Sign-In
Cart
The Invented Invader: Mughal History, Polarization, and the War Over India's Past
Paperback
Series: The Narrative History of Medieval India
General World HistoryIndian & South Asian History
Please select the version of book you would like to purchase.
ISBN13: 9798185265352
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jul 2 2026
Pages: 288
Weight: 0.77
Height: 0.72 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jul 2 2026
Pages: 288
Weight: 0.77
Height: 0.72 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Preface
The past is never dead. It is not even past.
- a sentence so often borrowed it has become common property
This is a book about a quarrel. Not the quarrel between the Mughals and their enemies four hundred years ago, though that quarrel will fill many of these pages, but the quarrel happening now, in our own decade, over what those four hundred years are permitted to mean. It is a quarrel conducted in textbooks and on television, in courtrooms and on the granite of street signs, in the dark rivers of forwarded messages that run through a billion telephones every night. Its subject is dead. Its stakes are entirely of the present.
The past is never dead. It is not even past.
- a sentence so often borrowed it has become common property
This is a book about a quarrel. Not the quarrel between the Mughals and their enemies four hundred years ago, though that quarrel will fill many of these pages, but the quarrel happening now, in our own decade, over what those four hundred years are permitted to mean. It is a quarrel conducted in textbooks and on television, in courtrooms and on the granite of street signs, in the dark rivers of forwarded messages that run through a billion telephones every night. Its subject is dead. Its stakes are entirely of the present.
I want to be honest at the outset about the difficulty of the thing I am attempting, because the difficulty is the whole point. It would be easy to write a book that defended the Mughals against their detractors. It would be just as easy, and in today's market considerably more profitable, to write a book that prosecuted them. What is hard, and what I have tried to do, is to write a book that refuses both the prosecution and the defence and asks a stranger question instead: how did a vanished empire become a live wire in the politics of the world's largest democracy, and what is being done to the historical record in the process?
The phrase that gives this book its provocation - the falsification of Mughal contributions by people who call themselves nationalists - needs unpacking before we go a step further, because it could be misread as a slogan, and a slogan is the last thing I want to offer. Falsification, as I use it, does not mean the simple telling of lies, though there are plenty of those. It means something more insidious: the bending of a true and complicated record into a false and simple shape. It is the art of the half-truth, the selective fact, the accurate detail deployed to license an inaccurate conclusion. The most effective distortions of Mughal history are not fabrications. They are facts with the context surgically removed.
And the nationalists. I do not put the word in scare-quotes to sneer at love of country, which is among the most ordinary and decent of human attachments. I put pressure on the word because the people who have appointed themselves the guardians of the Indian nation's wounded memory have arrogated to themselves the right to decide who belongs to that nation and who is a permanent intruder within it. Their nationalism is real, but it is a nationalism of a particular and narrow kind, and one of the ways it does its work is by rewriting six centuries of the subcontinent's past into a single, unbroken story of Hindu humiliation at Muslim hands. That story is not history. It is, as we shall see, a colonial invention wearing a saffron coat. To call it a falsification is not name-calling. It is description.
But here is where the book complicates its own argument, and where I ask for the reader's patience. The people rewriting Mughal history today did not invent the bad habits they exploit. They inherited them. For most of the twentieth century, a rival camp - secular, nationalist in a different idiom, broadly associated with the long ascendancy of Jawaharlal Nehru and the historians who flourished under it - produced its own distortions of the Mughal past. Where the new revisionists turn every Muslim ruler into a fanatic, the older establishment too often turned Akbar into a kind of secular saint, airbrushed the violence out of the record, and treated awkward facts about temple destruction or discriminatory taxation as embarrassments to be managed rather than evidence to be examined.
The phrase that gives this book its provocation - the falsification of Mughal contributions by people who call themselves nationalists - needs unpacking before we go a step further, because it could be misread as a slogan, and a slogan is the last thing I want to offer. Falsification, as I use it, does not mean the simple telling of lies, though there are plenty of those. It means something more insidious: the bending of a true and complicated record into a false and simple shape. It is the art of the half-truth, the selective fact, the accurate detail deployed to license an inaccurate conclusion. The most effective distortions of Mughal history are not fabrications. They are facts with the context surgically removed.
And the nationalists. I do not put the word in scare-quotes to sneer at love of country, which is among the most ordinary and decent of human attachments. I put pressure on the word because the people who have appointed themselves the guardians of the Indian nation's wounded memory have arrogated to themselves the right to decide who belongs to that nation and who is a permanent intruder within it. Their nationalism is real, but it is a nationalism of a particular and narrow kind, and one of the ways it does its work is by rewriting six centuries of the subcontinent's past into a single, unbroken story of Hindu humiliation at Muslim hands. That story is not history. It is, as we shall see, a colonial invention wearing a saffron coat. To call it a falsification is not name-calling. It is description.
But here is where the book complicates its own argument, and where I ask for the reader's patience. The people rewriting Mughal history today did not invent the bad habits they exploit. They inherited them. For most of the twentieth century, a rival camp - secular, nationalist in a different idiom, broadly associated with the long ascendancy of Jawaharlal Nehru and the historians who flourished under it - produced its own distortions of the Mughal past. Where the new revisionists turn every Muslim ruler into a fanatic, the older establishment too often turned Akbar into a kind of secular saint, airbrushed the violence out of the record, and treated awkward facts about temple destruction or discriminatory taxation as embarrassments to be managed rather than evidence to be examined.
Also from
Nandi, Rickbed
The Role of Mercenaries in the Hundred Years' War: Free Companies And Their Economic Influence
Nandi, Rickbed
Paperback
$21.06
Strategies for Multiplexed CRISPR/Cas Editing in Complex Genomes: A Simplest Approach for General Readers
Nandi, Rickbed
Paperback
$12.00
Investigating The Potential Of Crispr Interference (CRISPRi) For Gene Regulation: Book 6
Nandi, Rickbed
Paperback
$14.40
High-Resolution Protein Structure Determination: A Text-Based Informative Book
Nandi, Rickbed
Paperback
$14.40
Development of Efficient Delivery Methods for CRISPR Components In Vivo: Book 3
Nandi, Rickbed
Paperback
$72.00
Formulation of a Premium Hybrid Liquid Laundry Detergent: A Lab-Tested Chemist Formula
Nandi, Rickbed
Paperback
$15.30
The Role of Gunpowder Artillery in the Final Phase of the Hundred Years' War
Nandi, Rickbed
Paperback
$14.42
The Evolution of English Longbowmen Tactics and Their Decisive Impact on the Hundred Years' War
Nandi, Rickbed
Paperback
$18.53
Rewriting the Gita: Tagore's Mystical Poetics in Gitanjali: Interpreting Transcendence Through Song and Scripture
Nandi, Rickbed
Paperback
$11.99
Tradition & Culture of Bengal: A Civilizational Journey Through Art, Music, Literature, And Architecture
Nandi, Rickbed
Paperback
$72.00
Post-Translational Modifications of Mitotic Cyclins and Their Regulatory Impact
Nandi, Rickbed
Paperback
$96.00
Crusading as Penitential Pilgrimage: The Theology of Indulgences Reconsidered: A Scholarly View
Nandi, Rickbed
Paperback
$18.00
Crusades And The Theology Of Holy Violence: A Comparative Study Of Christian And Islamic Martyrdom: A Scholarly View
Neuman, Jon
Christen, Jose
Paperback
$18.00
Theological Opposition to Crusading Voices of Dissent in the Medieval Church
Nandi, Rickbed
Paperback
$20.40
Nursing Theories and Models: 50 Theories and Models That Changed the Meaning of Nursing
Nandi, Rickbed
Paperback
$27.55
From Liberalism to Cover: The Mindset of Religious Transformation in Bangladesh
Nandi, Rickbed
Paperback
$19.20
Also in
Indian & South Asian History
Swift Sword: The True Story of the Marines of MIKE 3/5 in Vietnam, 4 September 1967
Glass, Doyle
Paperback
$15.19
Koh-I-Noor: The History of the World's Most Infamous Diamond
Anand, Anita
Dalrymple, William
Paperback
$18.99
India - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture
Culture Smart!
Stephen, Becky
Paperback
$16.14
The Doctor and the Saint: Caste, Race, and Annihilation of Caste, the Debate Between B.R. Ambedkar and M.K. Gandhi
Roy, Arundhati
Paperback
$18.95
The New Tech Titans of China: Innovation Under Pressure in the World's Most Ambitious Economy
Fannin, Rebecca
Paperback
$18.99
Lions of Medina: The True Story of the Marines of Charlie 1/1 in Vietnam, 11-12 October 1967
Glass, Doyle
Paperback
$15.99
Decolonizing Anarchism: An Antiauthoritarian History of India's Liberation Struggle
Ramnath, Maia
Paperback
$18.99
Azadi: Fascism, Fiction, and Freedom in the Time of the Virus (Expanded Second Edition)
Roy, Arundhati
Paperback
$18.95
Rambutan: Recipes from Sri Lanka, Accompanying the Acclaimed New London Restaurant
Shanmugalingam, Cynthia
Hardcover
$33.25
The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing, and Abolition
Soundararajan, Thenmozhi
Paperback
From $10.99
The Children of Mu: Relics of the Diaspora from the Lost Pacific Continent
Churchward, James
Paperback
$18.95
Secret Drugs of Buddhism: Psychedelic Sacraments and the Origins of the Vajrayana
Crowley, Michael
Paperback
$23.70
The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide (Pulitzer Prize Finalist)
Bass, Gary J.
Paperback
$17.10
The Last Island: Discovery, Defiance, and the Most Elusive Tribe on Earth
Goodheart, Adam
Goodheart, Adam
Hardcover
$27.50
Five Past Midnight in Bhopal: The Epic Story of the World's Deadliest Industrial Disaster
Lapierre, Dominique
Moro, Javier
Hardcover
$30.00
Women of the Raj: The Mothers, Wives, and Daughters of the British Empire in India
MacMillan, Margaret
Paperback
From $9.99
The 1921 Rebellion in Malabar: A Collection of Communist Writings
Prashad, Vijay
Narayanan, Nitheesh
Paperback
$16.24
Speaking of History: Conversations about India's Past and Present
Thapar, Romila
Arora, Namit
Paperback
$16.80
The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge, and India's Quest for Independence
Anand, Anita
Paperback
$19.00
Merchants of Death: A Study of the International Armament Industry
Engelbrecht, H. C.
Hanighen, F. C.
Paperback
$72.79
Slaves from the Tamil Coast and European Trade Around the World: 1547-1792
Stephen, S. Jeyaseela
Hardcover
$174.00
Eagles of Destiny: Volume 2 - Growth and Wars of the Pakistani Air Force 1956-1971
Mazhar, Yawar
Shabbir, Usman
Paperback
$28.45
Linguistic Resistance in Pakistan: Punjabi Language Movements After Independence
Columeau, Julien
Paperback
$52.50
Terror and Response: The India-Pakistan Proxy War 2008-2019
Badri-Maharaj, Sanjay
Pedroza, Everton
Paperback
$28.45
Indies Adventure; the Amazing Career of Afonso De Albuquerque, Captain-general and Governor of India (1509-1515)
Sanceau, Elaine
Paperback
$29.94
A Passage to Europe: The Astonishing Travels of an Indian Prince in the Age of Revolutions
Markovits, Rahul
Hardcover
$37.00
The Language Movement in Bangladesh: Translingualism and a Struggle for Rhetorical Sovereignty
Rabbi, Shakil
Hardcover
$180.00
Hindu Mythology: A Captivating Guide to Hindu Myths, Hindu Gods, and Hindu Goddesses
Clayton, Matt
Paperback
$16.10
A Year in Green Tea and Tuk-Tuks: My unlikely adventure creating an eco farm in Sri Lanka
Spowers, Rory
Paperback
$11.99
Prophetic Maharaja: Loss, Sovereignty, and the Sikh Tradition in Colonial South Asia
Judge, Rajbir Singh
Hardcover
$210.00
The Parliament of Pakistan: A History of Institution-Building and (Un)Democratic Practices, 1971-1977
Hussain, Mahboob
Paperback
$29.00
Punjab and the War of Independence 1857-1858: From Collaboration to Resistance
Sargana, Turab Ul Hassan
Paperback
$21.75
Modern Forests: Statemaking and Environmental Change in Colonial Eastern India
Sivaramakrishnan, K.
Paperback
$38.00
Himmler's Crusade: The Nazi Expedition to Find the Origins of the Aryan Race
Hale, Christopher
Paperback
$25.64
Discovering Bhutan: Land of Gross National Happiness
Schofield, Janetward
Schofield, Janet Ward
Paperback
$18.00
Ein Ungluck Ist Die Tochter: Zur Diskriminierung Des Madchens Im Alten Und Im Heutigen Indien
Syed, Renate
Paperback
$48.00
The Language Movement in Bangladesh: Translingualism and a Struggle for Rhetorical Sovereignty
Rabbi, Shakil
Paperback
$56.00
Modernity and Malevolence in the Psychiatric Clinic: Anxious Selves in Urban and Rural South India
Willford, Andrew C.
Hardcover
$112.00
The Mughal Empire: A Captivating Guide to the Mughal Empire in South Asia and the Impact the Mughals Had on the History of India
History, Captivating
Paperback
$15.17
A History of the Sikhs: From the Origin of the Nation to the Battles of the Sutlej: Copy#1
Cunningham, Joseph Davey
Hardcover
$49.94
The Battle of Saragarhi (1897): The Last Stand of Twenty-One Sikhs Against Overwhelming Odds
Whitaker, Jack
Paperback
$16.79