Colonial Times To The Present. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2003, Pp. 318, Rs. 695

Gottlob, Michael, Historical Thinking in South Asia: A Handbook of Sources from
Colonial Times to the Present. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2003, pp. 318, Rs. 695.
____________________________________________
Political and ideological battles in India are increasingly being fought on the terrain of
history. Historians occupied an extraordinary place in the debates over the Babri Masjid,
and in the course of the last few years controversies over history textbooks have
intensified. To be sure, these disputes have surfaced previously: in the textbook
controversies of 1977-79, those years memorably etched as the aftermath of the
emergency and the period of Congresss exile from the seat of power, contemporary
disagreements over Aurangzebs allegedly wanton destruction of Hindu temples, the
prevalence of beef-eating among the early Aryans, and Shivajis iconicity both as a
freedom fighter and Hindu nationalist appear to have been anticipated. Indeed, after
the attainment of independence, the nascent nation-state turned its attention not only to
five-year plans to generate economic growth and commit the country to development,
but to the task, construed as urgent, of rewriting Indian history. If, as was then widely
believed, colonial histories were almost invariably contaminated, engendered by the
impulse to make history serve as the handmaiden of the state and often animated by
wildly indulgent representations of Indians as lazy, intensely emotional people who were
predisposed towards viewing themselves preeminently as members of monolithic
religious communities, it became almost a moral imperative to install a competing
narrative at the heart of the nation-state. Nationalist historians had emerged in the last
quarter of the nineteenth century, but now their ascendancy, aided considerably by state
2
patronage, would become palpably evident. How, then, considering theimportance that
has been attached since independence to history, as the vehicle of both the dream-work
and culture-work of the Indian nation-state, might one argue that history has, in many
respects, become the chosen terrain, the very field of dharma (dharmakshetre), for
staking claims to Indias past as much as its future?
This query brings us to the book under review, Michael Gottlobs Historical Thinking in
South Asia. It is, as its subtitle indicates, a Handbook of Sources from Colonial Times
to the Present. One might begin with what is perhaps a minor quibble: like many
writers on the Indian subcontinent, Gottlob takes South Asia and India to be synonymous
terms. Doubtless, Gottlob expends a few pages on history-writing in Pakistan, but this
volume remains firmly anchored in Indian history. The historiography of Sri Lanka
receives no mention, an omission all the more regrettable from the fact that the work of
J ohn Rogers, E. Valentine Daniel, Stanley Tambiah and others represents a very
distinguishedbody of scholarly accomplishment. Gottlobs error is much less egregious
than that of some historians who, writingon Bengal, indeed I should say the middle-class
society of Calcutta, somehow imagine that they are writing on India. Within the
parameters of what Gottlob takes to be appropriate sources for the study of historical
thinking in colonial and post-colonial India, one is struck rather by the ecumenism of his
choices and his relatively wide conception of what can reasonably be construed as
examples of thehistorical sensibility at work, especially in the twentieth century.
3
Though each of the nearly fifty selections is prefaced by an interpretive and biographical
note, Gottlob sets the tone for the volume with a long and knowledgeable essay that
comprises a third of the book. The usual suspects, William J ones and J ames Mill, are
invoked in Gottlobs account of colonial indology, and from here he moves at once to
Rammohun Roy. The scholar-administrator types -- Mountstuart Elphinstone, J oseph
Cunningham, J ames Grant Duff, and J ames Tod, to name four-- whose histories
proliferated in the first half of the nineteenth century scarcely receive mention. Tod
exercised, as we have come to recognize, an incalculable influence not only on
generations of scholarship on Rajasthan, but even on Bengali self-understanding. Early
commentators such as Robert Orme and Alexander Dow had representedthe Bengalis as
effeminate; and Tods characterization of the Rajputs as the paradigmatic example of the
martial race was calculated to enhance the contrast. The omission of colonial
historiography becomes less puzzling once it is understood that Gottlob takes it as his
mandate to sketch the rise of historical thinking not merely in India, but more particularly
among Indians. J ust when did history become an object of reflection and inquiry, if not
research, amonga significant section of the educated elite? What intellectual positions
were embraced by the most enthusiastic advocates of history, and what place did
nationalism, patriotism and communalism, as well as conceptions of social reform,
progress, and revolutionary change, occupy in Indian historiography through the
nineteenth century? Gottlob devotes the last third of the book to the twentieth century,
and his attentiveness to the works of historians such as Devahuti, K. A. NilakantaSastri,
R. S. Sharma, and K. M. Panikkar, of whomthe present generation of historians whose
work has been shaped predominantly by postcolonial theory remain largely oblivious, is
4
commendable. Not surprisingly, the narrative is brought up to the present, concluding
with a section that recalls the emergence of womens histories and ecological histories, as
well as the enterprise, first sketched out in a little programmatic note by Ranajit Guhaon
colonialist and nationalist histories, that has come to be known as Subaltern Studies. It is
characteristic of Gottlobs ambition to remain objective, still cultivated to a remarkable
degree in the German academy, that Guhas note is reproduced without any attempt at
critical exegesis.
So long as one accepts Gottlobs framework of historical sources, his handbook of
historical thinking in India from around 1880 down to the present day will doubtless be
of pedagogic use, though even here one can occasionally question his judgment. What
J adunath Sarkar was to Indian historiography for the late nineteenth century, R. C.
Majumdar was to the middle portion of the twentieth century; and though it is in the
fitness of things that their communalist outlook, if not their unrepentant worship of facts
(which could nonetheless, in Sarkars case, be conjoined with dramatic flourishes), has
now banished them to the margins, at least two generations of Indian students were fed
on their histories. But they are not represented in Gottlobs volume. Moreover, if the
overlap between Gottlobs volume and Volume II of Theodore de Barys Sources of
Indian Tradition, which has never been advertised as a handbook of historical thinking, is
very considerable, then obviously one may ask what marks Gottlobs sources as
examples of historical thinking as such.
5
Moving beyond Gottlobs chosen framework, the questionsmultiply. In Maharashtra, for
example, as Tilak and the nationalist party gained ascendancy, historical plays came into
vogue; similarly, for the eighteenth century, bakhars remained the preeminent form of
historical expression. Gottlobs Handbook is, unfortunately, silent on these matters,
though attentiveness to them would have opened up Gottlobs field of inquiry. The
debate over the Babri Masjid was conducted at least as much in newspapers as in
propaganda tracts, government white papers, and scholarly works. What relationship do
newspapers, in English and Indian languages alike, bear to the rise of historical thinking
in India? Have newspapers been instrumental in advancing the study of history? If the
newspaper culture of India is in many ways distinct, how does it impact debates in
historiography? Or take another question: The film society movement played a crucial
role in the advent of regional cinemas. Can something similar be argued on behalf of
historical societies? Historians of India have been singularly indifferent to the question
of what constitutes an historical audience, and subsequent works on Indian
historiography will have to display greater sensitivity to such considerations.
Vinay Lal
Department of History
University of California, Los Angeles

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