Source materials for understanding Indian history and culture

[Vyom]

Rayc, found one of the free legally downloadable versions of the works of your uncle:

Political History of Ancient India: From the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty, Calcutta: University of Calcutta (1923):


http://www.archive.org/download/politicalhistory00raycuoft/politicalhistory00raycuoft.pdf

Thanks for the link, would sure read this in free time.

Ah I so wish for a tablet now. I have a plethora of books in pdf to read.

 

[balai_c]

An Advanced History of India (Madras, 1946; last reprint in 1981) (authored with R.C. Majumdar and Kalikinkar Datta)

For this book ,at-least, I already have uploaded the link,guys.

 

[Vyom]

Read Prof Hem Chandra, Raychaudhuri's (Charmichael Professor of Ancient Indian History and Culture):

Materials for the Study of the Early History of the Vaishnava Sect, Calcutta: University of Calcutta (1920)
Political History of Ancient India: From the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty, Calcutta: University of Calcutta (1923)
Studies in Indian Antiquities, Calcutta: University of Calcutta (1932)
Vikramaditya in History and Legend, Vikrama-volume, Scindia Oriental Institute (1948)
An Advanced History of India (Madras, 1946; last reprint in 1981) (authored with R.C. Majumdar and Kalikinkar Datta)

The Political History of Ancient India by Prof. H.C. Raychaudhuri is a milestone in Indian historiography and has earned him commendation from the students and scholars of India and abroad for reconstructing the history of ancient India through his thorough research. He gave challenge to colonial historiography, and earned immortal fame for his contributions to Vaishnavism.

You have a legacy, how terrific is that.

 

[Ray]

Terrifying since I cannot match up!

 

[Vyom]

Si-Yu-Ki: Hiuen Tsang's account of India (particularly Buddhism) and king Harsh Vardhan.


Si-yu-ki, Buddhist records of the Western world; : Hsüan-tsang, ca.596-664 : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive

 

[ejazr]

Nehru's letters to Indira Gandhi as his daughter were a very nice read when I was in school that does a bird eye view of not only Indian history but global history as well. They are published under the title letters from a Father to a Daughter. He also did write a separate voluminous Glimpses of World History and the Discovery of India which covered world history and Indian history respectively

The retd. SC judge Markandey Katju's speech on a general topic of What is India was also very interesting and insightful. Below is an excerpt and if you are interested you can read the entire speech at the link below.

Markandey Katju: What is India? - Times Of India

Friends,

I am deeply honoured to be invited to speak before all of you. My time is limited, as I was told I should speak for 30 minutes and after that there will be a question answer session. As my main speech will be restricted to 30 minutes, I may come to the topic of discussion immediately, that is, What is India? I will present before you five thesis for your consideration.

(i) India is broadly a country of immigrants like North America. Over 92% people living in India are not the original inhabitants of India. Their ancestors came from outside, mainly from the North West.

(ii) Because India is a country of immigrants like North America there is tremendous diversity in India - so many religions, castes, languages, ethnic groups etc.

(iii) Despite the tremendous diversity in India, by the interaction and intermingling of these immigrants who came into India a common culture emerged in India which can broadly be called the Sanskrit-Urdu culture, which is broadly the culture of India.

(iv) Because of the tremendous diversity in India the only policy which can work and hold our country together is secularism and giving equal respect to all communities, otherwise our country cannot survive for one day.

(v) India is passing through a transitional period, transition from feudal agricultural society to modern Industrial society. This is a very painful and agonizing period in history. If you read the history of Europe from the 16th to 19th Centuries you will find that this was a horrible period in Europe. Only after going through that fire, in which there were wars, revolutions, turmoil, intellectual ferment, chaos, social churning, etc., modern society emerged in Europe. India is presently going through that fire. We are going through a very painful and agonizing period in our history which I think will last for around another 20 years. I may now briefly elaborate these theses.

On the partition specific history, I would recommend In the Shadow of the Great Game by ADC to Mountbatten Narendra Singh Sarila as well as Wali Khan's book- the son of Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan - Facts are Sacred (http://www.awaminationalparty.org/books/factsarefacts.pdf)

Here is an old article about Wali Khan from the daily times to whet the appetite for his book

Daily Times - Wali Khan leaves behind his 'mark of treason'
Soon after 9/11 and the American invasion of Afghanistan, Khan Abdul Wali Khan would address a press conference in Peshawar. It would be his last major political activity. In that meeting with the media, Wali Khan said that had the US not attacked Afghanistan, that country would have turned into an Arab colony since Osama Bin Laden had a well-equipped army of 16,000 people which far outnumbered the trained soldiers in the Afghan army.

Exactly four years later, this writer got a chance to meet him at his Wali Bagh residence in Charsadda. He had been bed-ridden for over a year. His speech had become incoherent. Nor would his family allow visitors, particularly journalists seeking interviews. Thanks to Begum Wali, I was allowed to meet him in his bedroom.

"Who is he?", Khan Wali Khan enquired in Pushto from Sangeen Wali, his youngest son. "Baba, he's a journalist from Karachi," Sangeen replied. "Is he a Pushtoon?" asked Wali Khan. "Baba he's a journalist who has read your book, 'Facts are Sacred'. He has questions about your book," Sangeen said in English. "How are you?" Wali Khan now addressed me. "Good," I replied.

We remained with him for a short while and then met again in the sitting room. Wali Khan's undiminishing preference for "Pushto" and "Pushtoon" brought to mind, among other things, the speech he delivered at Darul Ulum Haqqaniya, Akhora Khattak, in the 70s. He told a gathering there that the ulema and NAP's present close relations were due to their identity of views about Islam and Pushto. As a result, Mufti Mahmood was forced to make a U-turn on his statement that Urdu would remain the official language of the Frontier, stating in the provincial assembly that Pushto would be the language of the province and the adoption of Urdu was only a 'stop gap' arrangement.

I noticed the walls and pillars of his house, adorned with his pictures and those of major historical figures from this region, such as Bacha Khan, Dr Khan Saheb, Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, the late Shah of Iran Daud Khan and Dr Najibullah of Afghanistan. He and his family had always enjoyed very cordial relations with the Congress leadership, but they have not met much since the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1990. By this time, Wali Khan had also withdrawn from active politics. He could not speak much because of his poor health.

It was disturbing to find that Wali Khan could not speak of the British military operations he witnessed in South Waziristan in August-September 1946, or of the similarities with the current operation against Al Qaeda and Taliban sympathisers. He was not to be bothered for his account of Nehru's visit to the tribal areas in October 1946, or the role played by the then NWFP governor, Sir Olaf Caroe. Nor would he draw parallels between the military operations in Balochistan in the 1970s and the current upheavals in that province. Nor would he shed light on how Gen Zia offered him a government through Gen Fazl-e-Haq and later withdrew the offer.

A highly controversial politician because of his and his predecessors' vehement opposition to the creation of Pakistan, he was nevertheless a treasure trove of history, pre- and post-Independence. He was considered one of the most learned politicians in Pakistan, even as he neared the end of his political career. Iqbal Akhund, adviser on national security and foreign issues during Benazir Bhutto's first government, writes in his highly acclaimed 'Trial and Error: The Advent and Eclipse of Benazir Bhutto':

"The opposition's partisan agenda was very much in evidence at the joint session of Parliament that met on 10 February. Benazir opened the session in the afternoon with a speech delivered alternately in Urdu and English, sounding, as a result, 'somewhat disjointed and not very coherent', as one newspaper wrote the next day...

"However, the speech delivered by the opposition's co-leader, Khan Wali Khan, struck an unexpected note and set the dovecots aflutter on all sides of the House. Kashmir, he said, was a problem inherited by the present government and it would be unfair to blame it for the existing situation. Kashmir was lost long ago, he went on, by Pakistan's own repeated mistakes, recalling that it was Jinnah who had insisted that the rulers of princely states and not their people should decide the affiliation of a state with India or Pakistan.

"Wali Khan also referred to Pakistan's rejection of Sardar Patel's supposed offer: 'You lay off Hyderabad, we lay off Kashmir.' Why, the Khan asked, had Jinnah accepted the accession of Junagadh, a state with an overwhelming Hindu majority and not contiguous to Pakistan? He blamed Jinnah also for giving carte blanche to Cyril Radcliffe and agreeing that his award should be final and not subject to appeal, whereas India had wanted to provide for an appeal. As for the Simla Accord, Wali Khan reminded members that it had been ratified by the National Assembly, and if now they wanted to renounce it then the Assembly would have formally to abrogate it.

"Wali Khan got a big hand from the treasury benches. On the opposition side there was first a rustle of surprise and then an embarrassed hush as the Khan spoke on..."

Wali Khan remained committed to his views. He felt there was an overt British tilt towards the Muslim League. In 'Facts are Sacred', he writes: "I used to think that Bacha Khan had become unduly embittered with the colonial rulers because of the agonies he and his followers had suffered at their hands. I was particularly sceptical about the Congress charges that the British were responsible for fanning communal passions within the country to further their imperialistic designs. I used to think that such accusations were exercises in finding scapegoats ... But I had not imagined that the truth was infinitely uglier than their portrayal of it. The evidence was there in black and white, written and signed by the guilty ones themselves, secured for posterity in their own official library - the communications of the highest British dignitary in India, the viceroy, and the minister concerned with Indian affairs in Whitehall."

He felt that the Muslim League was playing into the hands of the British. "Britain was resolved that there should be no election at the Centre. After the War had broken out and India too had been declared party to it, she got a good excuse. She also received encouragement in this from Muslim League leaders. Here is what the Viceroy writes on October 7, 1939, about the advice he received from Nawab Ismail, President of UP Muslim League. 'The Nawab suggested that it was essential that any declaration should make it clear that a democratic system at the Centre is not acceptable to the Muslim community and went on to urge that the Congress claim to speak for India and to control defence was perfectly inadmissible.'

"This was strange logic. The Congress which had won election in eight provinces could not speak for India: while the Muslim League, which could not form a ministry even in a single province, had the right of veto."

These "anti-Pakistan" views meant Wali Khan could never become a national leader. But, as his close friend Sherbaz Khan Mazari writes in 'A Journey to Disillusionment', he should best be remembered as a patriot: "On Sept 28 [1974] a serious attempt was made on Wali Khan's life as he was driving to Swat. Both his driver and guard were killed but Wali Khan luckily emerged unscathed. This incident had little effect on the NAP party president. He remained undaunted and continued steadfastly with his role as Leader of the Opposition. Bhutto knew the power of the printed press and used it to destroy the image of his opponents in the eyes of the gullible public. Wali Khan was to carry this 'mark of treason' for many years to follow, until sections of the press supporting the government of the day decided to exonerate him ... The very same Wali Khan, twenty years later, would be welcomed as a political partner by a prime minister from central Punjab [Nawaz Sharif] and be hailed by him as a Pakistani patriot..."

Both books are based on archived sources from the British India office and give a really good insight on the dynamics of that era. Sarila's book in particular beings into focus the foreign policy dimensions of the US and UK by referring to archived documents in both these countries.

 

[Vyom]

Friends,

I am deeply honoured to be invited to speak before all of you. My time is limited, as I was told I should speak for 30 minutes and after that there will be a question answer session. As my main speech will be restricted to 30 minutes, I may come to the topic of discussion immediately, that is, What is India? I will present before you five thesis for your consideration.

(i) India is broadly a country of immigrants like North America. Over 92% people living in India are not the original inhabitants of India. Their ancestors came from outside, mainly from the North West.

(ii) Because India is a country of immigrants like North America there is tremendous diversity in India - so many religions, castes, languages, ethnic groups etc.

Referring to AIT as factual? Not a good idea. I would hardly call that insightful.

 

[balai_c]

A very interesting book by R C Majumdar. This book , for a change , focuses on the daily life of people in ancient India, instead of highlighting in the rulers. This book even included the ceremony of selecting their kings, something unheard of anywhere else in the world.

Corporate life in Ancient India

 

[Virendra]

Efforts to bring some old manuscripts back to demystify the history. Although the intention this time is to solve Belgaum dispute between Karnataka and Maharashtra.
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Tiger papers - The Times of India
Excerpts:

These documents have been lying with the British Library's India Office Records for centuries now. In 2010, the state government constituted a team to visit France and the UK to identify documents stored in libraries and archives there that could be vital to the understanding of the history of places that lie within modern-day Karnataka
...
...
It's believed that these documents would throw new light on how the Mysore 'tigers' - Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan - managed their kingdoms, dealt with agrarian crises, and conducted revenue administration. Some of the papers also talk about the offensive and defensive alliances entered into by various kingdoms, which frequently changed power equations in southern India. The documents of the Kittur kingdom are perhaps more important, given the fact that in India, records about this kingdom are few and far between. Kittur was annexed to the British empire in 1824 under the English law of inheritance, which was eventually codified by Lord Dalhousie as the Doctrine of Lapse. And its ruler, Rani Chennamma, had become a martyr fighting the British, 33 years before Rani Lakshmibai became famous for a similar feat.

But what has got Karnataka more excited about this unfolding affair is the possibility of these documents helping it make a stronger claim over Belgaum. The district has been a bone of contention between Karnataka and Maharashtra since the 1950s, when the States Reorganisation Act gave the district to the state of Mysore amid protests by Maharashtra.
...
...
The place has had a turbulent history with too many powers staking claim over it in different periods. The Ratta dynasty, a branch of the Rashtrakutas, can be credited as the builders of the modern city in the 13th century AD. Then came the Yadavas of Devgiri, the Delhi sultans, the Vijaynagar rulers, the Bahmani sultans, the Adilshahi rulers of Bijapur and the Mughals under Aurangzeb; but with the weakening of Mughal authority, the Maratha Peshwas took control of the place. In 1776, Belgaum was overrun by Hyder Ali's army. But once again, this control proved to be short-lived, as the Marathas wrested back the region from Mysore. In 1818, however, the Marathas themselves were defeated and the district was integrated into the presidency of Bombay.

But not all historians agree that a decades-old boundary dispute could be sorted out on the basis of historical documents. Pune-based historian Ninad Bedekar says that if Karnataka can produce historical evidence, Maharashtra, too, can do the same. "There are more Marathi speakers in Belgaum than Kannada. The Marathas had control over this region ever since the time of Shivaji. But it was Hyder Ali alone, a Kannadiga , who had fought by the side of Marathas against the British under Warren Hastings when even the Bhonsle of Nagpur, a Maratha, colluded with the English. The key to harmony lies in the unity of the people. Our forefathers understood it. Sadly, we've forgotten it..."

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Its an irony that British got hold of our historical records and have managed them as well. Places like the British Library and the Royal Asiatic Society's Library have many such old treasures, a lot of persian manuscipts as well. Sometimes a few of them have been dug out to light by the historians.

Also relevant is - India's Missing Historians | History Today
Missing historians. A big hapless thing that Indian Historiography is.
Excerpts:

Ancient Indians believed poets are not only more valuable than historians but better able to write history. Kalhana, author of Rajatarngini, a twelfth-century history of the kings of Kashmir, began his book by saying, 'who but a poet can bring back the past in sweet composition, and what can make it intelligible if his art cannot?' As R. C. Majumdar, doyen of Indian historians, lamented in Ancient India (1968), 'One of the gravest defects of Indian culture, which defies rational explanation, is the aversion of Indians to writing history. They applied themselves to all conceivable branches of literature and excelled in many of them, but they never seriously took to the writing of history,' with the result that 'for a great deal of our knowledge of ancient Indian history we are indebted to foreigners.'

Regards,
Virendra

 

[Virendra]

R C Majumdar and Jadunath Sarkar were not court historians nor did they belong to any political/ideological camps.
One could expect from them a more balanced, factual and reliable view at the history.
Lot of our history and correspondence generated during Mughal rule is in Persian. You can find a huge pile of Persian literature translated in English at this link. I've also found the ones like 'Akbarnama' of Abu Fazl.
And then again, my favorite abode for history - Digital Library of India .. free !!
PM me if anyone needs help to read/download from that place. It sure is a treasure.
You can find a lot to read/download here as well (again free) - http://www.archive.org/

Regards,
Virendra

 

[balai_c]

Thanks virendra, that is a huge help.I was looking for non partisan sources.This endeavor can succeed only through collective effort.

 

[Virendra]

Sorry I forgot to inesrt the link for translated Persian literature - Packard Humanities Institute - Persian Literature in Translation

 

[civfanatic]

Library of Historical Maps of India, from Vedic to Modern times (has some useful textual commentary as well):
Digital South Asia Library_ Schwartzberg Atlas


A useful compendium of literary and epigraphical primary sources:
http://www.sdstate.edu/projectsouthasia/Docs/index.cfm

 

[Singh]

The Wonder that was India Vol 1 and 2

The Discovery of India by Nehru

The Argumentative Indian by Sen

 

[Iamanidiot]

The Wonder that was India Vol 1 and 2

The Discovery of India by Nehru

The Argumentative Indian by Sen

Read the two volumes of the wonder that was India and alsor ead the argumentative indian.How is the discovery of India

 

[balai_c]

Ancient India As Described By Megasthenes And Arrian by J. W Mccrindle

This book described India as described by ancient Greek travelers like megasthenes in their memoirs..

 

[balai_c]

A Code of Gentoo laws, or, Ordinations of the pundits : from a Persian translation, made from the original, written in the Shanscrit language

 

[Koovie]

guys please suggest me some links of websites that cover the Indian history of the early 20th century (Independence movement etc..)

except of wiki

 

[balai_c]

A book on Chalukya dynasty of Gujarat:

the chalukyas of Gujarat

 

[balai_c]

guys please suggest me some links of websites that cover the Indian history of the early 20th century (Independence movement etc..)

except of wiki

Try 2ndlook.wordpress.com

quicktake.wordpress.com/