History and Collective Memory in South Asia, 1200-2000

Product Description
In this far-ranging and erudite exploration of the South Asian past, Sumit Guha discusses the shaping of social and historical memory in world-historical context. He presents memory as the result of both remembering and forgetting and of the preservation, recovery, and decay of records. By describing how these processes work through sociopolitical organizations, Guha delineates the historiographic legacy acquired by the British in colonial India; the creation of the centralized educational system and mass production of textbooks that led to unification of historical discourses under colonial auspices; and the divergence of these discourses in the twentieth century under the impact of nationalism and decolonization.

Guha brings together sources from a range of languages and regions to provide the first intellectual history of the ways in which socially recognized historical memory has been made across the subcontinent. This thoughtful study contributes to debates beyond the field of history that complicate the understanding of objectivity and documentation in a seemingly post-truth world.
Review
"Guha's expertise in early modern Indian history allows him to explore "social structure and historical narration in western India" in great depth."―
Journal of Asian Studies

"Guha brings together sources from a range of languages and regions toprovide the rst intellectual history of the ways in which socially recognized historicalmemory has been made across the subcontinent. This thoughtful study contributes todebates beyond the eld of history that complicate the understanding of objectivityand documentation in a seemingly post-truth world."―
New Books in South Asian Studies

"Guha's book comes at a time when the authority of specialist historians is increasingly under challenge, while the gap between academic and public history seems larger and more in open conflict than ever. Through meticulous presentation of how the practice of history writing is shaped by the social-political context of the recording agents, Guha problematises the view that history writing can be seen as an autonomous cognitive practice of a specialised group."―
South Asia Research

"Much of this rich and exciting material has not been discussed in published form before. The subject of how South Asians have constructed the past has been an increasingly important one in the field; this book will become one of the most original and substantial contributions to this literature."―Douglas E. Haynes, author of
Small-Town Capitalism in Western India: Artisans, Merchants, and the Making of the Informal Economy, 1870–1960

"Guha reminds us that the now-standard Western method of history writing, as practiced and taught in university departments, is of fairly recent vintage. This book should go well beyond the usual circles of South Asia specialists to general readers interested in comparative historiography and epistemology."―Samira Sheikh, author of After Timur Left: Culture and Circulation in Fifteenth-Century North India

"Not only does Guha possess a mastery of a staggering diversity of historical practices in South Asia, his analysis extends to a thoughtful discussion of (and argument about) the origins and development of European history writing."―William R. Pinch, author of Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires

"Guha charts the rise of historical memory in South Asia in a way that moves past literary affect or philosophical predisposition, refusing to reduce his subject to a reconfiguration of Western historiography even while he traces parallels in colonial institutions. Instead, Guha engages everything from family lineages and modes of accounting, to grand memorial narratives of the rise and fall of dynasties, to give us a comprehensive study how social memory, wedded to evidence-based reasoning, transformed into the historical arts of South Asia, and finally how history matters even now in a 'post-truth' age."―Christian Nove