Streaming the Past

In a conscious bid to avoid the categorization of ‘south’ India Streaming the Past: Peninsular India in History changes the framework of the historical meta-narrative of the nation, which has failed to integrate the history of premodern peninsular India within it. This book demonstrates that a collection of varied essays is, in fact, a woven tapestry with perforated boundaries and a stage for interdisciplinary voices to speak to one another in several ways. Put differently, the volume streams the past to create a level playing field for individual historical research designs to interact with the larger patterns of India’s history.

Focusing on peninsular India, the essays cover diverse topics stretching from megalithic times to the eighteenth century. They rely on classical languages and historical materials to source information, employ versatile methods and examine wide-ranging themes including archaeological sites, trade routes, iron technology, water management, coinage, social hierarchies, goddesses and narrative traditions, performing arts and culture, forms of protests, crime and punishment, and narratives of death alongside socioeconomic and political processes. Individually and collectively, the book intervenes, disturbs and challenges the dominant gaze of history-writing in India, and argues for a more wide-angled and cosmopolitan understanding of India’s complex history.