Historiography of India

[11] Al-Biruni stated the following about local Indian histriography:[10] "Unfortunately the Hindus do not pay much attention to the historical order of things, they are very careless in relating the chronological succession of their kings, and when they are pressed for information and are at a loss, not knowing what to say, they invariably take to tale-telling.

[22] The Chinese traveller Hiuen Tsang mentioned that in every province of India, there would be officials who would be responsible for documenting in-writing "good and evil events, calamities, and fortunate occurrences".

[22] There are historical works authored by the Chalukya, Rashtrakuta, Pala dynastical historiographies and also regional historiographical traditions in Kashmir, Sindhu, Gurjara, Jejakabhukti, Kamarupa, Kerala, Hoyasala, Andhra, Kalinga, and Maharashtra.

[11] The Orientalist approach was influenced both by imperialist attitudes and interests, and also fascination for the "exotic" East for Mediterranean and European writers and thinkers, captured in images by artists, that is embodied in a repeatedly-surfacing theme in the history of ideas in the West, called "Orientalism".

The term Orientalism has come to acquire negative connotations in some quarters and is interpreted to refer to the study of the East by Westerners shaped by the attitudes of the era of European imperialism in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Company rule in India favored Orientalism as a technique for developing and maintaining positive relations with the Indians—until the 1820s, when the influence of "anglicists" such as Thomas Babington Macaulay and John Stuart Mill led to the promotion of a Western-style education.

Scholarship often was intertwined with prejudicial racist and religious presumptions,[26] to which the new biological sciences tended to contribute until the end of the Second World War.

[27] Since its publication, most academic discourse began to use the term "Orientalism" to refer to a general patronizing Western attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian, and North African societies.

In Said's analysis, the West essentializes these societies as static and undeveloped—thereby fabricating a view of Oriental culture that can be studied, depicted, and reproduced in the service of imperial power.

[37] In The New Imperial Histories Reader, Stephen Howe has assembled articles by critics who take aim especially at P. J. Marshall, D. K. Fieldhouse, Robinson and Gallagher, and Peter Cain and A. G.

He recommends a deeper appreciation of Indian initiatives, and more attention to the emerging importance of public life in many areas of society rather than just a concentration on politics.

[41] Historians in this school included Rajendralal Mitra, R. G. Bhandarkar, Romesh Chunder Dutt, Anant Sadashiv Altekar, K. P. Jayaswal, Hem Chandra Raychaudhuri, Radha Kumud Mukherjee, R. C. Majumdar, and K. A. Nilakanta Sastri ,.

[77][78][79][80] This approach is noted for denying the Indo-Aryan migrations, as they consider those whose ancestry and religion have origins outside of the Indian subcontinent to be aliens, namely Muslims, Christians, and communists.

[85] After a rival political party, the Indian National Congress, came into power, efforts were undertaken in 2004 to reverse the saffronisation of textbooks previously made by BJP.

Since there can be no true consensus about that era due to divided and deeply entrenched political motivations, history for that period is highly subjective and particularly vulnerable to the influence of the textbook writer's sympathies and outlook.

[88] Critics have said that the changes to the textbooks have portrayed the medieval period as "a dark age of Islamic colonial rule which snuffed out the glories of the Hindu and Buddhist empires that preceded it".

[84] The state government of Rajasthan reportedly spent Rs 37 crore to reprint 36 textbooks used for classes 1 to 8 for the 2016–2017 academic session that will be based on an agenda that would promote Indian culture by including historical figures, such as Maharaja Surajmal, Hem Chandra, and Guru Gobind Singh.

According to Christophe Jaffrelot, a French political scientist specialising in South Asia, the Hindutva ideology has roots in an era where the fiction in ancient Indian mythology and Vedic antiquity was presumed to be valid.

They created a culture — an ensemble of mythologies, legends, epic stories, philosophy, art and architecture, laws and rites, feasts, and festivals.

[98] The premises of early Hindu nationalist thought, states Chetan Bhatt, reflected the colonial era European scholarship and Orientalism of its times.

[99] Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, a Fellow of the British Academy and a scholar of Politics and Philosophy of Religion, states that Hindutva is a form of nationalism that is expounded differently by its opponents and its proponents.

[102][103] For instance, in 2011, Hindutva activists successfully led a charge to remove an essay about the multiple narratives of Ramayanas from Delhi University's history syllabus.

[104] Romila Thapar, a world-renowned historian, has faced Hindutva-led attacks, with the claims that her works present Marxist and Eurocentric points of view.

[109] The Association for Asian Studies noted that Hindutva, described as a "majoritarian ideological doctrine" different from Hinduism, resorted to "increasing attacks on numerous scholars, artists, and journalists who critically analyze its politics".

The issue was actually raised by conservative British politician Edmund Burke who in the 1780s vehemently attacked the East India Company, claiming that Warren Hastings and other top officials had ruined the Indian economy and society.

Ray accuses the British of depleting the food and money stocks and imposing high taxes that helped cause the terrible famine of 1770, which killed a third of the people of Bengal.

[112] Marshall argues that recent scholarship has reinterpreted the view that the prosperity of the formerly benign Mughal rule gave way to poverty and anarchy.

The British largely delegated control to regional Mughal rulers and sustained a generally prosperous economy for the rest of the 18th century.

Marshall notes the British went into partnership with Indian bankers and raised revenue through local tax administrators and kept the old Mughal rates of taxation.

Professor Ray agrees that the East India Company inherited an onerous taxation system that took one-third of the produce of Indian cultivators.