Diabolic designs and demonic actions

Indian history is fraught with ruling-class intrigues, which tend to keep the lower classes in a perennial state of confusion. The fact that this history comes to us in a mythologised form is itself the biggest intrigue, obscuring as it does information about how the vast, diverse masses of the Subcontinent lived through the millennia. Reading Indian history, thus, becomes an exercise in speculation. If it provides one kind of insight for one group, it is capable of being interpreted equally plausibly in the opposite way by another. What eventually reaches the people is a partisan viewpoint at best and bewilderment at worst – a condition under which the ruling classes thrive.

In this context, two books by Subhash Gatade, a committed intellectual and Left activist, are significant additions to the works of the fast-diminishing community of scholars who continue their work with unstinting commitment in these confusing times.