1 00:00:05,040 --> 00:00:12,300 I'm sorry I didn't, you know, allow anybody to say hi. Do you also walk breathlessly long to get to this? 2 00:00:12,300 --> 00:00:16,950 OK. So, yeah, no worries. 3 00:00:16,950 --> 00:00:21,990 I can see we're late now. So I'm assuming we're broadcasting. Hello, everyone. 4 00:00:21,990 --> 00:00:28,560 Hi. Welcome to the third modern South Asian Studies seminar of this academic term at the University of Oxford. 5 00:00:28,560 --> 00:00:33,870 I'm very, very sorry for the slight delay in joining. We had some technical difficulties. 6 00:00:33,870 --> 00:00:37,260 We all hate teams, of course, and there were some problems with getting it going. 7 00:00:37,260 --> 00:00:42,930 But we are very, very delighted to see Manon make an appearance with this gorgeous Moglia as opposed to behind them. 8 00:00:42,930 --> 00:00:51,750 So we're all sort of sceptical. My name is Netcom Martin, and it's my very great pleasure to be chairing the seminar today with Professor Emma. 9 00:00:51,750 --> 00:00:55,530 I'm going to do a very quick introduction of Professor Emma. 10 00:00:55,530 --> 00:01:04,230 And he's going to then launch into stock. But before I do so, just a quick housekeeping announcement. 11 00:01:04,230 --> 00:01:09,630 So Professor Emmett's going to speak for about 45 to 50 minutes. You will see that there is a queue in a box. 12 00:01:09,630 --> 00:01:17,550 Right. Which is open at this point. If you have any questions during Professor Woodstock, please feel free to type them in. 13 00:01:17,550 --> 00:01:21,300 And hopefully Professor Smith can pick them up at the end of a stock. 14 00:01:21,300 --> 00:01:29,960 We could have a fairly brief Q&A for about 15 to 20 minutes after stock for the sort of public end of the lecture. 15 00:01:29,960 --> 00:01:34,740 I think yeah. So I think that's the only sort of housekeeping announcement to make. 16 00:01:34,740 --> 00:01:40,380 So Professor Emma is associate professor in history at the University of Columbia. 17 00:01:40,380 --> 00:01:44,350 His it has a specialisation include intellectual history in South and Southeast Asia, 18 00:01:44,350 --> 00:01:49,290 critical philosophy of history, colonial, colonial and anticolonial thought. 19 00:01:49,290 --> 00:01:51,390 He has extensive background in digital history, 20 00:01:51,390 --> 00:01:57,630 in the history of archives of the Global South and in the problems of access and control of digitised materials. 21 00:01:57,630 --> 00:02:00,320 Now the summit is widely published. 22 00:02:00,320 --> 00:02:08,760 His had a book out in 2016, which was called The Book of Conquest The Charge NAMA and Muslim Origins in South Asia. 23 00:02:08,760 --> 00:02:16,110 But today he is, however, going to be talking about his brand new book, which is sort of fresh off the press and is already creating waves. 24 00:02:16,110 --> 00:02:23,370 And we're all sort of reading voted and hearing about it. And so we are absolutely delighted to have him speaking to us today about this book. 25 00:02:23,370 --> 00:02:29,460 The book is called The Loss of Hindustan The Mention of India. It was published by Harvard University Press just a few months back. 26 00:02:29,460 --> 00:02:39,440 Indeed, 2020. So although to end with apologies again for the slight delay in starting the seminar, over to Professor Edward. 27 00:02:39,440 --> 00:02:47,600 Thank you, Danica. Everyone I relive can I know, let the world can see us. 28 00:02:47,600 --> 00:02:55,340 Yes. And hopefully because I'm getting some text messages that that this is the event has not started. 29 00:02:55,340 --> 00:02:59,900 That's why I was asking if the world can see us or hear us give some indication. 30 00:02:59,900 --> 00:03:05,000 World security box. And I didn't. 31 00:03:05,000 --> 00:03:11,900 So I apologise. I apologise for the late start. 32 00:03:11,900 --> 00:03:22,490 And I apologise that I wasn't able to get my credentials sorted into different e-mail accounts, which led to, you know, our today. 33 00:03:22,490 --> 00:03:27,440 So thank you. Let me start, however, formally by thanking my gracious, 34 00:03:27,440 --> 00:03:34,700 gracious and kind hosts for inviting me to your forum and giving you this opportunity to speak to you today. 35 00:03:34,700 --> 00:03:36,560 I'm thankful to Professor Bunker. 36 00:03:36,560 --> 00:03:45,710 Professor O'Hanlan Midnight, Stephen BNA, Professor Matau and of course, Clare Sledder Selter, who tried her very best to help me. 37 00:03:45,710 --> 00:03:49,730 And I let everyone down on that end. 38 00:03:49,730 --> 00:04:01,730 So it's a great honour to be here today and to talk to you about the work that Professor Matthew mentioned has recently come out. 39 00:04:01,730 --> 00:04:05,910 And the title of the talk today is A Contrapuntal History of Hindustan. 40 00:04:05,910 --> 00:04:11,360 And I want to preface what I'm going to do today just to give you overall pictures. 41 00:04:11,360 --> 00:04:27,980 I want to try to say a little bit about the kind of methodological framework of this talk and and then get a bump jump into a little bit of specifics, 42 00:04:27,980 --> 00:04:39,140 mainly because I think oftentimes with the book, when you're introducing books to audiences, it's difficult to figure out, you know, what? 43 00:04:39,140 --> 00:04:41,670 How do you know? Do you give a overall picture? 44 00:04:41,670 --> 00:04:52,190 Do you do you kind of jump in to some of the detail that I thought, because this is a forum with students as well as scholars. 45 00:04:52,190 --> 00:04:58,160 I should actually give some real content. So with that, let me begin. 46 00:04:58,160 --> 00:05:06,010 My my my reflections today. How does one think about Hindustan after colonialism? 47 00:05:06,010 --> 00:05:10,910 The previously colonised subject faces a stark challenge when it comes to writing history. 48 00:05:10,910 --> 00:05:16,190 The disciplinary histories and classrooms and research institutes are often written by erstwhile colonisers. 49 00:05:16,190 --> 00:05:21,600 Yet are paradoxically the only legible form of recognition afforded to the colonised. 50 00:05:21,600 --> 00:05:26,630 The previously colonised subsects also learnt history through origin remits. 51 00:05:26,630 --> 00:05:34,460 These myths are prevalent in the memoir On Grandmothers Knees Inside of political, social, cultural, ethnic and Linguistic Identities. 52 00:05:34,460 --> 00:05:38,840 These originary myths, whether or not their inventions do not feel as such. 53 00:05:38,840 --> 00:05:43,250 Do not feel inventions. They lived in even natural. 54 00:05:43,250 --> 00:05:48,020 In the subcontinent, the radical difference between Hindus as outsiders and Muslims, 55 00:05:48,020 --> 00:05:57,470 Hindus as insiders and Muslims as outsiders is one such naturally felt history that has also significantly shaped disciplinary history. 56 00:05:57,470 --> 00:06:05,450 So how do we think about the history of the subcontinent when colonial historiography continues to hold such discourse to power? 57 00:06:05,450 --> 00:06:10,430 When we think of history as cause and effect, as change over time, as rise and decline, 58 00:06:10,430 --> 00:06:16,420 we become implicated in the arrangement of it before and an after. 59 00:06:16,420 --> 00:06:23,080 This temporal issue for the history of the subcontinent is that our prevalent and predominant before and afters are an inherited, 60 00:06:23,080 --> 00:06:29,500 inherited teleology created by the European sciences of history under colonialism. 61 00:06:29,500 --> 00:06:34,630 The challenge historians face is that they have to provide a history of continuity 62 00:06:34,630 --> 00:06:42,420 that is not ipso facto a history of stagnation or of martial determinism. 63 00:06:42,420 --> 00:06:47,980 Esteem erase the history of India around the notion of five thousand years within this enduring idea. 64 00:06:47,980 --> 00:06:50,830 There were two organising concepts that the Golden Age, 65 00:06:50,830 --> 00:06:56,900 which featured a majestic Hindu polity and monumental Sanskrit epics, initiated the 5000 years of unchanging, 66 00:06:56,900 --> 00:07:02,110 quote, unchanging into this society and that of the mediaeval Muslim invader kings 67 00:07:02,110 --> 00:07:07,210 who pushed India into darkness and maintained their power through despotism. 68 00:07:07,210 --> 00:07:13,480 History as a field of knowledge lies at the centre of these constructions past. 69 00:07:13,480 --> 00:07:21,280 The structuring of this assessment lies in an interlocking quadratic formulation that can be most simply expressed as follows. 70 00:07:21,280 --> 00:07:29,590 India's past is 5000 years old. Just half way, I think, has been updated to twelve thousand years in the most current political regime in India. 71 00:07:29,590 --> 00:07:34,540 So India's passes 5000 years old, 72 00:07:34,540 --> 00:07:39,490 during which there was a golden age best epitomised by an emperor shoka who ruled over the 73 00:07:39,490 --> 00:07:44,150 entirety of the subcontinent that golden age was disrupted and destroyed by Muslim invader. 74 00:07:44,150 --> 00:07:52,540 My mother. It wasn't me who launched 17 invasions on the subcontinent and destroyed many temples, including the temple of Somnath. 75 00:07:52,540 --> 00:07:58,000 Doesn't it inaugurates a dark age of Muslim despotic rule with the only respite in 76 00:07:58,000 --> 00:08:03,660 that eight hundred years of tyranny being the enlightened rule of Jalaluddin puppet? 77 00:08:03,660 --> 00:08:10,660 It was British colonial rule that provided a means to an end of missioner for Germany and the advent of liberal secularism after partition. 78 00:08:10,660 --> 00:08:15,690 Five thousand years, the golden age of a Shogo, the 17 raids of Mahmood Wazni and the Muslim despotism. 79 00:08:15,690 --> 00:08:22,020 That is the central logic and the philosophy of history that has organised the colonised historiography of the. 80 00:08:22,020 --> 00:08:33,090 It is this a pastime that needs to be properly historic sized in order to undertake the project of reassessment. 81 00:08:33,090 --> 00:08:39,360 When conceptualising how to think of this time, it is important to take seriously the intellectual genealogies of history. 82 00:08:39,360 --> 00:08:46,380 Incursion from the 11th to the 19th century is to put Europe in a quote unquote proper historical case by demonstrating 83 00:08:46,380 --> 00:08:53,880 how universal claims of history do specific violence to our understanding of the past and call them that's geography's. 84 00:08:53,880 --> 00:09:00,870 At the heart of my work is a call to reassess and we learn Hindustani historical writings from the 11th century to the 20th. 85 00:09:00,870 --> 00:09:07,080 The need to reassess early relearnt arises precisely because these texts have been rendered as biased, 86 00:09:07,080 --> 00:09:13,640 limited, lacking the necessary, valid insights into the or presence that they purport to address. 87 00:09:13,640 --> 00:09:19,830 They are outsider text removed from the lived realities of the subcontinent. 88 00:09:19,830 --> 00:09:25,140 Before I turn to. Further on my talk to kind of talk specifically about my mother, Wazni. 89 00:09:25,140 --> 00:09:29,810 I want to start off by just gesturing a little bit about this. 90 00:09:29,810 --> 00:09:31,560 And these two frameworks, 91 00:09:31,560 --> 00:09:39,680 these two frameworks that are co-dependent linked from the very inception in the colonial steam and throughout the production of history. 92 00:09:39,680 --> 00:09:41,860 I can test both of these frames, 93 00:09:41,860 --> 00:09:49,900 but I want to make sure that we understand that while I'm not going to tackle the question of the making of a shock and the golden age, 94 00:09:49,900 --> 00:09:58,290 that project is very much co-dependent on the project that I will talk about today, which is talking about. 95 00:09:58,290 --> 00:10:03,520 Now, when we talk about a member of the Rosny, it is important that within the coning imagination, 96 00:10:03,520 --> 00:10:13,630 subcontinent and the subcontinent appears as early as the Portuguese arrival to be linked in this, 97 00:10:13,630 --> 00:10:22,240 in the sense that it's linked in its Islamic history to the history of crusades and the history of Islam in Europe prior to the 15th century. 98 00:10:22,240 --> 00:10:27,460 And that's something that I feel has not been theoretically explored enough. 99 00:10:27,460 --> 00:10:33,910 The linking of the the long history of the Crusades and how the Europe's vision of 100 00:10:33,910 --> 00:10:43,150 Islam within Europe and and in relation to the Abbasid empire and the Hubert's, 101 00:10:43,150 --> 00:10:51,400 how that has impacted the 17th, 16th and 17th century understanding of Muslim rule in the subcontinent. 102 00:10:51,400 --> 00:10:57,340 These days. These these geographies are somehow distinct. 103 00:10:57,340 --> 00:11:02,380 However, the entire history of Muslims in the European imagination is understood generically as one of, 104 00:11:02,380 --> 00:11:06,940 quote unquote, conquest epitomising the motif of the Sword of Islam. 105 00:11:06,940 --> 00:11:15,700 This is a phrase that's introduced most most importantly by Edward Gibbons. 106 00:11:15,700 --> 00:11:19,270 This word, however, predates the 18th century. 107 00:11:19,270 --> 00:11:26,560 It's present in Dontae, the Geary's Inferno and Walter Ķiģelis, The Life and Death of Mohammed, the Conquest of Spain, just 60 37. 108 00:11:26,560 --> 00:11:33,880 And Thomas Carliss, the hero as Prophet 1840. Modern scholarship on early Islam has foregrounded the conquest paradigm. 109 00:11:33,880 --> 00:11:42,970 Examples range from Philip Gaieties Origins of Islamic State 1917 to HRR Gibbs The Arab Conquest of Central Asia nineteen point three. 110 00:11:42,970 --> 00:11:49,900 The paradigm of Muslim conquest creates an originary myth for all Muslim polities that they are direct descendants of the earliest period. 111 00:11:49,900 --> 00:11:54,820 Their home that is in Islam spon based on geography, the desert. 112 00:11:54,820 --> 00:11:58,990 Any Muslim polity can be understood to have this concept. 113 00:11:58,990 --> 00:12:05,560 Europeans used to describe the earliest period of Islam. So just quote unquote, tribe reads nomadism and so on. 114 00:12:05,560 --> 00:12:10,910 So that nomine culture that is reserved for the earliest period. 115 00:12:10,910 --> 00:12:20,320 No need not. I need not remind you or maybe I do need to remind everyone is used even as late as 2003 for Afghanistan and of course, 116 00:12:20,320 --> 00:12:31,540 for histories of conflict that Compson 9/11 this had has had the anachronistic effect of freezing Islam as a, 117 00:12:31,540 --> 00:12:37,200 quote, religion of the desert, even as it as has any other ideological or intellectual tradition mutated, 118 00:12:37,200 --> 00:12:43,720 developed, matured and flourished far from us. Do not have a place of birth. 119 00:12:43,720 --> 00:12:52,030 And here I want to quote a little bit from from Henry Myers Elliott to whose dates are 1888 to 1853, 120 00:12:52,030 --> 00:13:02,140 who was a secretary in the Government of India Foreign Office and also responsible for the most monumental project of acquiring, 121 00:13:02,140 --> 00:13:07,870 excerpting and rendering Muslim what he called the histories of Muhammad in India. 122 00:13:07,870 --> 00:13:12,730 And this is what he would he how he kind of put it, I think succinctly, quote, 123 00:13:12,730 --> 00:13:16,450 Scarcely had the false prophet inspired when his followers and disciples, 124 00:13:16,450 --> 00:13:23,080 disciples issuing from the naked desert where they had hitherto robbed their neighbours and quarrelled amongst themselves, 125 00:13:23,080 --> 00:13:27,790 hastened to convert their head. Ottery feuds into the spirit of unanimity and brotherly love. 126 00:13:27,790 --> 00:13:32,220 The conquest of Persia was a mere prelude to further extension in the east and the West, 127 00:13:32,220 --> 00:13:38,920 more difficult in an inhospitable country as well as internal dissensions cheque their progress or some years afterwards. 128 00:13:38,920 --> 00:13:44,200 Yet it was not in the nature of things to be expected that they should long delay their attacks on the rich. 129 00:13:44,200 --> 00:13:51,520 And I don't trust country of India, which offered so tempting a bit to their cupidity and zeal. 130 00:13:51,520 --> 00:13:58,770 Now, this this this idea of of the zeal of the sward is central to how, 131 00:13:58,770 --> 00:14:08,470 in this idea of the zeal of those of the Muslim conquest is this figure that I wanted to talk a little bit more about today, 132 00:14:08,470 --> 00:14:16,510 which is memoir of personnel. The notion of Mahmud Lesnie as a foreign invader was critical to this idea of the dark age of Muslim despotic rule. 133 00:14:16,510 --> 00:14:23,350 There was, however, an irony in the dual configuration of Shoka as a representative of the golden age of Mahmud Lesnie, 134 00:14:23,350 --> 00:14:31,300 as Harold of the darkish British archaeologist, for example, located three Ashokan edicts in Kandahar and three in Luckman. 135 00:14:31,300 --> 00:14:39,070 Both locations are now in Afghanistan. The inscriptions were in Greek, Aramaic and or bilingual Greek in army archaeology. 136 00:14:39,070 --> 00:14:44,380 Accepted that these marked the territorial reach of Schocken governance, part of Ashoka's imperial rule, 137 00:14:44,380 --> 00:14:49,810 whereas edicts perform the work of publicly proclaiming his vision for poverty, I quote. 138 00:14:49,810 --> 00:14:55,720 And the king abstains from killing living beings and other men and those who are huntsmen fishermen of the king of desisted 139 00:14:55,720 --> 00:15:06,190 from hunting on one of the pillars that is Boma Show Guys Not Mine is about 40 miles from Kabul and 100 miles from Poznan. 140 00:15:06,190 --> 00:15:13,630 It was from Lesnie, however, that the European prototypical representative of the so-called Muslim invader came. 141 00:15:13,630 --> 00:15:19,000 Mahmood, whose reigns are from nine ninety eight to ten thirty and who ruled from Bosnia, 142 00:15:19,000 --> 00:15:26,140 Kabul in Lahore, was two British historiography, the very epitome of the foreign Muslim invader in 1776. 143 00:15:26,140 --> 00:15:30,900 Edward Gibbon introduced him as the first quote to dawn on a holy war quote. 144 00:15:30,900 --> 00:15:37,360 But the principal source of his mahmud's fame and riches was the holy war, which he waged against the Gentoos of India. 145 00:15:37,360 --> 00:15:38,680 In this foreign narrative. 146 00:15:38,680 --> 00:15:48,290 I may not consume a page and a Wallum wouldn't scarcely suffice to be kept recapitulated the battles and sieges of his twelve expeditions. 147 00:15:48,290 --> 00:15:52,020 No, it's twelve. Forgiven. Never was the Muslim on. 148 00:15:52,020 --> 00:15:55,990 He wrote, dismayed by the ink. Clemency of the seasons. The height of the mountains. 149 00:15:55,990 --> 00:16:06,190 The breath of the river. The barrenness of the desert. The multitudes of the enemy or the formidable army of their elephants of war. 150 00:16:06,190 --> 00:16:13,580 I just want to shout out to Edward Gibbon here and say that as a young person in Lahore 151 00:16:13,580 --> 00:16:19,720 with the three three books that I could cheque up three books from the British Library, 152 00:16:19,720 --> 00:16:26,160 I actually learnt English from Gibbons, the very same text that I'm citing today. 153 00:16:26,160 --> 00:16:34,180 So almost 70 years later, Elphinstone Lord rewrote that passage in 1841 History of India. 154 00:16:34,180 --> 00:16:41,170 As to Mamoon, the undiscovered regions of India presented a wider feel for romantic enterprise, 155 00:16:41,170 --> 00:16:45,430 the great extent of that favourite country, the rumours of its accumulated treasures, 156 00:16:45,430 --> 00:16:52,000 the fertility of the soil, and the peculiarity was production raised into a land of fable in which the 157 00:16:52,000 --> 00:16:59,050 surrounding nations might indulge their imaginations without him without control. 158 00:16:59,050 --> 00:17:07,470 Elphinston also reaffirmed that Mahmud's military excursions Lahor language in with for the purpose of plunder the 17 rates, 159 00:17:07,470 --> 00:17:14,680 quote unquote, that I quoted before Motif began its life first as the 12 rates of memory of Lesnie and Gibbon and in Elphinstone, 160 00:17:14,680 --> 00:17:20,350 who cited the authority by telling me that the envelope Alexander Downs to the best of the sasy, 161 00:17:20,350 --> 00:17:27,430 all of whom wrote about the polity that emerged in Bosnia and asserted itself as a successor state to the Abbasid. 162 00:17:27,430 --> 00:17:35,390 It was Eliot I mentioned earlier who corrected the figure of twelve raids to my mood of my mood to the now mythical 17 raids of Memo, 163 00:17:35,390 --> 00:17:44,810 doesn't it be on India? So, Eliot, 17 raids that Mahmood waged in India would become totemic. 164 00:17:44,810 --> 00:17:49,180 That would lead to be hunted, reproduced and in a brief history of the Indian Peoples in 1880. 165 00:17:49,180 --> 00:17:52,720 And Vincent Smith added the number to his The Oxford History of India. 166 00:17:52,720 --> 00:18:05,230 The text used for as a as exam textbook for all graduates from Oxford and or anyone wanted to serve in the Indian civil services. 167 00:18:05,230 --> 00:18:11,140 By 1920, everyone taken the Indian Civil Service Exam would reflect on the 17 rates of Mahmood. 168 00:18:11,140 --> 00:18:17,300 Sroka was the perfect Indian king, Mahmood the perfect Muslim invader. 169 00:18:17,300 --> 00:18:25,510 So I want to take this as as I mentioned, this this figure of of of Mahmud's 17 raids. 170 00:18:25,510 --> 00:18:32,680 And I want to just turn a little bit to how I want to think against it and re reframe it. 171 00:18:32,680 --> 00:18:37,240 And I want to do this by looking at a historian named Farishta, 172 00:18:37,240 --> 00:18:45,650 who was one of the who's writing in the late 60s, early 17th century, and Ibrahim the Shah. 173 00:18:45,650 --> 00:18:53,110 The second, who is a ruler of Beachport in the Declan and he is British, does one of British thus patron first days. 174 00:18:53,110 --> 00:18:59,050 Just to just to quickly summarise some somewhat of a diplomat. 175 00:18:59,050 --> 00:19:07,420 He's a he's a field physician. He's obviously a historian, which is why we're talking about him today. 176 00:19:07,420 --> 00:19:15,010 But he's also someone who is we can broadly understand as the literature and intellectual. 177 00:19:15,010 --> 00:19:22,590 And he's asked by Abraham ideas, rather second to write the first total comprehensive history of Hindustan. 178 00:19:22,590 --> 00:19:31,180 He us first that no such comprehensive account existed, quote, Since the histories of the Kings of Hindustan do not exist in one single volume, 179 00:19:31,180 --> 00:19:38,430 you should grab the pen and you get yourself to write a book with such qualities, a book in plain language without artifice and lies. 180 00:19:38,430 --> 00:19:44,500 It is with this mandate, that first test that had to compile an archive of all the histories that had come before in 181 00:19:44,500 --> 00:19:50,090 all of the accounts of the different parts that would constitute the whole of Hindustan 182 00:19:50,090 --> 00:19:54,560 in the archive available to him was the vast expanse of materials dated from the 9th to 183 00:19:54,560 --> 00:19:59,400 the 17th century that contain a remarkable array of histories about polity and space. 184 00:19:59,400 --> 00:20:04,720 First, I inherited this archive consisting the work of historians have been stored who shared ethical and 185 00:20:04,720 --> 00:20:15,760 philosophical concern just with this same archive that I think we can write a history of in this time. 186 00:20:15,760 --> 00:20:21,790 When we see hours are passed from the vantage point of fresh start from from the 17th century, 187 00:20:21,790 --> 00:20:27,990 what we recognise that there is substantial body of writing that constitutes a living archive for writing history. 188 00:20:27,990 --> 00:20:32,200 And this. We see a coherent into a reference reality. 189 00:20:32,200 --> 00:20:36,310 A clear sense of development of theory and in practise of doing history and 190 00:20:36,310 --> 00:20:40,990 deliberate way in which the logic of history is made apparent to future generations. 191 00:20:40,990 --> 00:20:45,820 You're always writing history for the future. Do you always write history? 192 00:20:45,820 --> 00:20:54,100 As for our tenured colleagues. So that's, again, kind of a shift in the ethics, I guess, of a historian. 193 00:20:54,100 --> 00:20:55,920 The historian and this intellectual geography. 194 00:20:55,920 --> 00:21:03,120 Even the Stein sees himself as an ethical servant of the governing elite, but also beholden to future generations. 195 00:21:03,120 --> 00:21:06,660 While he served the governing ruler, he was not in a subservient position. 196 00:21:06,660 --> 00:21:11,680 The historian sees as his audience a future reader who will judge his work on the ground of truthfulness, 197 00:21:11,680 --> 00:21:17,370 a critical approach to understanding power as first then launches his own project to write a complete history of Hindustan, 198 00:21:17,370 --> 00:21:20,310 rather rather than a history of royal lineages. 199 00:21:20,310 --> 00:21:27,150 These ideas of history writing must have directly influenced his own thinking to approach first through 200 00:21:27,150 --> 00:21:34,470 the lens of the historians who preceded him is already to dismantle the claim of colonialist geography, 201 00:21:34,470 --> 00:21:41,160 where these historic histories are mere repositories of fact that can only be gleaned by the European historian. 202 00:21:41,160 --> 00:21:47,430 What I want to foreground is first I was deliberately participating in a committee of historians whose work 203 00:21:47,430 --> 00:21:53,890 informed first does interpretation of history from within such particular viewpoints of thinking about history. 204 00:21:53,890 --> 00:22:02,670 The aim to produce a new mode of historical thinking is this preface like the preface of works before his gaze drips with humility, 205 00:22:02,670 --> 00:22:08,280 recognising his shortcomings and handicaps while confronting the monumental nature of the task ahead. 206 00:22:08,280 --> 00:22:09,930 I quote, In my youth, 207 00:22:09,930 --> 00:22:17,970 my worthless years would often hear whispers from the sky that if the heavens have this manifest beauty and if the world is so carefully crafted, 208 00:22:17,970 --> 00:22:22,890 if recognising the order of the universe is to praise the creator, 209 00:22:22,890 --> 00:22:28,890 then it is incumbent upon one to write such a book that will contain the doings of kings, 210 00:22:28,890 --> 00:22:33,900 Muslim kings and the conditions of the elders of faith such that the internal and external 211 00:22:33,900 --> 00:22:42,520 conditions of the country of Hindustan are revealed as being sustained by these fundamental groups. 212 00:22:42,520 --> 00:22:52,990 First rule is is here kind of perhaps Ventrella causing a long tradition within Persian and Arabic voices 213 00:22:52,990 --> 00:23:01,840 from above that are prompting the poet or historian to undertake the monumental work that they have to do. 214 00:23:01,840 --> 00:23:04,900 Even if we take this as a paradigmatic story, 215 00:23:04,900 --> 00:23:16,460 I do want to say that it's important for us to understand that he is engaging in it with with respect to his own contemporary audience as well. 216 00:23:16,460 --> 00:23:21,440 And the way he goes about this is that he begins his history with the with a problem lamina. 217 00:23:21,440 --> 00:23:28,640 That's a that's that's that's titled the beliefs quote, the beliefs of the people of Hinden, the accounts of the appearance of Islam in their land. 218 00:23:28,640 --> 00:23:35,510 And he said he starts, quote, amongst them. There is no other book more significant and reliable than the mob. 219 00:23:35,510 --> 00:23:42,430 And he goes on to describe the Texas having more than one hundred thousand verses and talks about the translation of the text. 220 00:23:42,430 --> 00:23:45,560 But in order to see the significance of British does engagement with the mar part, 221 00:23:45,560 --> 00:23:51,950 it's important to understand that Molvar for Freestar is a work of history. 222 00:23:51,950 --> 00:23:56,840 For example, when he concludes his summary account, he proclaims, God be praised. 223 00:23:56,840 --> 00:24:04,190 Such an account of marvels and wonders is not contained in any history of the seven Clines except from this book and the stock. 224 00:24:04,190 --> 00:24:08,960 And then he goes on to say, Call the Assa, the writer, the author. 225 00:24:08,960 --> 00:24:18,020 He credits as the author of my. He calls him a, quote, eyewitness to history and the history of the war. 226 00:24:18,020 --> 00:24:24,800 First, he argues that Viarsa not only witnessed the events, but also made his narrative useful with wise anecdotes, 227 00:24:24,800 --> 00:24:30,350 an aphorism for his readers to ruminate upon, thus providing an ethics for the reader. 228 00:24:30,350 --> 00:24:43,400 And it's this duality of eyewitness saying, reporting, critically engaging, but also providing a necessary, necessary lesson for the reader. 229 00:24:43,400 --> 00:24:46,940 That free stuff is engaged in. 230 00:24:46,940 --> 00:24:57,680 So having said all this, I want to in the last few last part, I want to just conclude my talk by talking about how fresh that reads. 231 00:24:57,680 --> 00:25:04,690 Mahmud shows the the titular subject of the 17 or the 12 raids that began. 232 00:25:04,690 --> 00:25:09,590 And in order to kind of think about my move against me. 233 00:25:09,590 --> 00:25:15,050 Who who who is who was founded in the colonia sources. 234 00:25:15,050 --> 00:25:17,130 We have to kind of dial back. 235 00:25:17,130 --> 00:25:29,810 And what we see is that a lot of Lebanese contemporaries, historians and poet actually have captured much of much of the history that follows. 236 00:25:29,810 --> 00:25:35,430 And Professor Ramita Tupper and others have written a lot about so enough and it wasn't. 237 00:25:35,430 --> 00:25:40,340 So this is not grounds that I want to cover, as if I'm new to them. 238 00:25:40,340 --> 00:25:47,170 But I would do want to highlight how Farishta is thinking about this this history that he reads from there. 239 00:25:47,170 --> 00:25:52,150 Those see photo Keelen City, BERU need to be and then all of these other figures. 240 00:25:52,150 --> 00:25:56,270 It is this tradition that forms, but does intellectual geography. 241 00:25:56,270 --> 00:26:03,400 Looking at the past from Forresters perspective, highlights the availability and circulation of the major text of the previous six hundred years. 242 00:26:03,400 --> 00:26:10,310 So that's another important point that you have the circulation of these histories in narratives of the past, 243 00:26:10,310 --> 00:26:15,830 even to first time seven, six hundred years after the fact. 244 00:26:15,830 --> 00:26:21,290 The awareness that this was a canon of history changes our perception of how to read them. 245 00:26:21,290 --> 00:26:26,840 How did first I deal with the availability of multiple sources of competing pictures of the past? 246 00:26:26,840 --> 00:26:29,300 What interpretive choices did that make? 247 00:26:29,300 --> 00:26:39,650 As a historian, in accordance with or against a then canonical understanding of Mahmud Freestar titles, this section accounts of the Sudans of Lahore, 248 00:26:39,650 --> 00:26:46,320 particularly known as the Navy SEAL Dance, which formally ecologies the geography of the stone to encompass the whole world. 249 00:26:46,320 --> 00:26:49,850 And obviously there are some structures in this chapter in two parts. 250 00:26:49,850 --> 00:26:56,870 First comes the political history of events. And then he narrates anecdotes, dreams, remembrance of the principal actors of the chapter, 251 00:26:56,870 --> 00:26:59,620 the main sources for first of the history of the book again, 252 00:26:59,620 --> 00:27:08,010 and his son Mahmood are the ones that first to understand this contemporary to the earliest histories I mention in passing. 253 00:27:08,010 --> 00:27:11,180 These would be, and then slightly later, 254 00:27:11,180 --> 00:27:18,020 13th and 14th century historians like Johnny Offie and me and all of these in them footage that relies as much as 255 00:27:18,020 --> 00:27:26,280 he can on what he thinks are the ones closest to my mood in time and the ones who can give a eyewitness account. 256 00:27:26,280 --> 00:27:32,120 But what we see in this micro episode and how fresh that's taking this one one but one tiny bit. 257 00:27:32,120 --> 00:27:38,530 This is a monumental work. Contemporary like the critical edition is in four volumes. 258 00:27:38,530 --> 00:27:44,870 And that was the NIS is it is a, you know, very short five, six page episode in it. 259 00:27:44,870 --> 00:27:53,990 And so I wanted to kind of focus on on this episode. But what we see operating is this does method and how first that takes in and recast 260 00:27:53,990 --> 00:27:58,820 his predecessor's history is to shift both the meaning and the agency of past actors, 261 00:27:58,820 --> 00:28:05,570 as in his privileging of the mob out of the priest that plays out the themes of his contrapuntal history by interpolating actors, 262 00:28:05,570 --> 00:28:11,870 victors and Concord into a sustained understanding of man after narrating the family and political history. 263 00:28:11,870 --> 00:28:13,000 It's a book, The Ghent, 264 00:28:13,000 --> 00:28:20,970 that recounts the book The Guinn's decision to advance his army against the polytheists of Hindustan as he started this is first as noise, 265 00:28:20,970 --> 00:28:26,930 avoidance and saturnine. Seven of nine seven seven use the book to concoct a few forts where, quote, 266 00:28:26,930 --> 00:28:33,560 where Islam had made no Packwood's constructed, quote, mosques and places code and collected vast riches. 267 00:28:33,560 --> 00:28:36,920 Returning victories too, wasn't it? So the book gains actions. 268 00:28:36,920 --> 00:28:45,320 First strikes alarmed Jay Paul, son of Paul, who was called a Brahmin by birth and whose politics then did certain to move on to Kashmir, 269 00:28:45,320 --> 00:28:52,370 unquote, and who worried that his heritage tree poverty would be taken, quote, by those outsiders, unquote. 270 00:28:52,370 --> 00:28:54,890 So looked again and Jay Paul clashed near Mool done. 271 00:28:54,890 --> 00:29:01,280 The water raged for days and Freestar calls attention to the bribe, bravery and scale of the young men killed in combat. 272 00:29:01,280 --> 00:29:08,820 The battle was so evenly balanced that writes that, quote, One could not differentiate between the victorious and the unquote. 273 00:29:08,820 --> 00:29:13,730 In that balance, an unspecified group approached the young man and told him that near Jay Paul's camp was 274 00:29:13,730 --> 00:29:19,220 a natural spring with the miraculous power that should any impurity be thrown into it. 275 00:29:19,220 --> 00:29:24,100 The gods will be angered, the skies will darken and snow and thunderstorm will appear. 276 00:29:24,100 --> 00:29:28,640 Mahmud ordered that manure or other impurities be immediately thrown into the spring. 277 00:29:28,640 --> 00:29:35,370 Last foretold an immediate darkness, engulfed the battleground and, quote, a bright day became like the darkest night, unquote. 278 00:29:35,370 --> 00:29:39,740 And such a cold wind blew that mules and horses perished from. 279 00:29:39,740 --> 00:29:44,650 Frightened by the calamitous shift in weather, Jay Paul's warriors lost their courage and appeal to him to surrender. 280 00:29:44,650 --> 00:29:46,890 Surrender to this heaven. For J. 281 00:29:46,890 --> 00:29:53,260 Paul with us forced to appeal for peace, which some of the gang accepted to get at first does method here we have to first look at. 282 00:29:53,260 --> 00:29:58,420 But first, the sources were telling and then considered his own addition to this account of the past. 283 00:29:58,420 --> 00:30:05,140 The earliest version of the clash between the book again and Jay Paul is it would be study for Yemeni, which describes the conflict. 284 00:30:05,140 --> 00:30:06,790 However, it would be. Narration. 285 00:30:06,790 --> 00:30:13,750 It was the young Mahmood himself who already held the knowledge that polluting the spring would bring about darkness over the land. 286 00:30:13,750 --> 00:30:22,000 The later historian Just Janni in the 14th century in the 13th century only mentions that's the book again defeated J. 287 00:30:22,000 --> 00:30:31,800 Paul and gives no details about the pitched battle, nor of any heavenly intervention ofthe another contemporary of Johnny Joe Army guy. 288 00:30:31,800 --> 00:30:36,550 It also describes his battle in an anecdote with interesting differences in OFFIE. 289 00:30:36,550 --> 00:30:43,900 The information that there is a sacred spring in the vicinity of the battleground is conveyed to the young men mood by an old woman. 290 00:30:43,900 --> 00:30:50,440 When my mood pollutes the spring, it brings about the snow storm and the victory forces looked again. 291 00:30:50,440 --> 00:30:57,640 The earliest account form would be the easiest to interpret. It is an odd march to the young Mamool to demonstrate the sacred reach of a young man 292 00:30:57,640 --> 00:31:02,950 moon who can turn even the natural world of into stone against the polytheists in OFFIE. 293 00:31:02,950 --> 00:31:07,030 The story invites reflection. My mood is not the holder of knowledge. 294 00:31:07,030 --> 00:31:13,510 Rather, the knowledge is held by an old woman of the stone, often placed as his anecdote in the section titled, quote, 295 00:31:13,510 --> 00:31:16,960 on the chemical properties of natural objects, unquote, 296 00:31:16,960 --> 00:31:22,620 thereby drawing attention not to Mahmud's several power but to the natural world and its mysteries. 297 00:31:22,620 --> 00:31:30,850 In just Janani, whose emphasis on tracing the descent of power from the Woori sultans of Lahor in which the enemy stages of little direct importance, 298 00:31:30,850 --> 00:31:38,590 Zarni simply states the outcome of the event, the victory and moves up in first, thus recounting of this history. 299 00:31:38,590 --> 00:31:48,040 Some critical changes were made to the narrative. The motif of cooperation often a means to invoke divine intervention shapes which does narrative. 300 00:31:48,040 --> 00:31:52,840 Thus, what does account of this first battle is a unique reconfiguration of this historical event. 301 00:31:52,840 --> 00:31:59,470 The Muslim army and the Hindu army are portrayed as equals. The landscape has sacred elements that cause divine intervention, 302 00:31:59,470 --> 00:32:07,690 and those inhabitants who lived around the battlegrounds, an unspecified group, have a stake in halting wars on them. 303 00:32:07,690 --> 00:32:13,870 While the markers of religious difference foreground this particular incident spoke, the Gayton intends to build mosque from place to. 304 00:32:13,870 --> 00:32:19,750 First, that does not spell out which sacred power was offended by the pollution of the spring. 305 00:32:19,750 --> 00:32:25,910 Unlike would be first, that takes the glory and agency away from Mamou and gives it to the people of the Star. 306 00:32:25,910 --> 00:32:31,850 They are the ones you knew about the spring and their intervention that stops the bloodshed. 307 00:32:31,850 --> 00:32:36,850 Just Johnny and his accountant in doubt. Mahmud's birth with divine significance at the occasion of his birth. 308 00:32:36,850 --> 00:32:41,310 An idol in why Hinde fell over and smashed into bits. 309 00:32:41,310 --> 00:32:49,240 Just down, he writes, quote, converted thousands of temples into mosques and conquered many cities if it was done and defeated many Rogers, unquote. 310 00:32:49,240 --> 00:32:54,820 However, just Johnny writing two hundred years after Mahmud's time does not delve much into Muhammad's history. 311 00:32:54,820 --> 00:33:00,040 The only battle of Mahmud that Jonny describes is the one that some not in Woodroffe and Jasni. 312 00:33:00,040 --> 00:33:05,380 He writes that Mahmood brought back Mignot, the idol from some not, and divided into four parts. 313 00:33:05,380 --> 00:33:12,100 One part was placed in the central mosque and was not one in the palace and two were sent to Mecca and Medina. 314 00:33:12,100 --> 00:33:22,500 For Chinese, portrait of Mahmud undergoes a marked shift in Firster, unlike just Gianni's, a conference that describes the battle to die. 315 00:33:22,500 --> 00:33:30,220 Tiny and Dona Haasan Converge Matura Ryan the horror both long history of clashes before Mahmud gets to. 316 00:33:30,220 --> 00:33:37,210 So not even in these events. Mahmud is presented as focussed on building alliances where possible and destroying temples. 317 00:33:37,210 --> 00:33:42,430 Only when necessary. Often miraculin are the most cited historians in this section. 318 00:33:42,430 --> 00:33:48,220 But first, that changes the meaning and import of many of the events narrated in the section changes that 319 00:33:48,220 --> 00:33:53,770 amount to a recalibration of the ways in which Mahmood can be seen as a person and a warrior. 320 00:33:53,770 --> 00:33:57,790 An example just to highlight this after his taking power in the heart. 321 00:33:57,790 --> 00:34:07,180 Mahmud. This is again quoting from first up. After taking power in the hall, Mahmud heads towards Rajan Lunda Volleyer after a short siege by Mahmood, 322 00:34:07,180 --> 00:34:15,510 Nunda asked for peace with an offering of thirty five elephants. Mahmud counters and asks for three hundred elephants, not by Greece, but four. 323 00:34:15,510 --> 00:34:21,190 Is that right? As a test, he Nunda released the three hundred elephants without any riders. 324 00:34:21,190 --> 00:34:27,420 But Mahmud's troops are able to corral the elephants, impressing no. 325 00:34:27,420 --> 00:34:34,130 None then writes in the language of him. Again, according to, according to Forrester, a couplet from him. 326 00:34:34,130 --> 00:34:42,200 Mahmud shows this couplet to the literati of Hindi, Arabic and Persian at his court, and they unanimously praised it for this literary value. 327 00:34:42,200 --> 00:34:50,960 Duly impressed by Nunda, Mahmood consulted the adviser and grants the governorship of 15 forts, including Colin Jar to London. 328 00:34:50,960 --> 00:34:57,140 This is not simple. Certainly not a simplistic portrayal of an idle smasher who conquers an despotic rules, 329 00:34:57,140 --> 00:35:02,180 which was to become the dominant understanding of men and leaders. Europeanist geography first time. 330 00:35:02,180 --> 00:35:08,390 In fact, highlight's Mahmood as responding as much to a literary exchange as to a stalemate in warfare. 331 00:35:08,390 --> 00:35:11,360 When we turn to first does account of so not, 332 00:35:11,360 --> 00:35:18,740 we again see that it does not simply hew to what previous historians had reported in first thought Mahmud decides to campaign to. 333 00:35:18,740 --> 00:35:26,150 So not only after you heard reports that all of the other duties have been done subservient to the one in so. 334 00:35:26,150 --> 00:35:36,620 And when the story of Mahmud's arrival to solve not and then the breaking of the Eidos may be familiar to everyone and the pieces that were taken of, 335 00:35:36,620 --> 00:35:43,940 some not back to the back to Kabul become an important part of European imagination, 336 00:35:43,940 --> 00:35:54,620 including the proclamation of Elphinstone when he brought there some gates of some not back to back to India in 1840, 1942. 337 00:35:54,620 --> 00:36:06,320 But I want to actually say how Farishta treats that little episode of of of icon of picking up the icon. 338 00:36:06,320 --> 00:36:10,160 First, the rights that the caretakers of the temple plead the mood to spared the 339 00:36:10,160 --> 00:36:14,740 destruction of the idol and to instead take from them at substantial annual tax. 340 00:36:14,740 --> 00:36:17,690 Mahmood consults with his adviser. They agree with the caretakers. 341 00:36:17,690 --> 00:36:24,980 CLEET Freestar writes that Mahmud's adviser told him he should leave the idol alone and accept the tax or by destroying the Idol cook. 342 00:36:24,980 --> 00:36:28,760 Neither will the practise of idol worship end here, nor will it benefit us. 343 00:36:28,760 --> 00:36:33,380 Instead, this sum of money will benefit many poor Mahmood. 344 00:36:33,380 --> 00:36:37,340 However, he responds with a stunning articulation of his paradoxical approach to power. 345 00:36:37,340 --> 00:36:40,620 According to first the quote, What if what you say is correct? 346 00:36:40,620 --> 00:36:47,690 But if I follow your advice, I will be known to posterity as Idol seller and not an idol smasher. 347 00:36:47,690 --> 00:36:51,610 First, the documents. This difference of opinion registered six hundred years prior. 348 00:36:51,610 --> 00:36:56,330 Between Mahmud's advisors who are making a mutually beneficial case and Mahmud's personal convictions. 349 00:36:56,330 --> 00:37:02,900 As an iconoclast, first, I certainly cleared that Mahmood makes a choice not based on what is good for either the people of some not, 350 00:37:02,900 --> 00:37:08,700 nor for the people it wasn't. But one, what do you imagine the judgement of posterity would be on him? 351 00:37:08,700 --> 00:37:14,870 And it's the judgement of posterity that I think first is able to render onto. 352 00:37:14,870 --> 00:37:17,700 And that's where I want to finish. 353 00:37:17,700 --> 00:37:24,750 Just Danny ends the life with Mahmud by proclaiming his rule extended east across all of Jim footstone them to Burraston Iraq. 354 00:37:24,750 --> 00:37:28,680 Nimruz Fighter School took what is done and took its thumb. 355 00:37:28,680 --> 00:37:32,040 And then he died after visiting Baghdad and getting a title from the caliph. 356 00:37:32,040 --> 00:37:38,220 So it's a very, you know, rags to riches story or minor riches to major riches story. 357 00:37:38,220 --> 00:37:44,890 Just Johnny celebrates Mahmud as a conqueror, ties into the caliphate. My first thought again differs when it comes to the close the chapter. 358 00:37:44,890 --> 00:37:53,010 My first thought is that after Mahmud's campaign against Juk and Turkmenistan, he grew ill from either anaemia or tuberculosis. 359 00:37:53,010 --> 00:37:57,690 Two days before his death, a priest actually spends a lot of time trying to diagnose the illness. 360 00:37:57,690 --> 00:38:00,750 And this is part of this kind of physician work. 361 00:38:00,750 --> 00:38:08,370 Two days before his death, he commanded that all of the treasures he had collected over his life be gathered in the compounds that resembled a garden. 362 00:38:08,370 --> 00:38:09,800 This is fresh stuff. 363 00:38:09,800 --> 00:38:20,530 Mahmood said, quote, Looking at them with covetous eyes and with audible gasps, cried and cried, and then ordered them to be put back in the Treasury. 364 00:38:20,530 --> 00:38:28,660 But he a reckoning of my mood continues across several anecdotes where my mood is shown to be covetous, hasty, often of two minds. 365 00:38:28,660 --> 00:38:33,030 He's no paragon of virtue and certainly not an ideal of kingship. 366 00:38:33,030 --> 00:38:37,350 Instead, much of the time, he's described before stuff as harming his own ability. 367 00:38:37,350 --> 00:38:41,850 Unlike Judge Darney, there's no attempt by Farishta to connect Mahmud's rain to that. 368 00:38:41,850 --> 00:38:46,700 That nor do Gwalior glorify his memory any way. Mohammed's history. 369 00:38:46,700 --> 00:38:49,920 Mahmud's history allows for a that to highlight the theme to which he repeatedly 370 00:38:49,920 --> 00:38:54,390 circles back the necessity of listening to advisers showing kindness to civilians, 371 00:38:54,390 --> 00:38:58,050 a resolution through PAP's instead of wars. First, the highlights. 372 00:38:58,050 --> 00:39:05,580 Mahmud's flaws as an individual as well as the king move to Freestar is brave, capricious, attentive to the judgement of history. 373 00:39:05,580 --> 00:39:10,890 First, that leads into that judgement to show that Mahmud's iconoclasm is no longer a point to celebrate. 374 00:39:10,890 --> 00:39:16,680 If it was rather a zeal and personal drive as a story of caution, according to freestyle, 375 00:39:16,680 --> 00:39:21,750 what is lacking from a mood is a sense of promoting the greater good of those in governance. 376 00:39:21,750 --> 00:39:25,200 So what we learn from examining first there's treatment of my mood is that the life 377 00:39:25,200 --> 00:39:30,390 of Mahmud's serves as an illustration to the implicated history for sketching, 378 00:39:30,390 --> 00:39:36,360 where piety does not lie with Muslim rulers alone. The past to Farishta is a repository for much. 379 00:39:36,360 --> 00:39:42,990 New ethical registers can be opened up. His history always has agents and protagonists who act according to their 380 00:39:42,990 --> 00:39:48,540 personal foibles and predeliction and not due to forces of ideology or religion. 381 00:39:48,540 --> 00:39:51,660 First, that mandate was to write the first comprehensive history of the time. 382 00:39:51,660 --> 00:39:56,310 He does so by assembling an archive of histories that could span the whole geography 383 00:39:56,310 --> 00:40:00,450 of Hindustan Ripperton and Persian and Arabic from the 9th to the 17th century, 384 00:40:00,450 --> 00:40:06,810 to which he adds histories of the places and peoples of the stunt from epics like Mad About It and Shahnameh. 385 00:40:06,810 --> 00:40:12,360 This history was not simply an amalgamation of facts, as argued by Springer, Iliad and other European historians. 386 00:40:12,360 --> 00:40:17,910 Instead, first, US history was a novel interpretation of the histories that had come before him. 387 00:40:17,910 --> 00:40:23,670 It reflected a long genealogy of historians interested in the practise and ethics of history writing. 388 00:40:23,670 --> 00:40:29,550 Their accounts provide an intellectual geography that reaches across the many places. 389 00:40:29,550 --> 00:40:38,020 Thank you very much. I'll stop here. Nic, thank you so much, money that was fascinating. 390 00:40:38,020 --> 00:40:41,680 I can see that, but what did he got? Tons of questions, actually. 391 00:40:41,680 --> 00:40:49,060 So, Danica, can you hear me now? 392 00:40:49,060 --> 00:40:57,540 That's my speaker turned off so I can hear you. 393 00:40:57,540 --> 00:41:03,330 So I'm saying that you've got lots of questions for you already, and I can see them all popping into the Q&A box. 394 00:41:03,330 --> 00:41:08,690 Would you like to just stick them in the order in which to be good? If that's OK. 395 00:41:08,690 --> 00:41:19,140 Guess that's fine. So, yeah. So I'm wondering, can everyone read the questions that are published in the Q&A box? 396 00:41:19,140 --> 00:41:22,710 Do we need to read them out again for those, OK? 397 00:41:22,710 --> 00:41:28,030 I think people can read them. So the first one is from someone who anonymous. 398 00:41:28,030 --> 00:41:31,310 Oh, sure, I can take that. I think so. 399 00:41:31,310 --> 00:41:40,140 Now, mothers are asking community India contributor. This conquest paradigm in the subcontinent is a grant to argue those rostral refugees in India. 400 00:41:40,140 --> 00:41:43,620 Separate from the later translation. Thank you. 401 00:41:43,620 --> 00:41:48,930 I think that the the question of shall nominate as it text long predates the 19th century. 402 00:41:48,930 --> 00:41:55,890 It's one of the most circulated, cited, illuminated, illustrated copy texts that we have. 403 00:41:55,890 --> 00:42:06,440 So I think even though it's only much later that this idea that shall astronomy, it represents a type of Iran or the idea of Iran that predates Islam, 404 00:42:06,440 --> 00:42:15,010 the circulation of Shahnameh certainly predates those kinds of interventions, historical interventions. 405 00:42:15,010 --> 00:42:21,810 And is it used by the European thought in order to create this paradigm? 406 00:42:21,810 --> 00:42:29,430 I think I mean, obviously for Gibbon, Gibbon cites Shahnameh when he talks about talks about my mood. 407 00:42:29,430 --> 00:42:35,970 So I think it's definitely a part and parcel of the kind of sources, the earliest sources that are used. 408 00:42:35,970 --> 00:42:42,840 Thank you. What do you think about the next question is, what do you think about the distinction between Hindustan pirates, 409 00:42:42,840 --> 00:42:49,140 especially when you think about today's India? Thank you. So one of the things that I argue in the book, and I'm not able to. 410 00:42:49,140 --> 00:42:53,310 I didn't go into it, is that this done as a as a political idea? 411 00:42:53,310 --> 00:43:00,990 And the conceptual conceptual terrain begins to undergo a shift over it over the 18th and 19th centuries. 412 00:43:00,990 --> 00:43:11,070 So what we understand is understand the first stop Hindustan extended from, like I mentioned, Kabul to beanball from the Himalayas to the NUNCA. 413 00:43:11,070 --> 00:43:21,960 And that understanding of the sun as the subcontinent begins to shift in their European rule, European imagination, largely because it's. 414 00:43:21,960 --> 00:43:25,630 It begins to be titled the the. 415 00:43:25,630 --> 00:43:31,620 Of the mobile. So the mobile polity and its its contraction and expansion becomes Hindustan. 416 00:43:31,620 --> 00:43:36,870 And then from Mobile, it becomes Mohammedan India and becomes more north India. 417 00:43:36,870 --> 00:43:45,720 And from Muhammad in India, Hindustan after the arrival of British India official British India after 1857. 418 00:43:45,720 --> 00:43:57,770 You have in this done largely as a as a ideia nominally associated with a type of either cultural or linguistic or musical paradigms. 419 00:43:57,770 --> 00:44:00,840 And the debate in the for example, 420 00:44:00,840 --> 00:44:10,380 the Constituent Assembly of India is precisely whether India and pottage should be the only two words mentioned in the Constitution, 421 00:44:10,380 --> 00:44:14,190 and not this time because Hindustan was by then by and by. 422 00:44:14,190 --> 00:44:28,130 By the mid 20th century, understood simply as an idea that belonged only to the Muslims of the North Indian corridor, largely between Bihar and Dabiq. 423 00:44:28,130 --> 00:44:35,730 Many. So the next day, as many historians generally criticise, going to periodisation for being community lives and no less insidious. 424 00:44:35,730 --> 00:44:42,660 But honestly, do you have any alternative methodology as such regional ethnic Class-Based? 425 00:44:42,660 --> 00:44:46,530 We've been so Balton Donora to feel to give us a substantive alternative paradigm. 426 00:44:46,530 --> 00:44:54,210 At the most they prefer partial searchlight's. Is this the colonial stuff proving to be sheer hot air? 427 00:44:54,210 --> 00:44:58,960 I feel that the question the declining approach produces. 428 00:44:58,960 --> 00:45:08,070 It's not so much to argue for another dominant hegemonic periodisation paradigm that we can finally say is the truth to history. 429 00:45:08,070 --> 00:45:13,620 I think what it needs to but it offers us is a way to understand and contextualise 430 00:45:13,620 --> 00:45:21,090 the colonial efforts to novated the period through a particular dominant framework. 431 00:45:21,090 --> 00:45:27,630 So they the the interlocking between disciplinary history writing for whom this 432 00:45:27,630 --> 00:45:33,510 periodisation is of primary importance because this is a modern South Asia seminar. 433 00:45:33,510 --> 00:45:38,230 I am a mediaeval historian. And yet here we are. 434 00:45:38,230 --> 00:45:42,720 Is precisely the ways in which discipline forms it itself. 435 00:45:42,720 --> 00:45:46,800 Are there other ways of thinking about the past possible? Absolutely. 436 00:45:46,800 --> 00:45:55,080 And they are not just devolving devolving time into smaller segments or region or space into smaller, smaller geographies, 437 00:45:55,080 --> 00:46:02,460 but rather how we actually incorporate memory and history and thinking about the past as leered or as 438 00:46:02,460 --> 00:46:09,630 having multiple temporality and multiple spaces and overlapping historiography that are not contentious. 439 00:46:09,630 --> 00:46:15,060 But at the other contrapuntal. As I tried to it's tried to demonstrate for free stuff. 440 00:46:15,060 --> 00:46:18,550 That's I think that the colonial approach, whether or not it's hot. 441 00:46:18,550 --> 00:46:23,020 You're I mean, you know, is the colonial epic a steam hot air? 442 00:46:23,020 --> 00:46:24,880 I don't think it's hot air. 443 00:46:24,880 --> 00:46:36,340 Anything that was used actively as an agent for enslavement and destruction of human beings and resources and histories and past is not hot here. 444 00:46:36,340 --> 00:46:43,610 I don't take the colonial at the steam to be simply a matter of historians inventing categories. 445 00:46:43,610 --> 00:46:52,180 Jerry, you know, James Mill's history of British India is not simply a text that exists in a library and has no consequences. 446 00:46:52,180 --> 00:47:01,120 It has immediate consequences. For those of you who read any of the utilitarian step follow, even including Marx and Marx's understanding. 447 00:47:01,120 --> 00:47:10,950 So it's not hot here. I don't mean to kind of, but it is important for us to understand the violence that this happens. 448 00:47:10,950 --> 00:47:16,600 I've been told this five minutes, LEPs. Sorry. 449 00:47:16,600 --> 00:47:24,760 How can we distinguish between Hindustani destroyed graphical construction within the Persian traditions and understand as a place of belonging? 450 00:47:24,760 --> 00:47:29,560 I ask because you mainly look at do Arabic. Persian. Thank you. 451 00:47:29,560 --> 00:47:33,340 That's a great question actually in the book, not in the excerpt you heard today. 452 00:47:33,340 --> 00:47:44,440 I do. I do. Do try my best to cast a wide net using some script above ramshaw Persian and such and Arabic and or do sources. 453 00:47:44,440 --> 00:47:50,530 So there are there's there's evidence throughout the text of the Sun's presence through different literary registers. 454 00:47:50,530 --> 00:47:57,280 But again, you know, one of the things that we that that is the invention is the idea that Sanskrit belongs to 455 00:47:57,280 --> 00:48:01,900 a particular religious tradition or Persian belongs to a particular religious tradition. 456 00:48:01,900 --> 00:48:10,540 And thus we can get that traditions, thoughts or belongings from that particular linguistic register. 457 00:48:10,540 --> 00:48:17,980 Again, that's not something that we imagine for any other space or any other community in the entire world. 458 00:48:17,980 --> 00:48:24,730 But we definitely imagined that Sanskrit. If something is in Sanskrit, it tells us about something called Hindu. 459 00:48:24,730 --> 00:48:28,990 And if something is in Persian or hoodoo, it tells us about something called Muslim. 460 00:48:28,990 --> 00:48:33,160 That dichotomy is not internal. Has that have any internal logic? 461 00:48:33,160 --> 00:48:37,180 It's certainly has a logic, according to the theme. 462 00:48:37,180 --> 00:48:44,470 What role, if any, did the 20th history lecture the nuts car and apartment them played in the creation of Muslim and in the history of India? 463 00:48:44,470 --> 00:48:51,670 Thank you, Doctor. That's a great question. And actually part of my introduction and conclusion deals with both Jetconnect Sarkar and Father 464 00:48:51,670 --> 00:49:00,550 McConnell did not sacar very much in his in his in his understanding building on Earvin's work, 465 00:49:00,550 --> 00:49:08,380 understood this paradigm of Muslim outsider and an Indian native and reproduced that shubha them of Hohn, 466 00:49:08,380 --> 00:49:15,910 on the other hand, who presided over the first Indian modern Indian history, Congress in nineteen thirty five, 467 00:49:15,910 --> 00:49:23,440 whose presidential address I, I, I quote in the last chapter or in the afterword in the book, 468 00:49:23,440 --> 00:49:31,990 actually made a, I think, a remarkable and prescient claim to the past, to the present, 469 00:49:31,990 --> 00:49:36,310 to the future that he was confronting where he said that the ways in which the colonial history, 470 00:49:36,310 --> 00:49:44,260 graphic tradition has organised the past up into Storen will lead to the violence and partition of the subcontinent. 471 00:49:44,260 --> 00:49:51,370 And this is, again, previous to any formal formal claim of partition that happens in the 20th century. 472 00:49:51,370 --> 00:50:00,400 Sestra, Father McCone certainly is one of the stories that I, I, I, I raise my attention to that. 473 00:50:00,400 --> 00:50:08,980 Who had the clarity and ethics of thinking of the future that was coming towards them. 474 00:50:08,980 --> 00:50:12,220 But I think that you must under house most question and we have time. 475 00:50:12,220 --> 00:50:21,750 Don't worry. Oh yeah, I. Because that's the sort of thing that and I think Sondra's is broken into too. 476 00:50:21,750 --> 00:50:25,540 And you can take more time and we could take more questions if I need. Thank you, Sandra. 477 00:50:25,540 --> 00:50:27,730 Thank you. So thank you. 478 00:50:27,730 --> 00:50:34,750 Struck by how many of the tropes to narrate conquest, nomadism, the sword are also tropes that contemporary defenders have been this done use. 479 00:50:34,750 --> 00:50:38,980 Would you how would you help us theorise this kind of counterpoint and tribulation? 480 00:50:38,980 --> 00:50:49,300 Thank you. So I think as I as I briefly indicated in my in my remarks, that the trope of the conquest that, you know, 481 00:50:49,300 --> 00:50:53,800 within which there is a Muslim is the sort of Islam and the Muslim conquest actually is 482 00:50:53,800 --> 00:51:05,320 remarkably remarkably coherent as a trope through the mediaeval European rendition. 483 00:51:05,320 --> 00:51:10,960 And then obviously, as it enters disciplinary scholarship and politics in the 19th, 484 00:51:10,960 --> 00:51:18,820 18th and 19th century and the idea of sward as a marker of this history. 485 00:51:18,820 --> 00:51:24,760 Formally becomes part of textbook. So I mentioned once Winston Smith's work. 486 00:51:24,760 --> 00:51:29,770 But all of these other textbooks that these other exams that are conscript contributed. 487 00:51:29,770 --> 00:51:31,780 And you know, that that that idea, 488 00:51:31,780 --> 00:51:44,110 that imaginary of the sward and then the temple and the camel and all these these ideas that are that stand outside any formal change as in indeed, 489 00:51:44,110 --> 00:51:48,980 they appear to be iconic no matter what period you're looking at, 490 00:51:48,980 --> 00:51:56,230 what time you're looking at are taken up by contemporary politics, very much from the colonial history orthography, 491 00:51:56,230 --> 00:52:03,490 very much using the same translations, the same renditions of of earlier histories, the same. 492 00:52:03,490 --> 00:52:13,630 In fact, the same texts. So Richard Burton, for example, just to cite one person who plays a oversized role in this in this in this historiography, 493 00:52:13,630 --> 00:52:18,880 his his accounts of not only of Mecca and Medina, 494 00:52:18,880 --> 00:52:29,260 but sin and also his so-called renditions of texts like Kamasutra in which the Muslim hair and the Muslim woman and the 495 00:52:29,260 --> 00:52:39,880 Haram or NYSUT visit the song plays such an incredible role are widely translated or republished and cited to this day. 496 00:52:39,880 --> 00:52:46,030 People who are curious about that should cheque out Divine Mithras Indian sex life. 497 00:52:46,030 --> 00:52:52,350 But I think, again, the the the the availability of all of these narratives, 498 00:52:52,350 --> 00:53:00,130 the comprehensive way in which they claim to represent the past is not a there's no anecdote antidote to that. 499 00:53:00,130 --> 00:53:09,280 And we just basically faced this monumental framing, the colonial framing that has not gone away. 500 00:53:09,280 --> 00:53:13,170 And so that's why I I very much hesitating with the word post-colonial. 501 00:53:13,170 --> 00:53:17,830 And I very much appreciate colonial and because these forms of thinking and knowing 502 00:53:17,830 --> 00:53:26,260 the past are not something that were shrugged off in any moment of independence. 503 00:53:26,260 --> 00:53:32,710 One last question. Thank you for presenting to us. I wonder how this idea and this idea is in the sand in Arabic sources. 504 00:53:32,710 --> 00:53:37,490 Thank you. Thank you very much for for attending. I really appreciate your question. 505 00:53:37,490 --> 00:53:47,730 Yeah, absolutely. We think about how the earlier Arabic sources basically thought about Hindu sin or Lindero of sin. 506 00:53:47,730 --> 00:53:55,100 If we use the Arabic, the Hindustan appears as a conceptual geography in those early sources. 507 00:53:55,100 --> 00:54:02,650 So I cite them, I think, to them in my chapter, thinking about the Indian Ocean world from which they merge. 508 00:54:02,650 --> 00:54:06,560 And what what is distinctive is that within those sources, 509 00:54:06,560 --> 00:54:15,640 where would are conceptual framework is very much limited to the ports that they are these these accounts are mainly about. 510 00:54:15,640 --> 00:54:25,600 So they're about sin, but then they have some understanding of Kashmir there about what we now call good dropped and a little bit Internet 511 00:54:25,600 --> 00:54:33,520 and and the the kind of proper formulation of Hindustan as they as the entire entire subcontinent happens. 512 00:54:33,520 --> 00:54:38,050 Actually, in histories like that, I say like Masood, the etc., 513 00:54:38,050 --> 00:54:49,390 who are thinking of Hindu or Hindustan as a as a as the broader at the broadest subcontinental expanse. 514 00:54:49,390 --> 00:54:58,390 So it's not so much that Arab, Arabic and Persian has hinted send or Hindustan, but rather different genres of history, 515 00:54:58,390 --> 00:55:06,850 writing or travel, writing or narratives have different understandings of authenticity. 516 00:55:06,850 --> 00:55:12,500 Plastic. Well, I think. Thank you so much, mint on that was most brilliant talk. 517 00:55:12,500 --> 00:55:18,360 And thank you so much for so efficiently and engaged in this engagement and dealing with the questions. 518 00:55:18,360 --> 00:55:24,150 I don't see any more. So I think we're going to end this sort of the segment of the seminar now. 519 00:55:24,150 --> 00:55:28,860 Thank you all for being here. And apologies again for the slight technical issues of the delayed starting. 520 00:55:28,860 --> 00:55:34,470 But thank you for your questions and thank you for being part of the seminar. Thank. 521 00:55:34,470 --> 00:55:37,170 Thank you. From my end to all the participants, I can't see you. 522 00:55:37,170 --> 00:55:42,630 I don't know where you are, but thank you so much for giving some time to my my words. 523 00:55:42,630 --> 00:55:46,960 I really, really appreciate it. Great. Thank you. 524 00:55:46,960 --> 00:56:04,597 And there's going to be a recording of this if you want to listen to what Professor Smith was saying.