administrative and cultural framework of the empire.

***

To reflect on this now, exploring the materiality of letter-writing is crucial for historical analysis for several reasons.

First, it shifts our attention away from the content of letters alone and asks us to consider the tools and technologies that made that content possible. Understanding how letters were physically produced, whether it was the quality of the paper, the ink, or the pens, allows us to grasp the lived experience of the writer in ways that textual analysis alone cannot. By examining the materiality of writing, historians can better appreciate the constraints and possibilities faced by historical figures, which in turn can lead to more nuanced interpretations of their actions and decisions.

Second, the objects involved in letter-writing and even the act of choosing a specific writing instrument, were not neutral tools. They were deeply embedded in the social, political, and economic structures of their time. For instance, in the case of Abdul Jalil, the materials he used to communicate with his son were tied to his status within the Mughal bureaucracy and his access to resources. Exploring these material aspects reveals the underlying power dynamics, social hierarchies, and networks of exchange that shaped his world. By focusing on materiality, historians can uncover the often-overlooked ways in which material culture interacted with social practices, helping to paint a fuller picture of the past.

Third and last, considering the materiality of letter-writing also challenges the conventional notion that historical documents are merely static containers of information. Instead, it brings attention to the ways in which these documents were part of a larger system of communication and exchange. It underscores the importance of everyday objects, those that might otherwise be dismissed as trivial or inconsequential, as active agents in historical processes.

In this sense, materiality invites a more holistic approach to history, one that accounts for both the human and the non-human factors that shaped historical events and experiences.

References

Alam, M., and Subrahmanyam, S. 1999. “Introduction.” In The Mughal State, 1526–1750. Oxford University Press.

Hall, N. 2000. “The Materiality of Letter Writing: A Nineteenth Century Perspective.” In Letter Writing as a Social Practice, edited by David Barton and Nigel Hall. John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Kipling, R. 1977. Something of Myself. Penguin Books.

Petroski, H. 1989. The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance. Faber.

Sarkar, J. 1920. The Mughal Administration: Six Lectures. Government Printing.

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In an age when travel has become an obsession owing to the carefully curated Instagram feeds, packaged into lifestyle aspirations, and sold as a form of self-discovery, it is easy to forget that travel can also be a philosophical way of knowing, perhaps something new, or revisiting the familiar with a fresh perspective.

The making of a philosophical traveller

François Bernier, the French physician who spent over a decade at the Mughal court during the course of the seventeenth century, was one of the earliest examples of what Peter Burke calls the “Philosophical Traveller”: someone who used encounters with the unfamiliar—a foreign country or “the other” (in Bernier’s case “the orient”)—not simply to record exotic details, but more importantly, to use the insights gained to critique his own society (Burke 1999, 124).

Unlike today’s impulse-driven tourism, Bernier’s journey was hence rooted in the pursuit of knowledge and a serious engagement with questions of power, governance, and culture.

To grasp the weight of his observations on the Mughal state, however, we must first consider the influences that shaped him and the particular lens through which he wrote.

Delhi, Kashmir, and the Mughal Court

Bernier was born near Angers (France) in 1620. He studied philosophy and medicine but is best remembered as a traveller. Before his long stay in Asia, he visited Italy, Germany, and Poland, and he spent about fourteen years in Asia (mainly the Indian subcontinent) between 1655 and 1688. He arrived in Delhi during the famous coup d’état of 1658, when Aurangzeb, Shah Jahan’s third son, deposed his father and took the Peacock Throne. Bernier is also the first European known to have visited Kashmir. According to Burke, if we divide the travellers into “short stayers” and “long stayers”, Bernier clearly belongs to the latter category (Burke 1999, 124).

Bernier learned at least one major Asian language, that is, Persian, the Mughal court’s lingua franca, and seems to have been an attentive listener, keen observer, and absorber of a different culture.

As a French physician, he entered the service of the Mughal high-official Danishmand Khan, for whom he translated into Persian the works of French philosophers Pierre Gassendi and René Descartes. Bernier himself was deeply influenced by Gassendi, who rejected Aristotelian doctrine in favor of explanations grounded in scientific observation.

On Mughal governance and socio-economic critiques

Turning to Bernier’s observations on the Mughal state, one of the most striking examples comes from his letter to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the finance minister of Louis XIV. The very subtitle of this letter is revealing: “Concerning the Extent of Hindoustan, the Currency towards, and final absorption of gold and silver in that country; its Resources, Armies, the administration of Justice and the principle Cause of the Decline of the States of Asia.”

Bernier describes the Mughal empire as vast and fertile, a place where no emperor, prince, or high minister was ever approached empty-handed. It was, above all, a land of immense riches, where “gold and silver, after circulating in every other quarter of the globe, come at length to be swallowed up, lost in some measure” (Bernier 1914, 202). Even as Bernier marvels at the wealth of the Mughal court, he is quick to add that “there are many circumstances to be considered, as forming a counterpoise to these riches” (Ibid, 205).

For Bernier, the foremost of these counterweights was the condition of the peasantry. He writes of their relentless exploitation at the hands of local governors and landlords. Vast tracts of land, he observed, were

little more than sand, or barren mountains, badly cultivated, and thinly populated; and even a considerable portion of the good land remained untilled for want of laborers; many of whom perish in the consequence of the bad treatment they experience from the Governors (Ibid).

He also notes that many peasants fled to the domains of local rulers (rajas), where they encountered comparatively less oppression.

Secondly, Bernier argues that the Mughal emperor was not, in practice, the absolute master of the diverse nations he ruled. Across the empire were many chiefs or sovereigns, some of whom paid tribute and others who did not. Those who withheld tribute were often powerful rulers in their own right, scattered both near and far from Delhi and Agra. Bernier notes that if some of such chiefs were ever to form an offensive alliance, they would pose a serious threat to the Mughal state.

Thirdly, Bernier describes “the Great Mughal” as essentially a “foreigner in Hindoustan, a descendant of Tamerlan [Amir Timur], chief of those Mongols from Tartary who about the year 1401, overran and conquered the Indies” (Ibid, 209). The emperor’s position was further complicated by the religious dynamics of the court: while the sovereign was a Sunni Muslim, many of his nobles were Shia. This, Bernier suggests, placed the emperor in a precarious situation, forcing him to maintain a large standing army—an undertaking that required immense expenditure.

He then turns to the financial mechanics that sustained this army, focusing on the mansab-jagir system. In this arrangement, the substantial revenues of the state were absorbed by bureaucrats or mansabdars, who when holding revenue assignments called jagirs became jagirdars. As governors and revenue contractors, since their tenure rarely exceeded three years, these officials were primarily concerned with amassing as much wealth as possible in the short term, with little incentive to improve the condition of the peasantry.

In addition to these subtle (or not so subtle) critiques, Bernier also reflects on the very nature of the Mughal state:

… the King is sole proprietor of all the land in the empire; a capital city, such as Dehly [Delhi] or Agra, derives its chief support from the presence of the army, and…the population is reduced to the necessity of following the Mogol [Mughal] whenever he undertakes a journey of long continuance (Ibid, 220).

One of the most striking comparisons here is Bernier’s depiction of the Mughal capital as little more than “a camp”.

He also observes that every soldier in the Mughal army was married, with wives, children, servants, and slaves dependent on him for survival. The soldier himself, however, was entirely dependent on the pay he received from the state; or more precisely, from the emperor. For Bernier, this revealed the vast scale of revenue income in the empire: how else, he wondered, could the subsistence of so many dependents be explained?

Yet Bernier is quick to note that this immense income, which he terms rent rather than revenue (since the emperor was understood as the universal landlord), did not translate into the accumulation of wealth. Alongside the heavy costs of maintaining armies, governors, and officials, he points to the Mughal court’s love of luxury, pomp, and ceremonial display as another drain on resources. He adds:

I admit that his [the emperor’s] income exceeds probably the joint revenues of the Grand Seignior [of France] and of the King of Persia; but if I were to call him a wealthy monarch, it would be in the sense that a treasurer is to be considered wealthy who pays with one hand the large sums which he receives with the other (Ibid, 222).

Moreover, Bernier concluded from the absence of private property and the unchecked power of the bureaucracy that such conditions in India prevented the development of the arts (Ray 2004, 179-81). Artisans, he argued, were compelled to work for high officals, often for little or no pay. Bound within the rigidities of the caste system, artisans had no real mobility and could not aspire to move higher within the social hierarchy. As a result, artisanal skills were passed down unchanged from one generation to the next, leading to stagnation rather than innovation.

Some historians have suggested that Bernier’s observations on the “absence of the middle state” in India were essentially about the absence of a middle class. This absence troubled him, not least because Bernier himself came from such a class in France—one that had actively resisted the centralizing tendencies of the monarchy. To his mind, the existence of a middle class was not only a marker of social vitality but also the bearer of “civilized” norms, something he found lacking in Mughal India (Ibid, 180).

Among other aspects of the Mughal state, Bernier comments on the precarious position of merchants, the practice of buying and selling offices, and what he saw as the flaws of the judicial system. He justifies the existence of the judges (qazis) only by mocking their limited role and reducing their function to little more than affixing seals to documents rather than dispensing justice.

Bernier does concede that one supposed advantage of such despotism was the shorter process of delivering judgments, but he quickly adds a sharp qualification:

[If a state] does away with ‘meum and tuum’ (what is yours and what is mine), the necessity for an infinite number of legal proceedings will at once cease but it is equally certain that the remedy would be infinitely worse than the disease, and that there is no estimating the misery that would afflict the country (Bernier 1914, 237).

For Bernier, the central cause of the decay of Asian states lay in the absence of private property in land. He insists:

Yes, My Lord, to conclude briefly I must repeat it: take away the right of private property in land, and you introduce, as a sure and necessary consequence, tyranny, slavery, injustice, beggary and barbarism: the ground will cease to be cultivated and become a dreary wilderness; in a word, the road will be opened to the ruin of Kings and the destruction of Nations (Ibid, 238)

As Aniruddha Ray notes, it is hardly surprising then, that in the eighteenth century, when the Mughal empire had begun to fragment, Bernier’s writings were repeatedly cited to underline the supposed inevitability of Mughal decline. Bernier’s “prophecy,” articulated nearly a century earlier, was proving to be true (Ray 2004, 164).

Contradictions in and limitations of Bernier’s account

No doubt Bernier’s account of the Mughal state has drawn considerable criticism from historians. Ray notes that Bernier was unique among European travellers to India in being shaped by two key influences: the rapidly shifting political situation in France and the philosophy of Gassendi, whose scientific assertions challenged prevailing customs and superstitions (Ibid).

According to Ray, however,

the difference is not in the details of the narrative of the voyage, which Bernier usually failed to provide in the manner of some of his contemporaries, but in the systematic consolidation and organization of data that Bernier accomplished (Ibid).

Yet this very systematization rested on selective and often unverifiable sources, making his knowledge highly subjective. At times Bernier identifies his informants, but at others he leaves their origins obscure. This raises the question of why he relied on certain reports that can only be compared to “bazaar gossip”. Popular examples include the alleged escapades of Roshanara Begum, suggestions of an incestuous relationship between Shah Jahan and his daughter Jahanara Begum, and rumours surrounding the Mughal civil war—events Bernier himself did not witness and for which he provides no reliable authority (Ibid, 170-71).

His writings also contain several inherent contradictions. He laments the deplorable conditions of artisans and the stagnation of the arts in Mughal India, yet simultaneously suggests that the newly established French East India Company could make unlimited purchases of high-quality goods produced by independent artisans (Ibid, 180). Similarly, he criticizes the lack of European-style urban glamour in India while acknowledging the wealth of merchant houses, even though he elsewhere depicts merchants as unprotected and reduced to poverty. A further inconsistency appears in his claims that agricultural cultivation had declined, despite his own descriptions of flourishing urban centres such as Agra, which he considered larger than Paris. Such cities could hardly have been sustained without significant agrarian surplus.

According to Stanley J. Tambiah, one of the most effective challenges to Bernier’s thesis of absolute Mughal sovereignty has been Irfan Habib’s authoritative work The Agrarian System of Mughal India (1556–1707), based on a meticulous study of imperial revenue records. Habib’s analysis of the status and powers of the landholders (zamindars) directly falsifies Bernier’s claim that Mughal India lacked private property in land, intermediate powers, and political fragmentation. On the question of the supposed absence of a judicial system, Bernier has been critiqued by R. P. Tripathi, who devotes an entire chapter to the Mughal judiciary in his The Rise and Fall of the Mughal Empire. Likewise, while Bernier emphasized the oppressive and extractive nature of Mughal governance, P. Saran in The Provincial Government of the Mughals (1526–1658) presents a more nuanced picture of a benevolent and self-restrained sovereignty.

Bernier’s characterization of the emperor and Mughal bureaucracy as “foreigners”, moreover, has remained one of the most contentious and debated aspects of his work (Tambiah 1998).

The philosophical value of Bernier’s letters

Despite the above-detailed limitations, the significance of Bernier’s writings, however, as Burke writes, lies less in the factual reliability of his observations and more in what might be termed the “uses” of India for Bernier himself. Burke bases his analysis on the subtext underlying Bernier’s letters: they reflect his unease with the political changes in France during his absence—specifically, the early years of Louis XIV’s rule—and can be read as a veiled recommendation to return to more traditional forms of governance.

Bernier’s critique of Mughal despotism may in fact have been an indirect commentary on the absolutist system under construction in France by the king and his finance minister Colbert. Whether or not Colbert was aware of such a subtext is impossible to determine, but it is clear that Bernier participates in a long intellectual tradition of using “the orient” as a mirror to critique Europe; a writing tradition started by Edward Said whose works too suffer from multiple limitations, majorly the well known biased “oriental gaze” (Burke 1999, 130).

Placed within this genealogy, Bernier occupies a dual position: on the one hand, he provides a lens to view how European anxieties were projected onto Asian polities; on the other, his writings fed into later European constructions of “the orient”. Most notably, Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes drew upon the Persian “other” as a device to disillusion French readers with their own institutions, a technique that owes much to Bernier’s example. Such was the legacy of Bernier, the early “philosophical traveller”, whose letters were as much about Mughal India as they were about the political dilemmas of France.

Travel as intellectual wandering

As a critical thinker, one must always locate a historical source within its context. Bernier’s letters, despite their distortions and omissions, were shaped by his basic aim of making Mughal India intelligible to European readers who had never left their own continent. His literary strategy was therefore complex but also justified: he framed the unfamiliar in ways that resonated with familiar European debates. In doing so, he reminds us that travel is not only about physical displacement but also about the production of knowledge—sometimes new, sometimes refracted through old anxieties, and often offering fresh perspectives on both the “other” and the self.

What I wish to therefore convey is that, for me, Bernier’s account exemplifies how travel can serve as a way of knowing, a form of intellectual wandering; perhaps the very dimension that is missing from our own travels and travel accounts today, too often reduced to movement without reflection.

References

Bernier, F. 1914. “Letter to Monseigneur Colbert.” In Travels in the Mogul Empire, A.D. 1656-1668, translated by Archibald Constable. Oxford University Press.

Burke, P. 1999. “The Philosopher as Traveller: Bernier’s Orient.” In Voyages and Visions: Towards a Cultural History of Travel, edited by Jaś Elsner and Joan-Pau Rubies. Reaktion Books.

Ray, A. 2004. “Francois Bernier’s Idea of India.” In India-Studies in the History of an Idea, edited by Irfan Habib. Munshiram Manoharlal.

Tambiah. S. J. (1998). “What did Bernier actually say? Profiling the Mughal empire.” Contributions to Indian Sociology 32 (2): 361-86. https://doi.org/10.1177/006996679803200210

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In What is Microhistory? Theory and Practice, a work that according to its two authors, Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon and István M. Szijártó, ‘should be read as a dialogue or a debate on microhistory’, SGM considers the breaking of metanarratives to be the goal of a microhistorian.

However, to not let ‘the grand narrative’ monopolise attention poses a great challenge for any historian (like me) working especially in the context of an empire. In the study of the Mughal empire, for instance, one is often blindsided by the grandeur of its rise and fall. It was in the year 1526 that Babur, the descendent of the famous conqueror Amir Timur, won a victory over the Delhi sultanate. Defeating the Lodi dynasty, he established an empire that ruled over the Indian subcontinent for more than three hundred years (1526–1857). Eventually, due to several debatable reasons—wars of succession, factionalism, foreign invasions, weak rulers, the rise of regional forces, etc.—the empire perished giving way to colonial rule in India.

***

At the heart of this essay is, therefore, this question: do sources of life narratives, such as letters, have value in providing actual flesh to the empire’s well-established, awe-inspiring skeleton?

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Erla Hulda Halldórsdóttir argues that no doubt drawing broad generalizations from sources such as court records or memoirs can be problematic but among these problematic sources, one must include private letters as well. All historical sources have their limitations.

Even so, according to her, what distinguishes these letters is that they have a more personal and candid form than chronicles and memoirs, which are usually written long after the events they recount. Letters illustrate what takes place then and there. Once they are sent in the mail, there is no way that they can be changed or revised. This makes one agree with Liz Stanley as well who considers letters and photographs as having similar ‘temporal complexities’. In other words, they not only capture memories but also serve as a reflection of the time in which they were written. This is a characteristic that Stanley terms as ‘flies in the amber’ quality - something indicative of a bygone era that still exists in the present in the same or similar form; like an ancient insect preserved in amber.

Stanley asserts that, as far as research is concerned, some ‘documents of life’ are considered tricky. Consequently, they are either face neglect or are rendered marginal, with diaries receiving scant attention and letters even less. Highlighting how social scientists remain suspicious of the value of letters, though many insights can be gained from their study, Stanley enumerates various features that mark out epistolary as a distinct genre of writing.

First, as mentioned earlier, letters are comparable to photos in that they are always in the present tense, created at a specific moment in time. Second, letters involve a performance of self. Put another way, letters are representative of the particular writer, functioning as a proxy for them.

Third, letters possess a fragmented epistolary form, meaning they have an inherently incomplete quality. This is primarily because the temporal and spatial interruptions have a huge impact on the letters, so much so that, they always remain in some way unfinished. Stanley writes:

Any particular letter is a part of a sequence in a correspondence; consequently, there are always things not present in any one letter, with an incremental and fragmented emplotment existing across a series concerning what happened before. These ‘gaps’ concern things that need not be written and can be assumed, concerning contextual and cultural knowledge, about relationships and shared events, leading to letters that are often highly elliptical, with few or no clues even in a collection as to the meaning.

Therefore, often contextual and shared cultural knowledge, between the writer and the reader, makes one not mention certain things in detail, or these are written in one letter but not repeated in others. These details are usually indirectly spelt out, making the letters ambiguous and ‘unfinished’.

Fourth and final, letters typically anticipate a response, meaning that both the ‘after’ and the ‘before’ are usually considered in an exchange of correspondence.

Stanley also notes that a paradox lies at the core of epistolary matters since:

[T]he ‘real’ message of the letters is not quite what is written; letters ‘stand for’ the writer, but only in their absence; the writer is not the ‘actual person’ but an epistolary version or emanation of them; what they write about is not the world as it is but which is represented; and the moment of writing is conveyed to the reader but only after it has gone by.

Considering, thus, the very perplexing nature of letters, one is forced to ask: what then makes letters authoritative, not just as a genre of writing or literature, but as sources of history?

As Stanley explains, a collection of letters serves as a record of an individual when only one side of the correspondence remains, or as a shared epistolary life when both sides are preserved. Additionally, the collection also constitutes a narrative.

The importance of this narrative, in history in general and microhistory in particular. cannot be emphasised enough. Aren’t all acts of history-writing, also acts of narrativising? One can go as far as calling it ‘storytelling’. Nevertheless, what constitutes this narrative? According to its most basic definition, it comprises a chronological or sequential structure. And so among the various factors that are indispensable to the practice of microhistory, SGM includes the role of narrative.

The second factor that renders letters authoritative-ness as primary sources for historical reconstruction is that, letters are fragments of the past that remain, and what remains offers the only possible epistolary narrative, shaped by the passage of time and its uncertainties.

***

For my research, accordingly, Abdul Jalil’s letters, a collection of 22 letters written to his son, during the period extending from Aurangzeb’s reign (r. 1658–1707) to the reign of Muhammad Shah (r. 1719–48), thus, provide us an excellent opportunity to build a micro-narrative of the life a petty eighteenth-century official, providing an ant’s eye view and offering itself as a unique history of Mughal decline (for details read What is my book ‘The Sky Poured Down Candy’ about?)

***

Worth mentioning in this context is also that in the reconstruction of an epistolary life narrative, correspondence can often be considered a kind of dialogue or communication filled with an unrestricted flow of emotions. However, it is imperative that one should refrain from regarding letters simply as sentimentally satisfactory conversations on paper. As Halldórsdóttir writes,

There is a difference in time (the time that passes between writing and reception), the discursive styles on paper and in face-to-face conversation, and no facial expressions can be shown in a letter.

This is exactly what Sigfús Jónsson, the protagonist of her work Jakobína Jónsdóttir or Bína’s brother seemed to be aware of when he wrote to her in 1864 that he would spend his afternoon ‘talking’ to her. She quotes:

[B]ut when I sit down to write I feel how different it is, to let a stiff pen “make a speech” that cannot reach your eyes or ears until after so long a time, that it has become a fading echo, or if I could speak to you orally and hear you and see you near me.

Another of Bína’s cousins wrote previously in 1863:

[T]he pen is so stiff that it cannot show you what I want to say, and the paper is so cold that it cannot deliver you but so little of my thoughts and emotions, and then perhaps more eyes that yours can see it.

On the other hand, my protagonist, Abdul Jalil, in one of the letters to his son wrote the following verses:

Let there be at least a single line in the margin (of your letters),

For it is enough if I may become a line in your own handwriting.

Though the heart is parted, the eye still turns to you;

Though I am caged, my wings and feathers are beyond count.

The difference between an oral or a face-to-face conversation and written communication is, therefore, well-marked and so is Abdul Jalil’s restricted emotional engagement through written correspondence, embodied visibly in the expression of being caged.

***

Recognising, therefore, the significance of letters despite their limitations, one can safely conclude that—microhistory or not—letters provide a unique personal-everyday window through which all historians can glimpse the past, and it is in this that their value lies.

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Over the last several weeks I have only been thinking about two things. First, microhistory, with my book releasing in a couple of days (read here); second, for “recreation”, the show The Summer I Turned Pretty, which has led me to (mentally) analyse its gendered reception among women in their 30s (also me; also as an academic, I can’t help the constant critique).

So here are the two lines of thought spilling into one another, forming a stream of absurdity.

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The slowness we crave

One of the most illuminating things about microhistory is its ability to interpret life slowly. In other words, to linger over feelings, gestures, contradictions, and silences that grand historical narratives often erase. As one microhistorian explains:

‘Slowness’ calls for creativity: sensitive, imaginative contemplation of phenomena concerned with people’s everyday lives. Slow is the watchword of a range of movements in the arts, architecture, spatial consciousness and studies of time, reflecting individual and collective awareness of the quality of life: how to resist that perception of reality which demands quick responses — glib and shallow statements, generally based on some momentary instinct: a straight line from A to B, consumption that prioritizes speed (‘fast food’) and maximum calories in the minimum time, spaces providing low-maintenance comfort and convenience, looks that hide people’s soft spots.

Therefore, slowness values what unfolds over time: the hesitant steps, the unfinished thoughts, the longing that doesn’t resolve into action but lingers like a scent, a memory, a regret. This slowness is a way of honoring lives that are too easily dismissed as ordinary, indulgent, or emotionally complicated.

That is why I find myself turning to TSIP, not only as a show (and a novel) about adolescent longing, but as an archive of female desire; and a site where many women, particularly those in their 30s, are finding an unexpected refuge. Watching it feels like hitting pause in the fast-moving scroll of digital life. It is a world that moves at the pace of emotion, not productivity. It is one where someone sits quietly, blushes, overthinks, stares at a summer horizon, and lets life unfurl without performance metrics.

In that sense, it is no coincidence that women who are juggling careers, relationships, and the relentless pace of social media, not to mention the society at large, are gravitating toward this show and its narrative as their most esteemed “guilty pleasure” (more on this “guilt” below).

In a world where urgency is rewarded and introspection is a luxury, a show that allows for dreamy longing, awkward silences, and emotional meandering becomes more than entertainment. It becomes a space where women are allowed to feel without immediately having to fix, solve, or move on.

For many women in their 30s, watching TSIP has become a way of reclaiming that slowness. It is a reminder that desire doesn’t have to be resolved quickly, that confusion doesn’t have to be corrected immediately, that joy can exist without ambition attached to it. It requires watching with affection, not critique (though clearly I have failed at it).

The nuances of female desire

Additionally, what is most rare—and therefore most meaningful—is how the show ‘lingers on’ complicated female desire. The protagonist, Belly, is not a simplified “good girl” nor a rebellious “bad girl”. She is confused, torn, guilty, and yet unapologetically alive in her desire for two brothers at once. If you do not watch the show, yes, you read that right.

That emotional complexity, which is so often flattened or moralised in mainstream narratives, is what makes the story feel authentic to viewers who have lived such contradictions.

Women’s desire is rarely treated with the same nuance. I am in no way generalising but in most media, women are brought under scrutiny for wanting pleasure beyond normative expectations—with themes of marital duty, motherhood, career success, and now romanticised single-hood, looming large. The quiet ache for companionship, self-worth, or simple joy—of eating peaches by the roadside; the watchers know what I mean—is often dismissed as frivolous.

And it is here that microhistory, as a frame of reference, with its focus on the textures of everyday life, too reminds us that these desires are not incidental, but they are central to understanding how people live, love, and survive in larger worlds; in contemporary times, the patriarchal and capitalist worlds.

On supposed “guilty-pleasure”

What struck me most, as I watched the show and saw people’s reaction to it on the internet, is how women in their 30s are calling watching this coming-of-age show a “guilty pleasure”. Why guilty? Why is it that women feel entitled to pleasures only when they cloak them in guilt? The guilt is not about the show, I am sure, but about enjoying something that asks nothing of them. It is about allowing oneself to revel in emotion without productivity as proof of worth.

I wonder: do men have guilty pleasures? Perhaps not in the same way. Men’s pleasures, such as sports, are rarely framed as indulgent. They are framed as earned, deserved, or—brace your hearts—natural. When a man watches a game for hours, it is not called a guilty pleasure; it is called passion or fandom. But when a woman watches a teen romance series, she has it ingrained in her that she should be doing something more “meaningful”. Unfair!

The pleasures women seek are policed because they are seen as extravagant, unnecessary, or excessive. The very fact that we name something a guilty pleasure signals how little entitlement we feel toward our own joy.

What is more, this distinction is also mirrored in Belly’s internal guilt. She is torn between desire and restraint, between what she feels and what she believes she ought to feel. The fact that her longing (and Conrad’s now infamous yearning, of course) is narrated with such tenderness is what makes the story feel so close to real life; and why so many female viewers feel seen, even when that seeing is couched in supposed guilt.

A microhistory of feeling seen

Let us reflect a bit more on how watching TSIP has become, for many women, a way of feeling seen. I want to go so far as to say that the show is an ‘archive’ (historian, at work) of tender, messy, contradictory emotions; and in comparison, microhistory too teaches us that the small, the hesitant, the unproductive are not signs of weakness but are clues to how people live in the world. It is in the pauses, the blushes, the quiet confusion, and the longing for something beyond ambition where life (and history of everyday life) hides its softest truths.

The show’s popularity among women in their 30s is, therefore, not accidental. It is a slow invitation to inhabit desire without apology. It is an acknowledgment that love isn’t linear, that longing isn’t shameful, and that pleasure is not a prize but a right.

***

In this sense, let me be unapologetically absurd and say, that watching TSIP is not trivial—it is historical. It is an act of reclaiming time, feeling, and the right to desire without any guilt whatsoever.

PS, team Conrad.

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Inspired by Emily Spinach’s ‘personal curriculums when they work, when they don’t work, when they work better’.

Personal curriculums are all the rage right now. People are figuring out how to self-learn, manage time, and keep their passions alive. Reading Spinach’s post made me think about how this isn’t new; people have always designed their own learning journeys. In fact, looking back to early modern Mughal South Asia, the everyday education of ordinary people was shaped not only by employment needs but also, much like today, an innate passion for learning.

A striking example comes from the life of the protagonist of my book The Sky Poured Down Candy (read more about it here), Abdul Jalil Bilgrami, the “personal curriculum” he created for his son, Sayyid Muhammad, and what ensues thereafter.

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The French traveller Jean Baptiste Tavernier, who visited India frequently over two decades of the seventeenth century, observed how Mughal merchants educated their children:

They [merchants] accustom their children at an early age to shun slothfulness, and instead of letting them go into the streets to lose their time at play, as we generally allow ours, teach them arithmetic, which they learn perfectly, using for it neither pen nor counters, but the memory alone, so that in a moment they will do a sum, however difficult it may be. They are always with their fathers, who instruct them in trade, and do nothing without explaining it to them at the same time.

What stands out here is not just the focus on learning but how education was woven into everyday life, and in it the role played by fathers. Children learned by observing their fathers, solving problems by memory, and working alongside them. This approach wasn’t limited to merchants, it reflected how the broader middle classes of the Mughal society educated their children.

Take Abdul Jalil Bilgrami, a modest Mughal official. Even though he was far from his son, posted as a news-recorder at a frontier town, he remained deeply invested in the young man’s learning. In letters he sent, he urged his son to study hard and acquire knowledge across both religious and secular subjects. He recommended that his son gain expertise in Quranic commentaries (tafsīr), traditions (ḥadīs̤), jurisprudence (fiqh), and theology (uṣūl), alongside logic (mant̤iq), philosophy (ḥikmat), apart from the conventional job-based (rozgāri) skills.

This wasn’t unusual. From emperor Akbar’s time, Mughal rulers promoted education that combined religious learning with scientific, mathematical, and philosophical studies. As Abul Fazl, Akbar’s famous court chronicler, recorded under the regulations regarding education in the Akbari period:

Every boy ought to read books on morals, arithmetic, the notation peculiar to arithmetic, agriculture, mensuration, geometry, astronomy, physiognomy, household matters, the rules of government, medicine, logic, the ṭabī’ī [physical sciences], riyāzī [sciences of quantity comprising mathematics, astronomy, music, and mechanics], and ilāhī sciences [literally, divine comprising everything from theology and the means of acquiring a knowledge of God], and history; all of which may be gradually acquired.

Naturally, not everyone approved of this approach. Critics like Abdul Qadir Badauni argued that focusing on non-religious subjects like astronomy, philosophy, history, literature, mathematics, and medicine led to neglect of Arabic learning and traditional religious texts such as exegesis, traditions, and jurisprudence.

Nevertheless, the idea of learning by understanding, in place of rote learning—another of the Akbari educational measures—seems to have been embraced in everyday education. Abdul Jalil’s method of teaching through practice is a case in point. He asked his son to copy portions of scholarly texts and post them to him. While this directly helped him access the material from afar, it also sharpened his son’s language and interpretative skills in Arabic, Persian, and Hindi. Poetry wasn’t left out either. Abdul Jalil shared his own compositions, including verses (rubāʻīs) and chronograms (taʼrīkhs), with his son, making literature a significant part of everyday learning.

Being himself trained, it seems, in medicinal sciences, in imparting medical knowledge, a combination of reading and practical application was what Abdul Jalil took recourse to. Abdul Jalil advised his son to read medical works like the Ikhtiyārāt-i Badi‘, Alfāẓ al-Adwiye, and Qarābādīn-i Shifā’ī, all pharmacological texts detailing drugs in multiple languages including Hindi. He, at the same time, asked his son to prepare remedies (like medicinal powder, churan) for his ill mother, using recipes from a household book.

Interestingly, Abdul Jalil did not just tell his son what to study; he also warned him against wasting time on obscure texts. When his son started reading a treatise titled I’lāmu’l Ḥadīs̤ (literally, science of Quranic traditions), Abdul Jalil thought it would not add much value and instead advised him to begin with better-known works that would make such texts easier to understand. To be specific, he mentioned that if the son had first consulted the Sharḥu’l ‘aqā’id (literally, interpretations of the fundamental religious tenets), the I’lāmu’l Ḥadīs̤ would have been very easy for him to comprehend. Additionally, he instructed his son to follow a system when it came to his curriculum, which would help him acquire knowledge in a structured and timely manner.

Throughout his letters, Abdul Jalil emphasized one thing repeatedly, that time was precious. He encouraged his son to keep reading and writing every day, making the most of each moment. Giving his own example of having achieved scholarly proficiency under the guidance of his diseased father, he asked him to be uniformly industrious. Appreciating the son’s efforts, albeit sparingly, he acknowledged the improvement he had made in his reading.

Interestingly, the father even advised the son to protect his eyesight by avoiding late-night reading, showing how caring for one’s well-being has always been very much a part of the learning process.

Of course, Abdul Jalil’s guidance bore fruit. His son, Sayyid Muhammad, went on to write a biographical dictionary in 1852, a collection of historical and biographical notices on the most notable and venerable men from their hometown of Bilgram (in present-day Uttar Pradesh, India).

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What strikes me most is how grounded and practical Abdul Jalil’s “personal curriculum” for his son was. It wasn’t about following rigid rules; it was about equipping a young man with tools to live, think, and contribute meaningfully.

In today’s world of self-designed study plans and productivity hacks, it is humbling to see how similar concerns of time, attention, practice, persistence, curiosity, and well-being have always shaped education, even in early modern Mughal South Asia.

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In a previous post, What is my book ‘The Sky Poured Down Candy’ about?, I hinted at one of the constant difficulties of writing a microhistory, that is, how to handle macro historical contexts. In my writing I often feel this tug-of-war. The larger imperial canvas of the empire risks overwhelming the fine-grained details of the individual lives who experienced it.

This post, then, is a reflection on the delicate balance between the micro and the macro in historical writing, and how this tension shapes narrative, argument, and ultimately, a reader’s understanding of the past.

Giovanni Levi, one of the leading figures of Italian microhistory, argued that adjusting the scale of analysis lies at the very heart of this approach. By narrowing the scale of observation, microhistory can uncover aspects that otherwise remain invisible. Changing the scale can even give new meanings to well-documented phenomena. This methodological move does not only deepen our grasp of the micro but also allows broader generalizations to emerge (Levi 1991, 94–97). In other words: starting small can sometimes open the door to big historical questions (on this also read my essay, What do two microhistories and one bollywood film have in common?)

Carlo Ginzburg’s classic The Cheese and the Worms is often taken as the emblem of this practice. Initially, he associated microhistory simply with reduced scale. But in narrowing the lens—from a footnote in a history of the Protestant Reformation to an entire book on Menocchio the miller—he realized that the micro could not stand without reference to the macro. He came to see the need for reconciliation between the two. Ginzburg admired Marc Bloch’s Feudal Society as a model for this, since Bloch moved seamlessly between panoramic views and close-ups of lived experience. If Ginzburg’s own microhistory is like a self-portrait, he likens it to Umberto Boccioni’s paintings, where boundaries between the self and the surrounding world dissolve (Ginzburg 2014, 165–66).

The question of how individual cases relate to larger contexts has been central to the theoretical debates around microhistory. Richard D. Brown distinguishes microhistory from conventional case studies: where case studies typically test narrow hypotheses, microhistory seeks to disrupt established narratives and experiment with narrative forms (Brown 2014, 127).

This has led to diverging positions. In What is Microhistory? Theory and Practice, Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon and István M. Szijártó debate the role of contextualization. Magnússon warns against letting grand narratives swallow up the small, calling instead for a “singularization of history.” He argues that history is made up of fragments, and that the more we enlarge our compass, the less we truly understand (Magnússon and Szijártó 2013, 115). Zoltán Boldizsár Simon, however, criticizes this approach, warning that it risks leaving history entirely self-contained, with subjects cut off from any wider meaning (Simon 2015, 243–44). Can history really be written without some form of context?

Other scholars strike a more balanced tone. Jacques Revel suggests that micro and macro are not opposites but complements; Bernard Lepetit advocates a “controlled multiplication of scales” rather than choosing one over the other. German Alltagsgeschichte historians like Hans Medick and Jürgen Schlumbohm similarly argue that microhistory gains depth through dialogue with macrohistory. Orest Ulbricht even goes so far as to say that microhistory is often itself a form of macrohistory, since it reveals broader social dynamics through precise investigation (Magnússon and Szijártó 2013, 35–37).

The French historian Robert Darnton provides an illuminating contrast. In The Great Cat Massacre, he examined a seemingly bizarre episode in which Parisian apprentices killed cats. Though he insists the incident is not representative of “typical” workers or masters, he still situates it within broader cultural contexts: folklore traditions, gendered tensions, and shifting material relations in trades (Darnton 1984; Little 2009). In his hands, the micro does not float alone but is firmly tethered to macro frameworks, even while resisting totalizing explanations.

Where does this leave us? Perhaps with Szijártó’s reminder that microhistory is best seen as “a colourful discourse” rather than a rigid method. It thrives precisely in its ability to move between scales, sometimes unsettling grand narratives, sometimes leaning on them.

In my book, The Sky Poured Down Candy, this remains for me the central challenge: when to let a Mughal letter or a fragment of poetry speak entirely on its own, and when to fold it back into the larger rhythms of imperial decline. If nothing else, microhistory teaches us that both the small and the large matter; and that history is richest when they are allowed to lean on one another, like two mirrors reflecting unexpected possibilities.

References

Brown, R. D. 2014. “Microhistory and the Post-Modern Challenge.” In Theoretical Discussions of Biography: Approaches from History, Microhistory, and Life Writing, edited by Hans Renders and Binne de Haan. Brill.

Darnton, R. 1984. The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History.Vintage Books.

Ginzburg, C. 2014. “Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know About It.” In Theoretical Discussions of Biography: Approaches from History, Microhistory, and Life Writing, edited by Hans Renders and Binne de Haan. Brill.

Levi, Giovanni. 1991. “On Microhistory.” In New Perspectives on Historical Writing, edited by Peter Burke. Polity Press.

Little, Daniel. 2009. “Darnton’s History.” Understanding Society: Innovative Thinking About a Global World. Accessed March 14, 2020.

Magnusson, Sigurður Gylfi, and István M. Szijártó. 2013. What is Microhistory? Theory and Practice. Routledge.

Simon, Zoltán Boldizsár. 2015. “Microhistory: In General.” Journal of Social History 49 (1): 237–48.

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