New book by Sumit Guha: History and Collective Memory in South Asia, 1200-2000

By Dilip -

In this far-ranging and erudite exploration of the South Asian past, Sumit Guha discusses the shaping of social and historical memory in world-historical context. He presents memory as the result of both remembering and forgetting and of the preservation, recovery, and decay of records. By describing how these processes work through sociopolitical organizations, Guha delineates the historiographic legacy acquired by the British in colonial India; the creation of the centralized educational system and mass production of textbooks that led to unification of historical discourses under colonial auspices; and the divergence of these discourses in the twentieth century under the impact of nationalism and decolonization.

In History and Collective Memory in South Asia, 1200-2000 (University of Washington Press, 2019), Guha brings together sources from a range of languages and regions to provide the first intellectual history of the ways in which socially recognized historical memory has been made across the subcontinent. This thoughtful study contributes to debates beyond the field of history that complicate the understanding of objectivity and documentation in a seemingly post-truth world.

https://newbooksnetwork.com/history-and-collective-memory-in-south-asia-1200-2000

Sumit Guha lectures on Asia, Europe and America in the Making of 'Caste'

Sumit Guha - Glimpsed in the Archive and Known no More: One Indian Slave’s Tale

Book review: Sumit Guha's new book on the history of caste


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