History and Collective Memory in South Asia 1200-2000

What and how do we choose to remember—and to forget?

In this far-ranging and erudite exploration of the South Asian past, Sumit Guha presents regional traditions of social and historical memory in the context of world history, identifying the influence of varying forms of socio-political organization. He demonstrates how these traditions shaped the historiographic legacy inherited by the British in colonial India, how the creation of a centralized educational system and mass production of textbooks led unification of historical discourses under colonial auspices, and how these discourses diverged in the twentieth century as historical narratives were shaped by new postcolonial social frames.

Bringing together sources from a range of languages and regions, Guha provides the first intellectual history of the ways in which socially objective historical memory has been made across the subcontinent, before and after the impact of Western imperialism and the imposition of Western modes of thought. In doing so, History and Collective Memory in South Asia, 1200-2000 contributes to contemporary debates beyond the field of history that complicate the public’s understanding of objectivity and documentation.