UPDATED: January 9, 2021 07:15 IST
Who is an Indian? That question, which was at the heart of the anti-CAA protests, also animates a crop of recently published biographies. Threaded through these life stories are debates about who counts and who does not—and if the idea of India is inclusionary or exclusionary.
It is appropriate to start with the Mughals. Ira Mukhoty’s Akbar provides a wide-ranging account of an emperor who was likely illiterate and dyslexic. Nevertheless, Akbar was shrewd enough to accommodate India’s diversity through the idea of sulh-i kul (universal peace). Supriya Gandhi’s The Emperor Who Never Was responds to that fiercely debated hypothetical: what if a supposedly-tolerant Dara Shukoh had become padshah instead of Aurangzeb? Gandhi rubbishes hackneyed portrayals of the prince as a liberal who could have averted communal bloodshed of the modern era.