South Asia Citizens Web

Ayesha Jalal’s new book about her granduncle Saadat Hasan Manto attempts to explain his revolt against the narrative that divided India.

Ahead of Agra rally, UP BJP cell felicitates riot-accused MLAs
Lalmani Verma : Lucknow, Wed Nov 20 2013
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/ahead-of-agra-rally-up-bjp-cell-felicitates-riotaccused-mlas/1197038/
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illustration by unamed

Can one go back into the past to fix the future? Only perhaps in Hollywood movies and in the election campaign of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s prime ministerial hopeful Narendra Modi.

The ’central thesis’ of Urs Apps book is that the birth of ’modern’ Orientalism was deeply linked to Europe’s ’discovery of Asian religions’. He challenges the view that modern Orientalism originated with Western imperialism or colonialism, a view sometimes associated with the work of Edward Said (Orientalism, 1978) instead tracing its gradual evolution, as it were, to a period from the late 17th century to the early 19th century, before the high noon of Western imperialism in Asia (pp. xi, xiii). The upshot of the inquiries of the progenitors of modern Orientalism was ultimately to undermine the Bible-based worldview and historical chronology that drew on the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible), a worldview and chronology that App informs us was still widely accepted even in the 19th century.

Mr.Modi’s reconstructions of facts issue from well-established tradition of the Hindu right wing, wherein historiography is more often a matter of unanalyzed prejudice and timely convenience than of adherence to fact and evidence.