With India riding on a nationalistic wave, this narrative will be diluted further, to make the narrative of the entire period more chauvinistic than ever. The early Indian perspective in textbooks relies on the Nehruvian narrative, still nationalistic but albeit filtered. In the traditional narrative filled with nationalistic sauce, the last 350 years (1600 to 1947) bring two standard narratives to question - the British perspective and the Indian perspective. This is where William Dalrymple’s series - the Company Quartet comes into play. While today’s generation wants to ‘live in the moment’, history has become the one-percenter subject - for the elite and enthusiasts.
History is the most important subject, and in many cases, the most hated subject. History as a subject is a ‘social conditioning’ tool structured around ‘controlled narratives’ taught to young impressionable minds. The first thing that one has to do while reading history books is to unlearn the textbooks we have read. Here is an excerpt that you would like to read: Friends: Presenting my review of 'the Anarchy' the first of the 'Company Quartet' books by William Dalrymple, a British Historian who lives in Mehrauli, near Delhi.
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