At a time when travelling physically to far off and unknown lands is not possible for us, books provide immediate respite and help us take off with the help of our imagination. What’s even better is that we can time-travel and visit key moments and figures of history who have shaped the world we know and live in. After all, the more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.
Here are five books that’ll help you revisit history and learn about it:
1.The New Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan
A brand new book from the Sunday Times and internationally-bestselling author of The Silk Roads
The New Silk Roads takes a fresh look at the relationships being formed along the length and breadth of the ancient trade routes today. The world is changing dramatically, and in an age of Brexit and Trump, the themes of isolation and fragmentation permeating the western world stand in sharp contrast to events along the Silk Roads, where ties are being strengthened and mutual cooperation established.
This prescient contemporary history provides a timely reminder that we live in a world that is profoundly interconnected. Following the Silk Roads eastwards from Europe through to China, by way of Russia and the Middle East, Peter Frankopan assesses the global reverberations of continual shifts in the centre of power—all too often absent from headlines in the west.
The New Silk Roads asks us to re-examine who we are and where we stand in the world, illuminating the themes on which all our lives and livelihoods depend.
2. Partition Voices by Kavita Puri
“Partition Voices is probably the closest thing to a partition memorial currently on offer… Heartfelt and beautifully judged” – John Keay, Literary Review
Dotted across homes in Britain are people who were witnesses to one of the most tumultuous events of the twentieth century. Yet their memory of India’s partition has been shrouded in silence. Kavita Puri’s father was twelve when he found himself one of the millions of Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims caught up in the devastating aftermath of a hastily-drawn border. For seventy years he remained silent—like so many—about the horrors he had seen.
When her father finally spoke out, opening up a forgotten part of Puri’s family history, she was compelled to seek out the stories of South Asians who were once subjects of the British Raj, and are now British citizens. Determined to preserve these accounts—of the end of Empire and the difficult birth of two nations—here Puri records a series of remarkable first-hand testimonies, as well as those of their children and grandchildren whose lives are shaped by partition’s legacy. With empathy, nuance and humanity, Puri weaves a breathtaking tapestry of human experience over a period of seven decades that trembles with life; an epic of ruptured families and friendships, extraordinary journeys and daring rescue missions that reverberates with pain, loss and compassion.
The division of the Indian subcontinent happened far away, but it is also a very British story. Many of those affected by partition are now part of the fabric of British contemporary life, but their lives continue to be touched by this traumatic event. Partition Voices breaks the silence and confronts the difficult truths at the heart of Britain’s shared history with South Asia.
3. The Anarchy by William Dalrymple
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S BEST BOOKS OF 2019
In August 1765, the East India Company defeated the young Mughal emperor and forced him to establish a new administration in his richest provinces. Run by English merchants who collected taxes using a ruthless private army, this new regime saw the East India Company transform itself from an international trading corporation into something much more unusual: an aggressive colonial power in the guise of a multinational business.
William Dalrymple tells the remarkable story of the East India Company as it has never been told before, unfolding a timely cautionary tale of the first global corporate power.
Allahu Akbar by Manimugdha Sharma
That he was a medieval king who, with a progressive bent of mind, dared to look ahead to find that common ground for all his people to stand together. That he was a medieval king who is today tempting us to look back into the past to see our future through his eyes.
Ever since the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government came to power in 2014 with Narendra Modi as the prime minister, an organised campaign began to vilify Emperor Akbar and the Mughals. While there were always voices that tried to project the Mughals as just another ‘Islamic empire’, ignoring the civilisational impact they had on India, even for them Akbar was a shining light in an otherwise era of darkness. Those talking in terms of easy binaries always found a ‘good Muslim’ in Akbar and a ‘bad Muslim’ in Aurangzeb.
Academics and other liberals who could have countered this incorrect portrayal did not do it, dismissing such claims as mere screeches by the fringe that do not deserve any attention. But with the Hindu Right assuming political power, the fringe today has become the mainstream. And Akbar is no longer the ‘good Muslim’.
Why is there such hatred for Akbar, once the most loved king in India? What was the journey like, from being great to not-so-great? And how is this India different from Akbar’s Hindustan? Has he become irrelevant in an India where growing Hindu nationalism threatens to alter the nature of the Indian state from a secular republic to a theocracy? Or is Akbar even more relevant today given the backdrop of hate that we all find ourselves in?
Allahu Akbar seeks to find answers to these questions while providing a profile sketch of the emperor, his empire and his times.
Gandhi’s Hinduism by M.J. Akbar
Gandhi wanted India’s unity at any price. Jinnah wanted partition at any cost.
Gandhi, a devout Hindu, believed faith could nurture the civilizational harmony of India, a land where every religion had flourished. Jinnah, a political Muslim rather than a practicing believer, was determined to carve up a syncretic subcontinent in the name of Islam. His confidence came from a wartime deal with Britain, embodied in the ‘August Offer’ of 1940. Gandhi’s strength lay in ideological commitment which was, in the end, ravaged by the communal violence that engineered partition. The price of this epic confrontation, paid by the people, has stretched into generations.
M.J. Akbar’s book, meticulously researched from original sources, reveals the astonishing blunders, lapses and conscious chicanery that permeated the politics of seven explosive years between 1940 and 1947. Facts from the archives challenge the conventional narrative and disturb the conspiratorial silence used to protect the image of famous icons. Gandhi’s Hinduism: The Struggle Against Jinnah’s Islam delves into both the ideology and the personality of those who shaped the fate of a region between Iran and Burma. It is essential reading for anyone interested in modern Indian history, and the past as a prelude to the future.
Let us know in the comments section on which books interest you and we will be back with another list of recommendations very soon. Stay safe and #ReadwithBloomsbury.