| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Methods/Theory

Vinay Lal. The History of History: Politics and Scholarship in Modern India. New York: Oxford University Press. 2003. Pp. xi, 309. Rs. 1040.00.
This book starts with the premise that despite the fact that "ahistoricism is one of the defining features" and "greatest attractions" of Indian civilization, history as a discipline has increasingly assumed a major role in India as the past has become an object of debate in the post-independence period (p. 14). This is particularly true of the last fifteen years, when the rise of a "Hindu" right has led to speculations about the future of secularism in the country.	1
In Vinay Lal's account, history is inextricably bound up with the apparatus of the modern Indian nation-state. In five chapters of the book, he gives a detailed account of the manner in which colonized Indians responded to the British depiction of India as a place without history by actively searching for "historical" pasts. Such historical consciousness, according to Lal, out of which the discipline of history was born, emerged during the period of Indian nationalism and reached its fullest expression in post-1947 India. He skillfully charts the careers of institutions like the Indian History Congress, the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Series; the role of patronage bestowed by political leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru and Rajendra Prasad in the development of the historical profession; the part played by prominent historians like Jadunath Sarkar, R. C. Majumdar, K. M. Munshi, and more recently by Anil Seal, Ranajit Guha, and others in producing the interpretive fissures that have resulted in the formation of well-defined groups in modern Indian historiography—namely the nationalist, leftist, Cambridge, and Subaltern schools. All these groups are intimately involved in debates having to do with nationalism and secularism.	. . .

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