King, Country, and War: Ideology, Memory and Written Indian History, c.1600-1900 by Anirudh Deshpande
King, Country, and War: Ideology, Memory and Written Indian History, c.1600-1900
AUTHOR- Anirudh Deshpande
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INFORMATION
- AUTHOR : Anirudh Deshpande
- HB ISBN : 978-93-6627-478-2
- Year : 2025
- Extent : 276
- Discount available on checkout
- Usually dispatched within 3 to 5 working days.
To counter the influence of nationalist anachronisms on Indian historiography, King, Country and War: Ideology: Memory and Written Indian History, c. 1600–1900 presents a critical analysis of six themes of Indian historiography: the historicization of the Indian mind, the role of individuals in history, desh and rashtra in pre-colonial India, forts in Indian history, the Third Battle of Panipat and hybridity in Indian history. The book asserts that deconstructing the ideological binaries which condition the Indian minds comprises the beginning of our quest for a critical appraisal of India’s past. This book presents a serious interrogation of the theoretical assumptions of colonialist and nationalist historiographies which continue to influence the historical thinking of contemporary Indians. The book also brings to bear on its subject matter the insights provided by the ‘micro history’ method. After all, critial history is produced by the inevitable tension between the historian and his sources. This makes history writing a dynamic, honest and scientific craft practiced by the critical historian who is forever alert to the political allure of ideology. Like any social being, the historian has ideological predilections but in his practice as a professional historians he should not be overtly influenced by them.
The Author
Anirudh Deshpande is Professor of Modern History, Department of History, University of Delhi. His publications include The British Raj and its Indian Armed Forces, 1857–1939 (2002); British Military Policy in India, 1900–1945 (2005); Class, Power and Consciousness in Indian Cinema and Television (2009); The First Line of Defence: Glorious 50 Years of the Border Security Force (2015); Hope and Despair: Mutiny, Rebellion and Death in India, 1946 (2016); The Practice of History: Essays in Search of a New Past (2020); The Rise and Fall of a Brown Water Navy: Sarkhel Kanhoji Angre and Maratha Seapower on the Arabian Sea in the 17th and 18th Centuries (2021); Aitihasik Nausainik Vidroh 1946 Aur Bharatiya Jan Andolan (2022); Bisween Sadi Mein Vishwa Itihaas Ke Pramukh Mudde: Badalte Ayam Aur Dishayen (2021); and Social Science Perspectives and Indain Cinema (2023). In addition to these he has also written a novel, Dreamt Lives (2018) and a collectiion of short stories, Corona Fieldwork and Other Stories (2024).
Anirudh Deshpande is a leading military historian of India. He is one of the few to study military cultures and practices across the great divide that almost all historians maintain between pre-colonial armies and governments and the colonial era. He is unique in addressing the financial structures and internal discipline that keep military machines functioning. This book contains examples of both long period studies and finely researched analyses of particular battles. I recommend it to the professional historian and the general readers.
—Sumit Guha
Debates over how we understand and represent the Indian past…were formerly the provenance of professional historians; now the supposed democratization of the public sphere has had the consequence of opening the past to more radical…forms of instrumentalization… The veteran historian Anirudh Deshpande, in King, Country and War, has offered a timely reminder both of (in Nietzsche’s phrase) ‘the use and abuse of history’ and why the stakes have never been higher than they are today.
—Vinay Lal