Robert Clive of the East India Company at the siege of Arcot. | Ernest Wallcousins (1883-1976) [Public domain]
Manan Ahmed Asif’s new book,
“Across the subcontinent we now confront a crisis of the past, with an explicit understanding of difference as destiny…
The majoritarian Sunni or Hindutva projects ask that we, as historians, consider them inevitable and immutable. Yet, this cannot stand…
The history I have sketched here is a prompt to imagine ways forward that do not yield to the majoritarian present, that do not inherit the past as certainty, and do not romanticise that which is lost. It is essential that, as historians, artists, activists, and thinkers, we turn to the medieval period and recognise the ways in which it continues to organise how current prejudices are rearticulated…