7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
More Historiography Than History, November 29, 2010
This review is from: Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy (Paperback)
NOTE: This review is for the 1997 edition.
This is an extremely brief review of about 200 years of history of the sub-continent, covering modern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (with extremely brief nods to Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan). It is written for college- or graduate-level readers or, more likely, professors of Indian or Pakistani history. Because the two authors are far more interested in discussing trends in South Asian historiography than in actually reporting the facts, I do not recommend this book for anyone interested in history.
The book starts with ancient history (Mohenjodaro and Harappa) and covers through 1997 (with updated material in later editions), but it is clear that the authors are more interested in the late colonial period, and far more interested in Partition and post-Partition. They breeze through the pre-Islamic era and the Mughals quickly and shallowly. That's understandable and expected in a book on "Modern" South Asia, but when they come to the colonial period, they still devote more time to causes, effects, and intellectual cross-currents than to what actually happened. For a reader with a very solid foundation in sub-continental history, the focus on how modern scholarship has changed traditional understandings may be a welcome change from a bare recitation of the facts. But that means this is less a work of history, and more a work of historigraphy. I finished it knowing more about what scholars think about what happened in India than about what happened in India.
A few examples: the authors introduce the Indian National Congress on p. 107, but never explain what it is, who was in it, and what it did, except for what can be gleaned piecemeal over then next 140 pages. We are told on p. 122 that when "viceroy Hardinge made a ceremonial entry on an elephant into New Delhi in 1912, he was greeted with a Bengali revolutionary's bomb." So was Hardinge killed? The authors do not say. More to the point, who was Hardinge? A viceroy who rode an elephant once, is all I can get from the text. Apparently someone named Radcliffe was responsible for drawing the partition lines. Who was Radcliffe? The authors don't say (and in a book primarily focused on Partition, that is an especially unusual omission). Maybe the best example pertains to Gen. Zia ul Haq: "When Zia vanished into fire and ash in August 1988 the fiscal crisis of the state was visible to all" (p. 234). That's certainly evocative, but if you don't already know that he was killed in a plane crash, it's also quite bizarre.
The authors write of the 1857 revolt that "[i]t is simpler, certainly far less controversial, to catalogue the course and extent of the rebellion than to analyze its character" (p. 92). Undoubtedly true. And yet, in a history book, that seems an important thing to do. That sentence captures the essence of my view of the book: this is a history where the authors forgot the include the section on history.
Read this book if you already know the history of South Asia, and if you want an admirable bibliograhy. Otherwise, look elsewhere.
NOTE: If you find my review unhelpful, please tell me why in a comment.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Concise--Provides new perspectives on history of South Asia, March 30, 2001
I enjoyed reading this book, it is a concise and easy reading. It makes few but strong points--political economy of colonialism, freedom movement and also describes, what is known as the 'People's history' of South Asia. More focus has been given to Bengal, Punjab and Tamil Nadu. I wish there was some on more stuff on Sindh, NWFP, Nepal and so on.
A must read for those who are inteested in South Asia.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Good overview but lacking anything new or revealing, January 1, 2000
By A Customer
Although this book may serve to guide people through South Asia, it doesn't really explain or go into the complexities of the region. In the case of Pakistan we do not get a complete picture of its varied past as western Pakistan isn't South Asia, but is instead more Middle Eastern as it is populated by speakers of Iranian languages (as opposed to the Indic tongues spoken in eastern Pakistan) Pashtuns and Baluchis. Also the Hindu-Muslim struggles are reduced to religion rather than adding the linguistic and cultural divisions prevalent to this day. For being tauted as revisionist there seems to be little revisionism just different wording.
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