On Interpretations of Indian History : Colonial history of India
This is a summary of a part of the first chapter 'Perceptions of the Past', from Romila Thapar's book Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300. Prinsep Ghat, Kolkata, in memory of James Prinsep, an English scholar, orientalist and antiquary. Romila Thapar lends great simplicity to her writing by sparing the amateur from crashing into a wall of academic babble. Instead she slowly introduces the reader to nuances of the subject. In the book's introduction, she brings clarity to the nature and meaning of history as a subject, when she says "History is no information that is handed down unchanged from generation to generation". In a line, she demolishes the common myth surrounding history, as an objective series of events, as a narrative that cannot be otherwise, as a true story. She further says "Historical situations need to be explained and explanations draw on analyses of the evidence, providing generalizations that derive from the logic of the a...