Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History - Softcover

Thapar, Romila

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1784780650 ISBN 13: 9781784780654

Publisher: Verso Books, 2015

Synopsis

In 1026, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni raided the Hindu temple of Somanatha (Somnath in textbooks of the colonial period). The story of the raid has reverberated in Indian history, but largely during the raj. It was first depicted as a trauma for the Hindu population not in India, but in the House of Commons. The triumphalist accounts of the event in Turko-Persian chronicles became the main source for most eighteenth-century historians. It suited everyone and helped the British to divide and rule a multi-millioned subcontinent.

In her new book, Romila Thapar, the doyenne of Indian historians, reconstructs what took place by studying other sources, including local Sanskrit inscriptions, biographies of kings and merchants of the period, court epics and popular narratives that have survived. The result is astounding and undermines the traditional version of what took place. These findings also contest the current Hindu religious nationalism that constantly utilises the conventional version of this history.

About this title

Review:

"Romila Thapar is the most eminent Indian historian."--Eric Hobsbawm (in praise of The Penguin History of Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300)

About the Author:

Romila Thapar is Emeritus Professor in History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. She has served as visiting professor at Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania and is currently the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the South at the Library of Congress. Among her previous books are Ashoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, Indian Tales, and The Penguin History of Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300.

About this edition

• Publisher: Verso Books
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1784780650
• ISBN 13: 9781784780654
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288