ASHA: Blast From The Past

Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi

There are neighbourhoods in India whose religious identity announces itself before one encounters a mosque, hears the call to prayer, or notices the beards and skullcaps of their inhabitants. The broken roads, overflowing drains, heaps of uncollected rubbish, tangled electricity wires, overcrowded houses and conspicuous absence of civic amenities often tell you that you are entering a predominantly Muslim locality. What ought to be an indictment of municipal administration has gradually become an accepted feature of the Indian urban landscape. Poverty, neglect and religious identity have become so closely associated in the public imagination that the condition of a neighbourhood is frequently mistaken for a characteristic of the community inhabiting it.

This is not to suggest that every Muslim locality is impoverished, or that civic neglect is confined to Muslims. There are affluent Muslim neighbourhoods, just as there are appallingly neglected Hindu and Dalit settlements. Yet the geographical concentration of Muslims in poorly serviced urban spaces, their difficulties in securing accommodation elsewhere, and the suspicion with which their neighbourhoods are regarded point towards a particular form of exclusion, one in which religious prejudice, economic inequality and administrative indifference reinforce one another.

Reading Rakhshanda Jalil’s deeply personal essay, “Living in Jamia, Coping with Ghettoisation”, reproduced in her collection But You Don’t Look Like a Muslim (HarperCollins, 2019), which she shared once again recently on social media, I was struck by how closely her experiences corresponded with what I have observed elsewhere. Jalil writes of her move from the relatively privileged surroundings of Gulmohar Park in South Delhi to the neighbourhood adjoining Jamia Millia Islamia. What she initially imagined would be a simple change of residence became an encounter with an entirely different social reality.

The most revealing incident concerns her young daughter’s birthday party. Children who had happily attended celebrations at their previous home suddenly found themselves unable to visit the new one. Their parents were reluctant to venture into the Jamia neighbourhood, notwithstanding Jalil’s offers to provide directions or arrange transport. When subsequent birthday celebrations were organised at a McDonald’s elsewhere, the reluctance disappeared. The problem, clearly, was not distance. It was the address.

Jalil recounts similar experiences with landlords who declined to rent accommodation to Muslims, often invoking the familiar preference for “vegetarian tenants”, as though a biryani recipe might somehow contaminate the property deed. Delivery services, dry cleaners and other businesses serving neighbouring affluent colonies refused to cross an invisible boundary into Jamia Nagar. Even more disturbing was the contrast in civic amenities between adjoining localities. One side of the road enjoyed the benefits of organised urban living; the other was left to negotiate inadequate infrastructure and administrative neglect. Her essay is particularly valuable because it demonstrates that ghettoisation is not necessarily the consequence of a community’s desire to live separately. Frequently, it is the outcome of a society’s unwillingness to allow that community to live anywhere else.

What Jalil describes is by no means peculiar to Jamia Nagar, Batla House, Zakir Nagar or Abul Fazal Enclave. It is a phenomenon encountered across large parts of India, and even beyond the towns and cities of the Hindi-speaking belt. Indeed, it has roots extending well into the twentieth century, although the forms of exclusion have changed over time.

I am reminded of an experience in Kolkata several decades ago, probably when Jyoti Basu was still alive. I had gone there to participate in a seminar. At the conclusion of the programme, I requested my hosts to arrange for me to be dropped at a particular street in the Park Circus area. One of the organisers, a gentleman belonging to the city’s educated bhadralok milieu and sympathetic to its long-established communist culture, kindly offered to take me in his car.

As we approached Park Circus, the surroundings began to change. The streets appeared increasingly congested, the environment less orderly, and the visible presence of men wearing beards and skullcaps became more pronounced. The neighbourhood, as it were, began to announce its religious identity.

My companion grew visibly uncomfortable. Finally, he turned towards me and asked, with unmistakable nervousness, “Is it safe for you to go there?”

The question has stayed with me all these years.

Here was a member of Kolkata’s educated, ostensibly progressive middle class, someone shaped by a political environment that had for decades proclaimed its commitment to secularism, class solidarity and opposition to communalism. Yet the sight of a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood was sufficient to produce anxiety. The area had become, in his imagination, a place of possible danger. What made the incident particularly revealing was that his apprehension was not based on anything that had happened to us. We had encountered no hostility, no disturbance, no threatening situation. The anxiety arose entirely from the neighbourhood’s appearance and the identity of its inhabitants. The beards and skullcaps were not evidence of danger. They were merely signs through which a deeply embedded social prejudice found expression.

I have often wondered whether my companion would have experienced the same unease had we been entering a similarly congested Hindu neighbourhood. Perhaps he would have complained about the roads, the traffic or the filth. But would he have questioned my safety merely because of the religious appearance of its residents? The distinction is important. A neglected Muslim neighbourhood is not merely perceived as poor. It is often perceived as dangerous. Its poverty becomes a sign of backwardness, its congestion a sign of disorder, and its religious identity an explanation for both.

And this was Kolkata, the city of the bhadralok, of intellectual debate, progressive literature, trade unionism and a powerful communist movement. If such anxieties could survive within that social and political environment, one can imagine how deeply they had penetrated societies where communal divisions were more openly articulated.

There was another encounter, perhaps more than a decade or so ago, which revealed a different but equally disturbing dimension of the same prejudice. I was travelling from Delhi to Hyderabad by the Rajdhani Express, in an AC two-tier compartment. Seated near me was a young woman who appeared well educated, affluent and thoroughly at ease with the world around her. We struck up a conversation. Speaking fluent English, she told me that she worked for a multinational company in Delhi, had recently visited the United Kingdom, and was now travelling to Hyderabad for the first time.

The conversation proceeded pleasantly until she discovered that I was a Muslim and taught history at Aligarh Muslim University. Her tone changed almost immediately. Looking at me with an expression of genuine surprise, she exclaimed, “But you don’t look like a Muslim!”

I was momentarily taken aback. What, I wondered, was a Muslim supposed to look like? Perhaps she expected me to sport a beard, wear a skullcap, have surma in my eyes and dress in the manner in which Muslims have so often been stereotypically portrayed in popular Hindi cinema, presumably with a permanently villainous expression and a background score to match. Apparently, my appearance, my manner of speaking and my professional identity did not correspond to the image of a Muslim she carried in her mind.

After a brief silence came another question, equally revealing: “In Aligarh, do you teach in Urdu?”

Imagine a young, educated, English-speaking professional, employed by a multinational corporation in Delhi, widely travelled and familiar with life in Britain, yet knowing so little about a university situated barely two or three hours from the national capital! That Aligarh Muslim University is a modern institution of higher education, where English is widely employed as a medium of instruction, seemed to be entirely outside her understanding. For her, the word “Muslim” apparently suggested a particular appearance, a particular language and, by implication, a world quite separate from the modern professional environment she herself inhabited.

What struck me was not merely her ignorance – ignorance can be corrected through information. More troubling was the confidence with which she carried these assumptions, without apparently recognising that they were prejudices. Her education, professional success and exposure to the wider world had done little to challenge the stereotypes she had absorbed.

In many ways, she reflected a mentality that extends well beyond any single individual. Within significant sections of India’s majority community, Muslims continue to be imagined through a narrow collection of visual and cultural stereotypes. Their identity is reduced to beards, skullcaps, Urdu, religious observances and supposed cultural separateness. A Muslim who does not conform to this image becomes an object of surprise, almost an exception requiring explanation.

This is precisely what makes the title of Rakhshanda Jalil’s book, But You Don’t Look Like a Muslim, so telling. The seemingly innocuous remark contains an entire history of stereotyping. It assumes that Muslims possess a recognisable and uniform appearance, that their religious identity must necessarily dictate their language, dress and cultural habits, and that those who do not conform are somehow unusual.

The young woman on the train and my bhadralok companion in Kolkata belonged to different social worlds, but their reactions sprang from a similar conditioning. One associated a Muslim neighbourhood with danger; the other associated Muslim identity with a predetermined appearance and linguistic culture. Neither seemed conscious of the assumptions underlying their responses. Indeed, the two encounters illuminate different dimensions of the same phenomenon. The Kolkata incident revealed the geography of prejudice; the Rajdhani encounter revealed its psychology. In one case, the Muslim was imagined as belonging to a threatening space; in the other, he was expected to conform to a fixed cultural stereotype. Both involved an inability to recognise Muslims as ordinary, diverse participants in India’s shared social and intellectual life.

And herein lies a larger problem. Ghettoisation is not merely the physical concentration of a community within particular neighbourhoods. It also exists in the minds of those who regard that community as fundamentally different from themselves. The walls separating communities are constructed as much through inherited prejudices, cultural representations and everyday conversations as through discriminatory housing markets and unequal civic development.

In the towns of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and elsewhere, the spatial separation of Muslims has long been visible. In many places, older Muslim residential quarters grew around mosques, markets, shrines, artisanal occupations and networks of kinship. Their origins cannot always be explained through discrimination. Medieval and early modern Indian towns frequently developed around occupational, caste, religious and familial clusters. The mohalla was an important unit of urban social organisation.

But there is a fundamental difference between a historically evolved neighbourhood and a modern ghetto. The former may represent social proximity, occupational association or cultural preference. The latter increasingly reflects restricted choices, unequal opportunities and the fear of exclusion or violence. A neighbourhood becomes a ghetto not simply because members of one community live together, but because the wider society erects barriers around them, both visible and invisible.

The communal violence accompanying Partition in 1947 profoundly altered the social geography of many north Indian towns. Subsequent riots, including those in Jabalpur, Ahmedabad, Moradabad, Meerut, Bhagalpur and other cities, contributed to new anxieties about residential security. In some places, families moved towards areas where members of their own community were concentrated, believing that numerical strength offered some protection against communal attacks. Such movements were not always voluntary in any meaningful sense. When a family abandons a mixed neighbourhood because it fears violence, or because its neighbours no longer regard it with trust, the resulting segregation cannot reasonably be described as a free choice.

The process has continued into the twenty-first century. The violence in Gujarat in 2002, for instance, accelerated the concentration of Muslims in particular residential areas of Ahmedabad. Juhapura became emblematic of a larger phenomenon: the growth of substantial Muslim settlements whose residents included professionals, traders, teachers and prosperous families, but who nevertheless encountered the disadvantages associated with a segregated urban space.

The existence of well-to-do households within such localities should not obscure the larger problem. Economic success does not necessarily secure freedom of residence. A Muslim professional may possess the means to purchase a house in an affluent mixed neighbourhood and still find that no one is willing to sell or rent to him. The vocabulary employed to justify such exclusion is often deceptively innocuous. Landlords prefer vegetarians. Housing societies speak of maintaining their cultural character. Property dealers invoke the preferences of other residents. Sometimes the refusal is blunt; more often it is conveyed through evasions, suddenly unavailable flats or conditions introduced after the applicant’s name becomes known. In this manner, discrimination is practised without necessarily being acknowledged. Politeness, it turns out, has always been an excellent disguise for prejudice.

The consequences extend far beyond housing. Once a neighbourhood acquires a communal identity, commercial institutions may hesitate to invest there, banks may regard it as undesirable, private schools may become inaccessible, and municipal services may remain inadequate. The very conditions produced by exclusion are then used to justify further exclusion. A vicious circle develops. Muslims are discouraged from settling in mixed neighbourhoods; they concentrate in areas where accommodation remains available; those areas become overcrowded; public investment fails to keep pace; and the resulting deterioration reinforces the prejudice that Muslim localities are inherently disorderly or backward. The inhabitants are blamed for the circumstances into which they have been pushed.

This process was recognised by the Sachar Committee, appointed to examine the social, economic and educational condition of India’s Muslims. Its report, submitted in 2006, documented serious disadvantages in education, employment, access to credit and urban infrastructure. It also drew attention to the residential insecurity of Muslims and the relationship between their concentration in particular localities and inadequate public facilities. The implications are disturbing. If two neighbourhoods of comparable economic standing receive different levels of public attention, poverty alone cannot explain the disparity. We must also examine the priorities of the institutions responsible for distributing civic resources.

There is, moreover, a political dimension to this neglect. Municipal administrations respond not only to need but also to influence, visibility and pressure. Areas inhabited by politically influential citizens are often better placed to demand services. Poorly organised or politically marginalised neighbourhoods may find their complaints repeatedly ignored. In Muslim localities, this disadvantage can be aggravated by communal prejudice and the tendency of political parties to regard their residents primarily as electoral constituencies rather than citizens entitled to equal services.

One should also recognise that the responsibility does not rest with any single political party. The conditions described by Jalil, and those I witnessed in Kolkata, developed long before the present phase of Indian politics. Congress governments, regional parties, Left administrations and other political formations have all presided, at different times and in different places, over unequal urban development. Secular declarations have not always translated into equitable civic administration.

Yet the political developments of the past decade have introduced an additional anxiety. Where Muslims were once frequently treated as a neglected minority, they are now also increasingly subjected to public suspicion. Campaigns around religious identity, disputes over places of worship, communal rhetoric and the selective use of demolition drives have deepened insecurities in several parts of the country. In such an atmosphere, residential concentration may become not merely a matter of convenience or social preference but a strategy for survival.

It is important, however, not to confuse the condition of a locality with the character of its inhabitants. Muslim neighbourhoods are not homogeneous spaces. They contain differences of class, occupation, education, sect, caste and political outlook. The prosperous trader, the university professor, the artisan, the daily-wage labourer and the unemployed young man may share the same neighbourhood while inhabiting very different social worlds. Nor should one romanticise life within these settlements. Community solidarity can provide security, mutual assistance and cultural continuity, but it cannot substitute for functioning institutions. A community may establish its own schools, clinics, charitable organisations and welfare associations, yet it cannot reasonably be expected to provide everything that the modern state is constitutionally obliged to ensure.

The problem is not that Muslims live together. The problem arises when living together becomes the only realistic option, and when the resulting concentration is used to justify their exclusion from the wider city.

Urban scholars have drawn attention to precisely these distinctions. Raphael Susewind, in his study Muslims in Indian Cities: Degrees of Segregation and the Elusive Ghetto (2017), demonstrated that residential concentration alone does not necessarily constitute a ghetto. What matters equally are the histories of insecurity, restrictions on residential choice, and the ways in which people perceive and experience their urban surroundings. Such research helps explain why the phenomenon is both historical and contemporary. Its roots lie partly in older patterns of urban settlement, but its persistence and intensification reflect modern structures of discrimination.

There is another consequence of this separation that deserves attention. When people inhabit increasingly segregated spaces, they gradually lose opportunities for ordinary social interaction. The shared neighbourhood, the neighbourhood school, the marketplace and the everyday encounters through which communities once came to know one another begin to disappear. Ignorance then takes the place of familiarity. A locality becomes known not through the people who inhabit it but through rumours, newspaper headlines, political speeches and occasional sensational incidents. Popular cinema and television have frequently reinforced these impressions by reducing Muslims to a limited repertoire of appearances, accents, occupations and religious practices. The Muslim neighbourhood becomes a place to be feared rather than a part of the city to be understood.

This brings me back to my two encounters, separated by years and circumstances but connected by the same underlying prejudice. In Kolkata, a communist-minded bhadralok was apprehensive about entering a Muslim neighbourhood. On the Rajdhani Express, an educated, internationally travelled young professional was astonished that a Muslim university teacher did not resemble the stereotype she had inherited. Neither incident involved overt aggression. Neither person necessarily considered himself or herself communal. Yet both revealed how deeply the idea of the Muslim as the unfamiliar, the different, and sometimes the threatening, had penetrated everyday consciousness.

That is perhaps what makes such prejudices particularly difficult to confront. They are not always expressed through hatred. Sometimes they appear as curiosity, surprise, nervousness or seemingly innocent questions. But beneath them lies an assumption that Muslims constitute a separate category of Indians whose appearance, language, neighbourhoods and way of life must necessarily differ from those of the majority.

Jalil’s essay exposes precisely this invisible geography. Her move from Gulmohar Park to Jamia Nagar did not change her education, cultural outlook, professional standing or her family’s aspirations. Yet her new address altered the way others perceived her. It affected who would visit her home, which services would reach her doorstep and how her neighbourhood was situated within the city’s social hierarchy.

What she experienced in Delhi, I recognised in Kolkata and aboard a train travelling towards Hyderabad. And what these experiences reveal can be encountered, with regional variations, across much of urban India.

The tragedy is that these divisions have become so familiar that they seldom provoke outrage. We have learnt to accept that certain localities will have broken roads, inadequate sanitation, poor schools and unreliable public services. We have even learnt to identify the religious composition of neighbourhoods through these signs of neglect. But there is nothing natural or inevitable about this geography. It has been shaped by history, political decisions, discriminatory housing practices, unequal public investment and, above all, the failure to regard every citizen as equally entitled to the city.

What is particularly telling is how little has changed in Jamia Nagar itself, despite the passage of years and the arrival of the Delhi Metro. The neighbourhood is now well connected to the rest of the capital, a fact that would suggest, on paper at least, that the old isolation should have diminished. Yet the perception persists. Auto-rickshaw drivers and taxi operators still hesitate to pick up or drop passengers there, as though crossing an invisible border into another country, one that requires a separate visa and perhaps a change of currency. Many amenities routinely available elsewhere in Delhi remain denied to the residents of the area. The metro may have shortened the distance, but it has not altered the distance in people’s minds. If anything, the only visible transformation is that people now flock to the area for its excellent variety of non-vegetarian food, because nothing unites Indians quite like a good kebab, even if the same Indians would rather not live next door to the people serving it.

The answer cannot simply be to improve roads and drains within Muslim neighbourhoods, although that is urgently necessary. It must also involve dismantling the barriers that prevent Muslims from living elsewhere, ensuring fair access to housing and credit, strengthening public institutions, and restoring the possibility of genuinely shared urban spaces. Equally important is the need to confront the stereotypes perpetuated through education, popular culture, political discourse and everyday social interactions.

For what use is the physical integration of a city if its inhabitants remain mentally segregated? A metro line may connect Jamia Nagar to the rest of Delhi, but it cannot by itself persuade a landlord to rent his flat to a Muslim family, or convince an educated professional that a Muslim need not wear a skullcap or speak Urdu. Such changes require something more fundamental: a willingness to recognise fellow citizens without first imprisoning them within inherited religious categories.

A secular society cannot be judged merely by the assurances contained in its Constitution or the declarations of its political leaders. It must also be judged by the everyday geography of its cities, by who can live where, who receives public services, who feels secure, and whose neighbourhoods are regarded as belonging to the city.

Until those questions are confronted, the invisible boundary described by Rakhshanda Jalil will remain firmly in place.

And perhaps the most damning indictment of our urban civilisation is this: in a country that constitutionally promises equality to all its citizens, one can still often recognise a Muslim neighbourhood not by its mosque, but by the neglect surrounding it. And even when a Muslim steps outside that neighbourhood, he may discover that the ghetto continues to exist in the minds of those he encounters – waiting for him at the metro station, or a house which will not be rented to him.

Note:

This essay draws upon:

• Rakhshanda Jalil’s “Living in Jamia, Coping with Ghettoisation”, reproduced in But You Don’t Look Like a Muslim (HarperCollins, 2019),

• Susewind, R., “Muslims in Indian cities: Degrees of segregation and the elusive ghetto.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 49(6), 2017, pp. 1286–1307 which is a work on Muslim residential segregation in Indian cities.

• Report of the High Level Committee on the Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India, chaired by Justice Rajindar Sachar, submitted on 17 November 2006, and tabled in Parliament on 30 November 2006.

• Personal Recollections

Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi

The history of Aligarh is generally associated with Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, the establishment of the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College in 1875, and the subsequent emergence of Aligarh Muslim University. Yet long before it acquired its modern educational identity, Aligarh, or Kol, as it was then known, had been an important centre of political and military activity in northern India. During the eighteenth century, its fort and surrounding territories witnessed the struggles between a declining Mughal establishment, the Jats of Bharatpur, the Marathas and, eventually, the expanding East India Company.

One of the most fascinating chapters of this history concerns Aligarh’s association with European military adventurers, particularly Benoît de Boigne and Pierre Cuillier-Perron. Their careers were closely intertwined with the rise of Mahadji Scindia, the transformation of Maratha military organisation, and the continuing political importance of the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II. Under these European commanders, Aligarh became a major military and administrative centre, housing regular infantry formations, artillery establishments and the headquarters of an extensive territorial command.

The surviving fortifications, the historic gateway associated with Sahib Bagh, and the Persian inscription recording Perron’s titles provide tangible reminders of this remarkable period.

What makes the story particularly interesting is that these European officers were not initially representatives of European colonial rule. They served Indian rulers, commanded armies composed overwhelmingly of Indian soldiers, and operated within an Indo-Persian political culture in which Mughal titles and imperial legitimacy continued to matter. Their presence in Aligarh thus represents a fascinating intersection of Mughal sovereignty, Maratha political power and European military expertise.

From Muhammadgarh to Aligarh: The Earlier History of the Fort

The fort of Aligarh, situated to the north of the old town of Kol, had a history considerably older than the arrival of the French officers. Its importance arose from its strategic position in the Upper Ganga-Yamuna Doab, along routes connecting Delhi, Agra, Mathura and the territories further east.

Although local traditions associate the site with earlier fortifications, its more clearly recorded history begins during the reign of Ibrahim Lodi. Around 1524–25, Muhammad, son of Umar, who held authority over Kol, is said to have constructed or rebuilt a fortress that came to be known as Muhammadgarh.

During the reigns of Farrukhsiyar and Muhammad Shah, Sabit Khan, an important Mughal noble and governor associated with Kol, undertook substantial reconstruction of the fort, which thereafter became known as Sabitgarh. Sabit Khan also left a significant architectural legacy in the town, most notably the Jama Masjid, completed around 1728. The mosque, with its Persian inscription, remains an important monument of eighteenth-century Mughal Aligarh.

As central Mughal authority weakened, the fort became an object of contention among competing regional powers. The Jats of Bharatpur, particularly under Maharaja Suraj Mal, extended their influence into the Upper Doab during the middle decades of the eighteenth century. The fort passed into Jat possession and became known as Ramgarh.

Its subsequent history was shaped by the attempts of the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II and his leading commanders to recover territories that had slipped from imperial control.

Among these commanders, Mirza Najaf Khan occupies a particularly important place. An Iranian-born noble who had risen to prominence in Mughal service, Najaf Khan emerged as one of the most capable military and political figures of the emperor’s later reign. He attempted to restore a measure of discipline to the imperial army, reorganise its finances and recover strategically important territories.

In 1775, Najaf Khan’s forces moved against the Jat-held fortress of Ramgarh. The operations were conducted principally under his subordinate Afrasiyab Khan, who secured the fort after a prolonged siege and negotiations. The campaign formed part of Najaf Khan’s wider efforts to re-establish Mughal authority over the Doab.

It was around this period that Ramgarh acquired the name Aligarh. The renaming has commonly been attributed to Najaf Khan, whose Shi’i background has encouraged an association between the new name and reverence for Imam Ali. Other accounts attribute the actual naming to Afrasiyab Khan, who conducted the military operations. The distinction is significant, and the precise circumstances of the renaming deserve closer examination through contemporary Persian records.

The new name was itself suggestive. Ali and garh, combining a personal or religious association with the Indic word for fort, reflected the cultural and linguistic environment in which Indo-Persian political traditions interacted with local forms of nomenclature.

Following Najaf Khan’s death in 1782, factional rivalries weakened the attempted restoration of Mughal power. Afrasiyab Khan, who had emerged as an influential figure at the imperial court, was assassinated in 1784. Meanwhile, Mahadji Scindia, the powerful Maratha chief, was extending his authority over Delhi and the surrounding territories.

Aligarh consequently passed into the expanding sphere of Maratha influence. It was this already established fortress, with its successive Lodi, Mughal and Jat phases, that would become one of the principal military centres of Scindia’s European commanders. And the fort continued to be known as Aligarh under Mahadji and his European commanders.

De Boigne and the Transformation of Maratha Military Power

Born in Chambéry in Savoy, De Boigne was not strictly French by birth, although his language and cultural background connected him with the wider French-speaking European world. His varied military experiences eventually brought him to India, where he entered the service of Mahadji Scindia.

Mahadji Scindia had recognised the importance of reorganising his military forces. The traditional Maratha cavalry remained formidable in mobile warfare, but the changing military environment required disciplined infantry formations supported by effective artillery. The successes of the East India Company’s armies had demonstrated the advantages of coordinated infantry drill and battlefield firepower.

De Boigne became one of the principal architects of this transformation. He organised regular battalions trained in European-style manoeuvres, equipped with firearms and supported by artillery. These formations gradually expanded into powerful brigades, which became central to Scindia’s military establishment.

It would, however, be misleading to regard this as a simple transplantation of European military methods into India. Indian armies had long possessed sophisticated artillery traditions, and Indian rulers had repeatedly experimented with new methods of military organisation. The brigades raised by De Boigne were composed predominantly of Indian soldiers, recruited from various regions and communities. Their maintenance depended upon Indian revenues, merchants, bankers, artisans and administrators.

Aligarh became one of the principal centres of this military experiment. Here De Boigne established facilities for training, provisioning and maintaining his troops. The surrounding territories supplied the revenues necessary to sustain the regular brigades. Military organisation was therefore closely connected with fiscal administration.

De Boigne’s forces played decisive roles in Scindia’s campaigns against rival powers, particularly at Patan and Merta in 1790. Their successes strengthened Maratha influence over northern India and contributed to Mahadji’s predominance at the Mughal court.

The relationship between Scindia and Shah Alam II was especially revealing. Although the emperor retained his imperial titles and ceremonial authority, effective military power increasingly rested with the Maratha chief. Yet Scindia did not seek to abolish Mughal sovereignty. Instead, he operated within its framework, deriving prestige and legitimacy from the emperor while exercising substantial control over imperial affairs.

De Boigne’s military establishment was thus sustained by a political arrangement in which Mughal sovereignty, Maratha authority and European military expertise coexisted.

Perron and the Rise of Aligarh as a Military Capital

Perron, a Frenchman of comparatively modest origins, arrived in India in search of military employment. After joining De Boigne’s establishment, he gradually rose through its ranks and, following De Boigne’s retirement, succeeded him as commander of Scindia’s northern forces in 1796.

Under Perron, Aligarh acquired even greater importance. It became not merely a military cantonment but an administrative headquarters from which an extensive territory was governed. His authority extended across substantial portions of the Upper Doab and connected Aligarh with the political affairs of Delhi and Agra.

Perron’s position was extraordinary. Formally, he remained a servant of Scindia, but he commanded considerable military resources, supervised revenue collection, administered territories and negotiated with powerful political figures. He exercised a degree of autonomy unusual even in the fluid political circumstances of late eighteenth-century India.

His establishment included European officers of different nationalities, although the soldiers themselves were overwhelmingly Indian. The army was maintained through territorial assignments, revenue arrangements and an elaborate system of supply.

Aligarh consequently developed into a centre of military expenditure and commercial activity. The maintenance of regular infantry and artillery formations required large quantities of grain, cloth, leather, metal, timber, gunpowder and other materials. Merchants, bankers, transporters, artisans and revenue officials must all have participated in this military economy.

The growth of the military establishment therefore affected the surrounding agricultural and commercial communities. The history of De Boigne and Perron cannot be separated from the social and economic history of Kol.

It is also worth noting that De Boigne’s economic activities extended beyond military command. He encouraged European indigo planters to settle in the Aligarh district, and several established factories in the surrounding parganas. Among them, a certain Longcroft operated a concern at Jalali, and the indigo vats associated with that enterprise are said to survive in a village near the present-day town—a modest but tangible trace of the commercial networks that sustained the military establishment. These planters were not merely agricultural entrepreneurs; their operations formed part of the wider fiscal and commercial infrastructure upon which Scindia’s brigades depended.

Sahib Bagh: The French Residence within Today’s AMU

One of the most remarkable surviving reminders of Aligarh’s French connection is Sahib Bagh, the garden residence associated first with De Boigne and subsequently with Perron.

Situated between the fort and the old town, Sahib Bagh was a substantial residential and administrative establishment. A description reproduced by H. G. Keene from the Delhi Gazette of 5 June 1874 records that De Boigne had occupied the mansion and that Perron subsequently improved both the residence and its gardens.

The garden was reportedly planted with fruit trees obtained from different regions and was considered by some French officers to rival the celebrated Ram Bagh at Agra.

Such descriptions suggest that Sahib Bagh was not simply a military commander’s residence. It represented the adoption of elite Indo-Persian traditions of garden planning, architectural display and aristocratic living.

The complex combined residential, administrative and defensive functions. Its enclosure, gateways and associated buildings reflected the position of a powerful military governor who held court and exercised authority over a substantial territory.

Its importance for the history of Aligarh is enhanced by the fact that the site subsequently became part of Aligarh Muslim University. The property was converted into a university residential complex in the twentieth century and is now associated with Sir Shah Sulaiman Hall. The historic gateway and surviving structures preserve a physical connection between eighteenth-century military history and the modern educational institution.

An important photographic record also survives in the British Library’s Archaeological Survey of India collection. Catalogued as Aligarh. Entrance gate of de Boigne’s House, it bears the reference Photo 1007/16(3581) and belongs to the Northern Circle photographs of 1916–20.

Comparison of this photograph with the present gateway could reveal alterations in the masonry, parapet, arches and decorative details. It could also help establish how much of the original eighteenth-century architectural fabric survives.

Perron’s Persian Inscription: Mughal Titles for a French Commander

Perhaps the most historically revealing feature of Sahib Bagh is the inscription associated with its gateway.

The bilingual tablet records Perron’s name and the year 1802 in English, while the Persian inscription identifies him through a series of honorifics, including Nāṣir al-Daula, Intiẓām al-Mulk, Bahādur and Muẓaffar Jang. The date 1217 AH is also recorded.

The inscription is significant for several reasons.

First, it demonstrates the continued importance of Persian as the language of political authority in northern India. Although Perron was a Frenchman commanding troops organised along European lines, the public representation of his status employed the vocabulary of Mughal nobility.

Second, the titles reveal how European military commanders could be incorporated into the ceremonial hierarchy of the Mughal Empire. Nāṣir al-Daula conveyed the idea of a supporter of the state, while Intiẓām al-Mulk referred to the ordering or administration of the realm. Muẓaffar Jang evoked victory in battle.

Third, the inscription reflects the distinction between effective political power and imperial legitimacy. Perron’s authority depended upon Scindia’s military establishment, yet the language through which his status was publicly acknowledged remained Mughal.

This was characteristic of the later eighteenth century. Even when the emperor lacked the resources necessary to exercise independent authority, imperial titles and honours continued to possess political value.

The inscription therefore provides an unusually clear material expression of the relationship between Mughal sovereignty, Maratha dominance and European military service.

Its architectural context is equally important. The gateway appears to draw upon late Mughal traditions of monumental entrances rather than a purely European architectural vocabulary. It would be anachronistic to classify it uncritically as Indo-Saracenic, a term more commonly associated with the eclectic architectural practices of the later nineteenth century.

A detailed epigraphic examination of the tablet, including an accurate Persian transcription, palaeographic analysis and comparison of the English and Persian sections, would be a valuable contribution to the architectural history of AMU.

It should be noted that no comparable building inscription survives for De Boigne. His presence in the documentary record is attested instead by a Persian seal impression reading Karnail Dubain Itmad-ud-daula Shamshir-Jung Bahadur 1208, found on Persian documents of the period. The seal—rather than an architectural tablet—is the principal epigraphic trace of his authority, and its wording reveals the same incorporation of a European commander into Mughal honorific conventions that the Perron inscription displays in stone.

Aligarh Fort and the French Military Engineers

Although the fort had passed through several phases of construction and reconstruction, its association with De Boigne and Perron marked a particularly important stage in its military development.

The French officers strengthened the existing fortifications and adapted them to the requirements of contemporary artillery warfare. The surviving enclosure, with its polygonal plan, projecting bastions, deep ditch and defensive approaches, reflects the increasing importance of artillery and coordinated infantry operations.

The Imperial Gazetteer of India specifically acknowledges that De Boigne and Perron devoted considerable attention to strengthening the fort.

The bastions enabled defenders to direct flanking fire along the adjoining walls, while the ditch and outer works complicated attempts to approach the principal defences. The arrangement was intended to make an assault difficult even for a disciplined army supported by artillery.

Yet these developments should not be attributed exclusively to European military ingenuity. Indian fortifications had long incorporated bastions, artillery platforms, deep ditches and multiple defensive lines. The French contribution lay in the adaptation and reinforcement of an existing fortress according to the requirements of Scindia’s regular army.

It is also important to distinguish between the different construction phases. The fort visible today cannot be treated as an entirely French creation. Its fabric reflects earlier Mughal and Jat interventions, Maratha-period reconstruction, British military alterations after 1803 and subsequent changes.

A proper architectural study would therefore require a measured survey of the bastions, curtain walls, gateways, masonry and defensive works, supported by historical maps and contemporary military descriptions.

The Other Europeans of Aligarh

De Boigne and Perron were not the only European officers associated with the military establishment of Aligarh.

Colonel Pedron, who commanded the fortress during the British assault of 1803, maintained a residence and garden in the town. According to the nineteenth-century account reproduced by Keene, the property subsequently became associated with the Judges’ Court.

Another officer, the Chevalier Dudernaque, possessed a house on the edge of the town. The same account also refers to European officers of English, French and Italian origin serving in Perron’s military establishment.

These details suggest that Aligarh contained a wider European military community, with residences, gardens and commercial connections extending beyond the fort and Sahib Bagh.

The phenomenon was not confined to Scindia’s service. Elsewhere in India, European officers were employed by various Indian rulers. Michel Joachim Marie Raymond served the Nizam of Hyderabad, while the military establishment of Begum Samru at Sardhana included European commanders and Indian troops. George Thomas, John Hessing and James Skinner similarly belonged to the wider world of military entrepreneurs who moved between competing political establishments.

Their careers challenge the conventional distinction between European and Indian military history. These men did not invariably represent European imperial states. Their loyalties were often contractual and personal, and their fortunes depended upon the Indian rulers who employed them.

At the same time, their military expertise became increasingly important in a political environment characterised by intense competition for territory, revenue and military resources.

The Fall of Aligarh, 1803

The fortunes of Perron and the Maratha military establishment changed dramatically with the expansion of British power.

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the East India Company had become increasingly concerned about Scindia’s military strength and the employment of French officers in his service. The wider conflict between Britain and France during the Napoleonic period gave these concerns an additional strategic dimension.

The British frequently represented French military influence in Indian states as a potential threat to their interests. Such arguments also provided justification for intervention against Indian rulers who sought to strengthen their armies through European expertise.

The Treaty of Bassein, concluded between the East India Company and the Peshwa in December 1802, altered the political balance within the Maratha confederacy. The resulting tensions contributed to the outbreak of the Second Anglo-Maratha War in 1803.

Aligarh became one of the principal objectives of the British campaign in northern India.

Perron, whose relations with Scindia’s ministers had deteriorated, found his position increasingly precarious. Internal divisions, uncertainty among subordinate officers and the difficulties of maintaining his extensive military establishment weakened his capacity to resist the British advance.

Rather than conducting a sustained defence, Perron withdrew and subsequently surrendered to the British. His conduct has been interpreted differently by historians. Some contemporary British accounts represented his withdrawal as evidence of the unreliability of European officers in Indian service, while other interpretations emphasise the political pressures and personal insecurity that influenced his decisions.

The fortress itself, however, continued to resist.

On 4 September 1803, British forces under General Gerard Lake stormed Aligarh Fort, which was defended by troops commanded by Colonel Pedron. The assault was fiercely contested, and the formidable defences imposed substantial difficulties upon the attackers.

The capture of Aligarh opened the way for the British advance towards Delhi, which fell later that month. The Mughal emperor Shah Alam II subsequently came under British protection, marking a decisive change in the relationship between imperial sovereignty and effective political authority.

The fall of Aligarh was therefore much more than a local military defeat. It formed part of the larger struggle through which the East India Company displaced the Marathas as the dominant power exercising influence over the Mughal court and northern India.

The Forgotten Military Landscape of Kol

The history of Aligarh’s French connection becomes even more interesting when we move beyond the fort and the residences of its European commanders to examine the wider urban landscape.

The nineteenth-century accounts refer to several establishments associated with the military community, including gardens, residential buildings, commercial premises and the locality known as Perronganj. The continued survival of names such as Sahib Bagh and Perronganj suggests that the presence of these European officers left traces in the town’s historical geography long after their political authority had disappeared.

Aligarh was not simply a fortified military station. It was a centre where military organisation, fiscal administration, commerce and urban development intersected. The provisioning of Scindia’s regular brigades would have required an extensive network of suppliers, bankers, merchants, artisans and transporters.

The revenues of the surrounding countryside sustained the military establishment, while the presence of a large army stimulated demand for agricultural produce, textiles, metal goods, animals and other commodities. The military economy must therefore have affected the social and economic life of Kol and its hinterland.

This aspect of the French connection remains insufficiently explored. Much of the surviving literature concentrates upon the personalities of De Boigne and Perron, their military campaigns and their eventual confrontation with the British. Far less attention has been devoted to the Indian soldiers who served under them, the revenue officials who financed their armies, or the merchants and artisans who supplied their establishments.

There is also a historiographical problem. A substantial portion of the English-language narrative was produced during or after the consolidation of British rule. British accounts frequently portrayed European officers in Indian service as adventurers, mercenaries or potential agents of French influence. Such descriptions need to be examined critically, particularly when explaining Perron’s withdrawal and the defeat of Scindia’s forces.

The history of Aligarh during this period was not simply a contest between British and French military interests. It was fundamentally a struggle among Indian political powers in which European officers participated.

The French Legacy and Aligarh Muslim University

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of this history is the survival of its architectural remains within the landscape of Aligarh Muslim University.

The historic gateway associated with Sahib Bagh, the Persian inscription recording Perron’s titles and the surviving structures connected with the old garden residence establish a direct link between the eighteenth-century military establishment and the modern university.

The transformation is striking. A site once associated with a powerful military commander, his administrative headquarters and the political intrigues of the late Mughal world eventually became part of an institution devoted to modern education.

Yet these structures are more than picturesque survivals. They constitute valuable historical evidence. The Persian inscription reveals the continuing importance of Mughal political conventions. The gateway illustrates the architectural tastes of European officers operating within an Indian cultural environment. The fortifications demonstrate the adaptation of military technology during a period of intense political competition.

Together, they provide an opportunity to reconstruct a neglected chapter of Aligarh’s history.

A systematic architectural and epigraphic survey of the gateway and inscription at Sir Shah Sulaiman Hall, supported by the historical photographs preserved in the British Library, could help establish the original character of Sahib Bagh. Similarly, a detailed examination of the fort’s masonry, bastions, gateways and defensive arrangements could distinguish the various phases of its construction.

The older history of the fortress, particularly its association with Sabit Khan, Suraj Mal, Mirza Najaf Khan and Afrasiyab Khan, must remain central to such an investigation. Without this background, the French contribution risks being presented as the beginning of Aligarh’s military importance rather than one phase in its long evolution.

Aligarh at the Crossroads of Empires

The story of Aligarh’s French connection brings together several major developments in the history of eighteenth-century India: the weakening of central Mughal authority, the rise of regional powers, the expansion of Maratha influence in northern India, the reorganisation of military establishments and the eventual emergence of the East India Company as the dominant political power.

From Muhammadgarh and Sabitgarh to Ramgarh and Aligarh, the successive names of the fortress reflected changing political circumstances. Under Mirza Najaf Khan and Afrasiyab Khan, it became an important centre in the attempted restoration of Mughal authority. Under Mahadji Scindia and his European officers, it emerged as a major military establishment of the Marathas. Its capture by the British in 1803 marked another decisive transition.

De Boigne and Perron stood at the intersection of these developments. Their careers demonstrate the extraordinary opportunities available to European military entrepreneurs in an age of shifting political allegiances. Yet their achievements were inseparable from the Indian political institutions, fiscal resources and military personnel that sustained them.

The Persian inscription of Perron is perhaps the most eloquent expression of this historical complexity. A French commander, serving a Maratha chief, proudly displayed titles derived from the Mughal emperor. Few objects could better illustrate the intertwined character of political authority in late eighteenth-century northern India. De Boigne’s Persian seal, though a less conspicuous artefact, belongs to the same world: a European commander adopting the titulature and documentary conventions of the Mughal state.

Today, thousands of students pass through the precincts of Aligarh Muslim University, often without realising that parts of its landscape were once associated with one of the most powerful military establishments of the Marathas.

The fort, the gateway of Sahib Bagh and Perron’s inscription remind us that Aligarh’s historical importance did not begin with the educational movement of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. Long before that, it had occupied a significant position in the political and military transformations of northern India.

Aligarh’s French connection is therefore not merely the story of two European adventurers. It is a chapter in the history of Mughal sovereignty, Maratha power, military innovation and the making of colonial India.

Select references and further reading

Edwin T. Atkinson, Statistical, Descriptive and Historical Account of the North-Western Provinces of India, Vol. II (1875), for the earlier history of Kol, the fort, the European establishments and the indigo factories of the district.

H. G. Keene, The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan, particularly the sections concerning Scindia, De Boigne, Perron and the French residences at Aligarh.

Herbert Compton, A Particular Account of the European Military Adventurers of Hindustan, from 1784 to 1803 (London, 1893).

H. R. Nevill, Aligarh: A Gazetteer (1909).

Imperial Gazetteer of India, entry on Aligarh Fort and its successive phases of reconstruction.

Archaeological Survey of India, Aligarh. Entrance gate of de Boigne’s House, photograph 1007/16(3581), British Library, Northern Circle Collection.

Rehan Asad, “Aligarh’s French Connection”, Live History India, 22 February 2019, particularly for Sahib Bagh, the Persian inscription and the surviving architectural remains.

Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi

There are moments in history when governments appear almost invincible. They command the machinery of the state, control the police and administrative apparatus, enjoy parliamentary majorities and exercise considerable influence over institutions that shape public opinion. Political opposition may appear fragmented, intellectuals hesitant, institutions submissive and ordinary citizens increasingly powerless. Yet history repeatedly demonstrates that political authority, however formidable, is never beyond challenge. Sometimes the most unexpected challenge comes not from established politicians or organised opposition parties, but from young men and women who abandon their classrooms, gather in university corridors and eventually occupy the streets.

What makes these movements particularly fascinating is the enormous imbalance of power between those who govern and those who protest. On one side stand the institutions of the state, supported by laws, administrative structures, security forces and political patronage. On the other are students, unemployed graduates, young workers and ordinary citizens, frequently possessing little beyond their numbers, determination and capacity for collective action. Yet the balance sometimes changes with astonishing speed. A demonstration dismissed as a minor disturbance becomes a nationwide agitation. A police crackdown intended to suppress dissent produces wider public anger. A university protest becomes a political movement, and a government that appeared unassailable suddenly finds itself compelled to defend its legitimacy.

This pattern is not new, but it has acquired fresh intensity in the present moment. What is especially striking is the contrast between the willingness of sections of the younger generation to confront authority and the caution, accommodation or silence visible among sections of established society. At a time when some institutions appear increasingly reluctant to question those in power, young people have continued to raise uncomfortable questions about education, employment, constitutional rights and democratic accountability. The history of student unrest is therefore not merely a history of youthful rebellion. It is also a history of the limits of political power, and of the capacity of ordinary people to challenge its excessive exercise.

The student uprising in Paris in May 1968 remains one of the most striking illustrations of this phenomenon. What began as protests against university regulations and the authoritarian character of educational institutions developed into a much wider confrontation with the French political establishment. Students occupied universities, erected barricades and confronted the police. When the authorities attempted to suppress the demonstrations, public sympathy expanded and millions of workers joined strikes. Factories were occupied, transport was disrupted and the government of Charles de Gaulle faced a profound crisis. De Gaulle, one suspects, had not anticipated that a dispute over dormitory visiting hours would eventually threaten his government. The students did not overthrow the French Republic, nor did their movement produce the political revolution some participants anticipated. Nevertheless, May 1968 exposed the vulnerability of apparently stable institutions and transformed debates about education, authority, gender, individual freedom and social hierarchy.

The movement formed part of a worldwide wave of youthful mobilisation. American students protested against the Vietnam War and racial discrimination. In West Germany, young activists questioned authoritarian traditions. In Mexico, students demanding democratic reforms faced violent repression, culminating in the Tlatelolco massacre. In Prague, students and young intellectuals participated in the movement for political liberalisation, although the Prague Spring extended far beyond the universities. These movements were neither ideologically identical nor equally successful. Yet they demonstrated that students could transform apparently local grievances into wider political questions. University campuses became laboratories of political thought, while the streets became arenas in which the legitimacy of established authority was contested. The young were not merely demanding a place within the existing order. Many were asking whether that order deserved to survive unchanged.

That question has returned with renewed urgency in the present decade. In Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina had governed continuously since 2009. Her administration commanded the state apparatus, and opposition parties had faced extensive restrictions. Yet in 2024, a movement that began with student opposition to quotas in government employment developed into a nationwide uprising. The initial demands concerned fairness in recruitment. But the government’s response, particularly the violence accompanying attempts to suppress the demonstrations, broadened the agitation. What had begun as a dispute over employment opportunities became a confrontation over political authority and accountability. In August 2024, Hasina resigned and left the country. Student leaders subsequently participated in discussions concerning the political transition. The uprising demonstrated the capacity of students to mobilise wider sections of society, although the difficulties of the subsequent transition also revealed that removing a government and establishing durable democratic institutions are very different undertakings. Toppling a regime, it turns out, is considerably easier than governing one.

Nepal witnessed a similarly dramatic development in September 2025. Protests against restrictions on social media rapidly expanded into a wider movement against corruption, nepotism and limited economic opportunities. Young demonstrators questioned the privileges enjoyed by political elites while ordinary citizens struggled with unemployment and insecurity. The government’s attempt to suppress the demonstrations resulted in deaths and intensified public anger. Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli resigned, and an interim administration subsequently took office. In Serbia, students organised sustained protests following the deadly collapse of a railway station canopy in Novi Sad in November 2024, a movement that eventually culminated in the ousting of President Aleksandar Vučić in parliamentary elections. In Kenya, young people played an important role in the demonstrations against proposed taxation in 2024. In Indonesia, student and youth protests have raised questions concerning economic inequality and political privilege.

These movements differ considerably in their political objectives and consequences. Their importance lies not in proving the existence of a single worldwide revolution, but in revealing recurring tensions between younger generations and institutions perceived as insufficiently responsive to their aspirations. The new generation has also acquired means of mobilisation unimaginable to its predecessors. A demonstration can be organised through a mobile telephone, filmed within seconds and transmitted across the world. Images of police action in one country can generate sympathy and discussion among young people thousands of miles away. But technology alone does not explain the phenomenon. Beneath these movements lie years of accumulated grievances concerning employment, education, inequality, corruption and the concentration of political power.

The Indian story of student unrest finds an unexpected echo across Europe, where the same combustible mix of neglected institutions, squeezed futures and a political class seemingly deaf to both has produced a continent-wide convulsion. What began in France over broken classroom boilers has spiralled into something considerably more existential. The French eruption began in mid-September 2026 with almost comically modest demands. High schoolers in the Paris suburbs wanted working heating, substitute teachers who actually spoke the language they were hired to teach, and toilets with doors. Within weeks, the dispute had metastasised into a nationwide confrontation involving students, trade unions and the resurrected gilets jaunes, with some 550,000 people taking to the streets on 17 October alone. The interior ministry counted nearly 2,400 arrests and almost 1,000 injured police officers, while a 15-year-old lost a hand to a police stun grenade. The imagery was stark: burning barricades in Lille, looted shops in Paris, and the 143-year-old town hall in Limoges reduced to a charred shell. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu offered a billion euros for education; students demanded ten. President Macron condemned the “sowers of chaos” while conceding that intelligence had failed to anticipate the scale of the unrest. One Lille organiser, aged sixteen, explained the logic with unnerving clarity: “If everything is burning, the government can’t ignore us.”

The Italian variant arrived with its own theatrical flourish. Students occupied high schools across Rome, draping banners reading “School, not barracks” from the windows. By late October, thousands had marched through Milan, Rome and Turin, with some briefly breaching the Colosseum itself, a gesture that would have impressed even the most ambitious tourist. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government responded by deploying soldiers in Milan and approving a sweeping security decree. The Italian grievances mirrored the French but with a distinctly Mediterranean twist: crumbling classrooms with falling plaster, soaring rents, and a defence budget expanding while education funding shrinks. As one seventeen-year-old in Athens put it, referring to his school’s peeling walls, “It’s not acceptable for classrooms to be dangerous.” In Madrid and Barcelona, the protest took a different physical form: tent camps. Hundreds pitched themselves in Puerta del Sol and Plaça Catalunya, demanding rent freezes and an end to evictions. The trigger was the eviction of an 87-year-old woman after her rent rose by 230 per cent, a figure that manages to be both absurd and entirely unsurprising to anyone who has glanced at a European housing market recently. In Lisbon and Porto, protesters carried a slogan that captured the predicament of an entire generation: “I want to move out from my parents before I’m 50.” It is difficult to satirise a housing crisis that has already satirised itself.

Brussels saw thousands of teenagers hurling firecrackers and road signs at police, with twenty-one detained including thirteen minors. In Greece, students in Athens’ Exarchia neighbourhood protested the contrast between military spending and the state of their classrooms, while fishermen and farmers blocked ports and highways. Albania experienced outright riots in Tirana, with thousands building burning barricades and demanding the prime minister’s resignation. What unites these disparate eruptions is not a single organisation or ideology but a shared diagnosis. As the International Sociological Association’s president observed, young Europeans “do not just feel like they do not have a place in politics, they feel they are not being heard at all.” A twenty-year-old in Bordeaux articulated the logic of the ballot box with brutal simplicity: “We don’t believe in it anymore.” The European movements are also watching each other. Italian students adopted the slogan “do as in France,” while Spanish organisers fielded enquiries from across the continent about how to build a tent camp. The Jolly Roger pirate flag has become a shared emblem, which is at least a more cheerful symbol than a burning town hall.

The European eruption sharpens the point. What began in France over broken classroom boilers spiralled within weeks into a nationwide confrontation involving students, trade unions and the resurrected gilets jaunes, with some 550,000 people on the streets on 17 October alone. The students’ demands were not merely expensive; they were systemically expensive. France is not a poor country forced into austerity by international creditors. Public expenditure exceeds 57 per cent of GDP, tax collections run at roughly 44 per cent, and the fiscal deficit sits near 5 per cent. Yet the money still falls short, and the reason is pensions. The French retire at 62 while most Europeans retire at 67; pensions replace about 70 per cent of working wages; life expectancy is 82.5, and those who reach 60 can expect on average another 26 years. Because the system is pay-as-you-go rather than fully funded, an ageing population means fewer taxpayers supporting more pensioners for longer, compressing the funds available for schools and universities. The students asking for working heating are asking a state that has already promised its money to its grandparents.

Beneath the fiscal squeeze lies a second fracture. About 9 per cent of the French population is foreign-born, and a much larger share are the children of immigrants, mostly from former African colonies. Some have risen to the heights of French academic and artistic life; many have not, and live in underfunded districts where poverty and crime are entrenched and reinforced by brutal, racialised policing. A rallying cry of the protesters has been “Bismillah, c’est les ténèbres”—literally, “In the name of God, it is the darkness.” According to one account, the phrase began when a police operative tried to infiltrate a protest group by prefacing his request for information with “Bismillah.” Protesters seized on the amateurishness of the attempt and turned the phrase into a slogan, mocking both the infiltration and the racialised policing it betrayed. It is a small detail, but it captures something the boiler-repair framing misses: humour, linguistic ingenuity and shared mockery are themselves forms of power available to those who have little else. As pointed out earlier, Italian students occupied high schools with banners reading “School, not barracks,” some briefly breached the Colosseum’s vicinity, and in Madrid and Barcelona hundreds pitched tent camps demanding rent freezes. Brussels saw teenagers hurling firecrackers at police; Tirana saw burning barricades. What unites these eruptions is not an organisation but a diagnosis, captured by a twenty-year-old in Bordeaux: “We don’t believe in it anymore.”

India possesses its own long tradition of student participation in political movements, and the contemporary Gen Z mobilisation belongs to that history while possessing distinctive characteristics. During the struggle against colonial rule, students abandoned classrooms to join nationalist demonstrations, boycotts and campaigns of civil disobedience. The Non-Cooperation Movement of 1920–22 and the Quit India Movement of 1942 witnessed extensive student participation. Independent India experienced equally significant mobilisations. The Nav Nirman movement in Gujarat and the Bihar movement of 1974, subsequently associated with Jayaprakash Narayan’s call for Sampoorna Kranti, demonstrated the capacity of students to challenge established political authority. These movements contributed to the wider political confrontation preceding the Emergency of 1975. Universities were not simply centres of learning. They were also spaces where competing visions of India’s future were debated.

Today’s young people have grown up in a world of expanding educational opportunities and increasingly uncertain employment prospects. They have been encouraged to acquire qualifications and aspire to professional success, yet many confront unemployment, recruitment delays, examination irregularities and the declining accessibility of quality education. Their frustration is not confined to economic insecurity. It extends to questions about political representation, constitutional rights, institutional accountability and the relationship between citizens and the state. A generation that has been encouraged to aspire is increasingly questioning why the institutions responsible for fulfilling those aspirations appear unable or unwilling to respond.

One of the most visible figures in this mobilisation is Neha Bora, the national president of the All India Students’ Association (AISA), a doctoral researcher at Jawaharlal Nehru University and a theatre practitioner. Bora’s political journey is revealing. Their early involvement in theatre helped develop an interest in social questions. The protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2019–20 provided an important political turning point. Subsequently, years of campus organising, distributing pamphlets, addressing meetings and participating in demonstrations prepared Bora for a larger public role. During the demonstrations at Jantar Mantar over alleged examination irregularities, Bora participated in protests demanding accountability from the Union Education Ministry. The movement subsequently broadened into questions concerning electoral processes, political representation and the exercise of state authority.

Bora became a familiar presence at demonstrations, sometimes addressing protesters from behind barricades, sometimes being carried away by police personnel, and sometimes reappearing at another location after attempts to prevent gatherings. In October 2026, Reuters described Bora as one of the most visible faces of India’s youth unrest. When police prevented protesters from reaching Jantar Mantar, Bora urged them to regroup elsewhere. Even after detention, Bora insisted that the movement would continue. What makes Bora particularly interesting is not simply the dramatic imagery of confrontation with the police. It is the insistence that political mobilisation emerges from years of accumulated grievances rather than sudden excitement. Speaking to Reuters, Bora observed that fear could spread through society, but hope could spread as well. The remark captures an important psychological dimension of collective action. When people see others questioning authority despite the possibility of arrest or intimidation, their own sense of helplessness may diminish. Bora has also resisted attempts to portray the movement as the achievement of a single charismatic personality, a refreshing departure in a political culture where individual leaders are frequently elevated above the movements that sustain them.

If Neha Bora represents the organisational spine of the movement, Neha Singh Rathore represents its soundtrack. A Bhojpuri folk singer and political satirist who describes herself as Gen Z, Rathore rose to national prominence through her UP Mein Ka Ba series, which took aim at governance failures, unemployment, inflation and paper leaks with a sharpness that conventional commentary rarely musters. When she spoke about the Gen Z protests at Jantar Mantar, she did so with the clarity of someone who had already spent years absorbing the cost of asking questions: police complaints, legal notices and a steady stream of online abuse. Her support for the movement was neither uncritical nor performative. She described the Cockroach Janta Party as a reaction to what many young people felt was the public humiliation of their aspirations, while cautioning that youthful enthusiasm could be both a movement’s greatest strength and its greatest vulnerability to manipulation. It is the kind of observation that comes from experience rather than distance.

What makes Rathore significant to the story of Gen Z mobilisation is the role she illustrates: the cultural amplifier. Student organisers build the infrastructure of protest – the hunger strikes, the legal aid, the negotiations. But movements also need voices that carry beyond the barricades, into WhatsApp groups and family gatherings and the wider public imagination. When a viral video emerged from Jantar Mantar showing a young woman being mistreated, Rathore’s response was immediate and unsparing, connecting the incident to a broader pattern of hostility toward women who dare to question authority. She asked why those accused of attacking student protesters were not being sent to the border to defend the country instead. It was the kind of remark that would be reckless from a politician and is merely honest from a folk singer. Her presence in the movement also complicates any tidy narrative about who belongs to Gen Z and what they want. Rathore is not a student leader, nor does she claim to be. She is a cultural worker who has made a career of translating grievances into songs that travel further than press releases. When she appeared alongside Rahul Gandhi at a youth outreach event, she spoke about the harassment and legal pressure she had faced for raising social and political concerns, and about what genuine respect for women would look like in a society that punishes those who ask questions. The contrast with the students fasting outside Jantar Mantar is instructive: different platforms, different methods, same underlying insistence that accountability is not an unreasonable demand. The students provide the courage; the singers provide the language that carries it further.

The growing attention surrounding Bora and Rathore should not obscure the contribution of the young people working alongside them. Danish Ali, Joint Secretary of the JNU Students’ Union, and Anjali, associated with AISA’s Delhi University unit, have been prominent participants in the agitation. Both have appeared alongside Bora during demonstrations and public discussions concerning the treatment of protesters. Danish participated in the hunger strike and has spoken about the years of patient organisational work underlying Bora’s emergence. Anjali’s experience illustrates another dimension of the movement. During the demonstrations, Anjali reportedly suffered a leg injury following police action. Yet the injury did not end her participation in student politics, a reminder that commitment is not measured in comfort. Other organisers, including AISA general secretary Prasenjeet Kumar, N. Sai Balaji and several young activists associated with other student organisations, have also contributed to the movement. The Cockroach Janta Party, or CJP, has added another distinctive element. Emerging through satire, digital communication and youth mobilisation, its organisers have worked with AISA on particular demands while retaining their own identity. The role of other hunger strikers and volunteers should also be recognised. The Jantar Mantar agitation was sustained not only by speeches but by prolonged fasting, coordination, publicity, legal assistance and the everyday work of maintaining a protest. These contributions remind us that movements are rarely the achievements of a single individual, however prominent that person may become. The face seen on television represents a much larger network of organisers, volunteers and supporters.

The power of the present youth movement becomes particularly visible when we turn from Jantar Mantar to India’s university campuses, where the conflict is often not over the overthrow of governments or even the replacement of university administrations. It concerns something more fundamental: the right of students to organise, elect representatives, express disagreement and participate in decisions affecting their institutions. The protests at Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University in December 2019 remain important landmarks. During the demonstrations against the Citizenship Amendment Act, police entered Jamia’s campus, and students at both institutions reported serious injuries and excessive force. The incidents generated widespread concern and brought students from JNU, Jadavpur and other universities into solidarity demonstrations. These events revealed how quickly a university protest could become a national controversy. They also raised questions about the relationship between academic autonomy, policing and the constitutional right to peaceful assembly.

The most recent developments at Jamia Millia Islamia are particularly revealing. In October 2026, students began an indefinite hunger strike demanding the restoration of their elected Students’ Union, whose elections had not been held since 2006. The demand was hardly revolutionary in itself. They wanted an institution through which students could participate in university affairs, raise grievances and negotiate with the administration. Yet the response produced a confrontation of remarkable intensity. Students alleged that security personnel assaulted and forcibly removed hunger strikers in the early hours of 17 October. Some protesters were detained, while others faced suspension and rustication orders. The administration maintained that disciplinary and security measures were necessary, but student organisations questioned both their proportionality and their legality. As the agitation continued, the university shifted teaching online and restricted access to the campus. Police and paramilitary personnel were deployed around the institution. Students reported being prevented from entering, while others attempted to cross barricades and campus walls to reach their fellow protesters. By 26 October, the confrontation had become even more serious. According to The Indian Express, more than 700 security personnel were deployed and over 40 students were briefly detained. The administration issued a notice ordering protesters to vacate their protest site, warning of possible disciplinary action. The images of security personnel surrounding a university while students demanded an elected union raised an obvious question: why should a dispute over democratic representation require such extensive security arrangements? One might reasonably ask whether the barricades were protecting the university from the students or the students from the university.

The administration was eventually forced to issue an order promising elections within fifteen days of the approval of a new Students’ Union constitution. It also announced the withdrawal of suspension and show-cause notices and an inquiry into the conduct of security personnel. But the students pointed out that the order contained no definite deadline for approving the constitution. It also included conditions concerning public apologies and the removal of allegedly defamatory statements. The dispute was therefore far from resolved. Among those who continued the hunger strike were Ebin Basil and Rehan Khan, whose determination had become an important feature of the agitation. Their position was that an assurance without a clear and enforceable timetable did not adequately meet the students’ demands. What is particularly striking is that the students continued their agitation despite detentions, disciplinary proceedings, restricted campus access and the physical strain of prolonged fasting. Their demands concerned representation and accountability, but the methods used to contain the movement transformed the dispute into a wider debate about academic freedom and the use of coercive authority.

Jamia’s experience is not an isolated episode. At Aligarh Muslim University, students undertook a prolonged agitation in September and October 2026, including an indefinite hunger strike, demanding the restoration of Students’ Union elections and changes in the university’s proctorial administration. The movement eventually resulted in an announcement restoring elections after eight years. Aligarh possesses a particularly important tradition of student politics. From the debating culture of the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College and the Siddons Club to the later Aligarh Muslim University Students’ Union, the institution has long served as a training ground for public speaking, political debate and civic participation. Its history has not been free from factionalism or political interference. Yet these problems cannot automatically justify the indefinite suspension of representative institutions. The agitation at Aligarh was significant because it demonstrated that students could sustain collective pressure over an institutional demand. The eventual administrative concession showed that negotiation and protest could produce results without necessarily involving a change in government. Allahabad University, Lucknow University and Banaras Hindu University have also witnessed recurring protests over student representation, educational policy, examinations, recruitment and campus facilities. At Jadavpur University, student politics has long been associated with questions of academic autonomy, democratic rights and broader social movements. The use of police or disciplinary measures varies across these institutions, and it would be inaccurate to describe every confrontation as identical. Nevertheless, allegations of excessive force, arbitrary disciplinary action and restrictions upon peaceful assembly have repeatedly accompanied campus disputes. The central question is whether universities regard student representation and dissent as legitimate parts of academic life or as disturbances to be managed through administrative control. For those of us who have spent decades teaching in universities, the question is especially important. Education is not simply the acquisition of degrees or the preparation for employment. It involves learning to question, reason, disagree and participate responsibly in public life. A university that teaches constitutional democracy while denying students meaningful opportunities for representation risks creating a contradiction between its intellectual purpose and its administrative practices, a rather awkward position for an institution dedicated to the pursuit of truth.

The recurring confrontation between young protesters and security forces deserves serious historical attention. Governments possess legitimate responsibilities to maintain public order, protect citizens and regulate demonstrations. Universities likewise have responsibilities to safeguard students and ensure that academic activities continue. But these responsibilities do not eliminate the right to peaceful dissent. The use of coercive authority must remain proportionate, lawful and subject to independent scrutiny. When peaceful protesters are met with excessive force, preventive detention or arbitrary disciplinary proceedings, the consequences can extend far beyond the immediate demonstration. Such actions may discourage participation, weaken confidence in public institutions and transform relatively limited grievances into wider political controversies. The recent experience of Jamia illustrates this danger. A demand for elected representation became a prolonged confrontation involving police deployment, hunger strikes, detentions, administrative notices and restrictions upon campus access. The same tension is visible in the demonstrations associated with Neha Bora and other young organisers. Repeated detentions did not necessarily end the protests. Instead, they sometimes became part of the movement’s public narrative. This does not mean that protesters are exempt from legal obligations or that every allegation against the authorities is necessarily established. It means that the exercise of state power, particularly against peaceful political activity, requires careful justification. A constitutional democracy must be capable of distinguishing between disagreement and disorder. It must also recognise that the presence of dissent does not, by itself, signify a failure of governance.

Perhaps the most thought-provoking aspect of the present mobilisation is the contrast it invites with the behaviour of sections of established society. Universities, professional organisations, cultural institutions and public intellectuals possess resources, experience and institutional standing that students often lack. Yet their responses to controversial public questions are sometimes marked by caution, silence or accommodation. Such behaviour can arise from different circumstances. Individuals may fear professional consequences, institutional retaliation, financial insecurity or damage to their careers. Others may genuinely disagree with the protesters or prefer quieter forms of engagement. Silence, therefore, cannot automatically be equated with submission. Nevertheless, there is a legitimate question about the responsibilities of those who possess institutional influence. When students risk disciplinary proceedings, interrupted education or detention to raise public questions, what responsibilities fall upon teachers, intellectuals and professional bodies whose very work depends upon freedom of inquiry and expression? This contrast becomes particularly significant within universities. Students may have much to lose. Their degrees, scholarships, accommodation and future employment can all be affected by prolonged confrontation. Yet some continue to participate despite these risks. The courage displayed by such students deserves recognition without suggesting that confrontation is the only legitimate form of civic engagement. Equally important are the quieter contributions of teachers, lawyers, journalists and citizens who defend due process, investigate allegations of abuse and provide opportunities for dialogue. The strength of democratic society depends not upon one generation alone, but upon the willingness of different generations and institutions to uphold the principles they profess.

The word revolution is frequently invoked when young people fill the streets. But history requires us to distinguish between political upheaval, institutional reform and deeper social transformation. The students of Paris in 1968 did not overthrow the French government, yet their movement contributed to lasting changes in social attitudes. The temptation to read every youth eruption as a prelude to progressive renewal should be resisted. The disruptions in France do not automatically deliver the country to Marine Le Pen, but neither do they automatically produce a new republic liberated from neoliberalism. Macron may well become one of the most unpopular figures in recent French history as he contains the protests, yet he remains the most articulate and credible liberal-democratic leader France has. The headline writer who invoked Fahrenheit 451 understood the stakes: the fear is not that students are burning books, but that a state which cuts school maintenance, apprenticeship programmes and university funding while spending ever more on pensions and defence is quietly extinguishing the institutions that make democratic citizenship possible. The students of Bangladesh in 2024 helped bring down a long-established administration. Nepal’s youth mobilisation precipitated a political transition in 2025. In India, the 2026 demonstrations have brought educational opportunity, student representation and electoral accountability into renewed public discussion. Across Europe, the French prime minister survived a confidence vote while students demanded ten times his education budget, Italian students occupied the Colosseum’s vicinity, and Spanish youth erected tent camps in the heart of Madrid. These are different kinds of achievements. Their long-term consequences cannot be measured by the size of demonstrations alone. Revolutionary change also raises difficult questions. Can movements that challenge arbitrary authority create institutions that respect disagreement? Can youthful energy be translated into lasting improvements in education, employment and public accountability? Can organisations that mobilise through protest also negotiate, compromise and govern responsibly? The answers are not predetermined. Nor should youth itself be romanticised. Young people can mobilise for democratic rights, but they can also support exclusionary or authoritarian causes. The historical significance of a movement depends upon its principles, methods and consequences rather than the age of its participants. Nevertheless, the present wave of youth activism reveals an important shift in political participation. Many young people no longer regard public affairs as the exclusive domain of established leaders or political parties. They are claiming the right to question decisions affecting their lives, whether those decisions concern university elections, recruitment procedures, public expenditure or constitutional institutions.

The spectacle of young people challenging established authority is not entirely new. What is new is the speed with which their movements can communicate, organise and acquire international visibility. A student protest in Delhi can be watched in Dhaka, Kathmandu, Paris or London within minutes. The experience of one movement becomes part of the political imagination of young people elsewhere. French students burn barricades; Italian students raise banners; Spanish students pitch tents; Indian students fast outside Jantar Mantar. The methods travel faster than the grievances, but the grievances are never far behind. Yet the ultimate test remains unchanged. Can the energy of protest be translated into durable institutions, accountable leadership and greater opportunities for participation? Can movements that challenge arbitrary authority avoid reproducing it within their own ranks? Can the desire for fundamental change coexist with respect for democratic procedures and the rights of those who disagree? These questions will determine the longer historical significance of the present wave of youth mobilisation.

For the moment, however, the participation of Neha Bora, Neha Rathore, Danish, Anjali and numerous other young activists has become part of India’s contemporary political story. So have the hunger strikes at Jamia, the struggle for student representation at Aligarh and the recurring demands for institutional accountability at Jadavpur and other universities across the country. Their experiences differ, and not every participant belongs to the same organisation or shares the same political outlook. But collectively they illustrate the continued importance of youth participation in public affairs. The recent events at Jamia are particularly instructive. Students demanding an elected union encountered extensive security measures, detentions and disciplinary proceedings. Yet they continued to organise, negotiate and insist upon a definite response. Their determination does not settle every question about the movement’s demands or methods. It does, however, challenge the assumption that young people are politically indifferent or incapable of sustained collective action.

The power of Gen Z lies not in its ability invariably to overthrow governments, but in its capacity to challenge decisions that appear beyond question and to insist that institutions remain accountable to those whose lives they govern. The young do not always make history in the manner they intend. Their victories may be incomplete, their movements divided and their hopes disappointed. Yet the history of modern societies would have been profoundly different had successive generations of students always accepted the world exactly as they found it. And perhaps that is the enduring significance of the present generation. At a time when sections of established society appear hesitant to question power, these young people are demonstrating that civic participation need not wait for age, office or permission. They are not merely waiting to inherit the future. They are demanding a voice in its making.

The deeper question in the end, however, is not why the young are angry but why they have been given so much to be angry about and disillusioned. The answer lies in the long ascendancy of a governing logic that has spent four decades treating citizens as consumers, public institutions as cost centres and education as an investment expected to pay for itself. Neoliberalism promised that opportunity would follow effort, that qualifications would guarantee security and that the market would distribute rewards fairly to those who worked hard enough. For a generation raised on that promise, the arithmetic has simply failed. They have been encouraged to accumulate debt for degrees that no longer guarantee employment, to compete for housing they cannot afford and to enter labour markets that offer flexibility to employers and precarity to everyone else. The result is not apathy but disillusionment of a particular kind: a generation that still believes in the promise, and is furious that the adults who made it have quietly abandoned it. This is why the protests in Paris, Dhaka, Kathmandu and Delhi share a common grammar despite their different languages. They are not merely demanding better schools or fairer recruitment. They are questioning a settlement that has turned the future into a commodity and then priced it beyond the reach of those expected to inherit it. The young are dissatisfied because they were promised a world that the neoliberalism of their elders never intended to deliver, and disillusioned because they have now noticed the gap between the rhetoric and the receipts. Whether they can close that gap is the political question of the coming decade.

Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi

Sharjeel Imam’s extensive interview with Athique Haneef (The Quint, 29 September 2026) has generated considerable discussion among intellectuals, political commentators and civil rights activists. And that is what I am dealing with today.

The responses have ranged from strong criticism of his political philosophy to sympathetic attempts to understand the historical experiences that have shaped his thinking. What makes the interview significant is that Imam is not merely commenting upon the contemporary condition of Indian Muslims. He is offering an interpretation of Indian history, nationalism, secularism, constitutionalism and the relationship between religion and political identity.

There can be little disagreement that the questions he raises about discrimination, political representation, communal violence and the marginalisation of Muslims deserve serious attention. Nor should criticism of his political views obscure his prolonged incarceration as an undertrial. As Md Zeeshan Ahmad (The Quint, 23 October 2026) emphasises, the defence of constitutional liberty cannot depend upon the ideological acceptability of the person concerned. His right to due process must be defended independently of whether one agrees with his arguments.

Yet the legitimacy of Imam’s grievances does not automatically establish the historical validity of his conclusions. His interview reveals an intellectual framework in which Islam, or rather his particular understanding of Islam, becomes the principal means of interpreting history, society and political emancipation. It is precisely here that a historian must begin asking questions.

Islam is not a single interpretation

Imam identifies himself with a tradition of Islamic modernism associated with Jamaluddin Afghani, Muhammad Abduh, Rashid Rida, Muhammad Iqbal and Ali Shariati. He invokes tawhid, the unity of God, as the foundation of justice, liberty and equality, while extending the concept of shirk beyond its conventional theological meaning to encompass nationalism, materialism, casteism, despotism and other forms of oppression.

This is an interesting intellectual exercise. But it remains an interpretation, not an uncontested definition of Islam.

Islam, like other major religious traditions, has never possessed a single, universally accepted understanding of society, political authority or the relationship between faith and reason. Sunni and Shi’i theological traditions, Mu’tazili rationalists, Ash’ari theologians, philosophers, Sufis, jurists and modern reformers have differed profoundly on questions of authority, free will, reason, religious knowledge and political legitimacy.

Even within Shi’i thought, interpretations of religious and political authority have varied considerably. The political philosophy of Ali Shariati, for example, cannot simply be equated with that of traditional Shi’i jurists, much less with every strand of Shi’i intellectual history.

The same diversity characterises Islamic modernism. Afghani, Abduh, Rashid Rida and Sir Syed Ahmad Khan were responding to different historical circumstances and did not arrive at identical conclusions. Indeed, Rashid Rida’s later political and theological positions differed substantially from some of the rationalist tendencies associated with Abduh.

Why, then, should Imam’s particular selection of thinkers and theological concepts be treated as representative of an Islamic worldview?

One might equally invoke Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Husain Ahmad Madani or the numerous Muslim intellectuals who defended composite nationalism and regarded religious faith as entirely compatible with participation in a shared political community.

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan himself, whose rationalist religious writings challenged conventional interpretations of scripture, would resist easy placement within any single contemporary political category. His intellectual legacy cannot be reduced to Muslim communal politics.

There is a fundamental difference between Islam as a religious tradition, the many historical interpretations of Islam, and Sharjeel Imam’s own interpretation of that tradition. To confuse these is to turn one individual’s political theology into an apparently universal religious position.

When theology becomes historical explanation

Imam’s understanding of history as a struggle between tawhid and shirk raises a methodological difficulty. Religious beliefs can certainly inspire movements against injustice, but they cannot by themselves explain the complex historical processes through which societies have developed.

If tawhid necessarily produces liberty and equality, how are we to explain the histories of slavery, monarchy, social hierarchy, sectarian persecution and political despotism within Muslim societies themselves?

The Delhi Sultanate, the Mughal Empire, the Ottoman state and the Safavid monarchy were not interchangeable political formations merely because their rulers professed Islam. Their institutions, social structures, economic interests and political cultures emerged from particular historical circumstances.

Nor were their societies divided neatly between believers and non-believers. Political alliances frequently crossed religious boundaries, while conflicts within Muslim ruling groups could be as intense as conflicts between different religious communities.

The Mughal experience is particularly instructive. Akbar’s policy of sulh-i kul, the incorporation of diverse groups into the imperial nobility and the intellectual exchanges encouraged at his court cannot be explained through a simple theological opposition between monotheism and its supposed alternatives.

Imam is entitled to understand the world through his faith. A historian, however, must ask whether that understanding adequately explains the evidence. The distinction between religious conviction and historical explanation must not disappear.

Partition and the temptation of selective history

Imam’s interpretation of Partition provides another illustration of the difficulties inherent in his approach. He places considerable responsibility upon the Congress leadership, particularly its insistence upon a strong Centre, while presenting Jinnah and the Muslim League as defenders of Muslim political autonomy.

There is nothing illegitimate about questioning the decisions of Gandhi, Nehru or the Congress leadership. Historical scholarship has long examined Congress centralism, the failure of the Cabinet Mission Plan and the competing constitutional visions of the 1940s. Yet criticism of Congress cannot become a justification for treating Jinnah’s political project as though it were free from contradictions.

Md Zeeshan Ahmad (The Quint, 23 October 2026) challenges Imam’s interpretation of the freedom struggle as reductive. His critique draws attention to the danger of presenting a complex anti-colonial movement primarily as a confrontation between Congress and the Muslim League, thereby diminishing the role of British imperial power and other political formations.

K.B.S. Sidhu (ThePrint, 10 October 2026), writing from the perspective of Sikh history, raises a related objection. The Cabinet Mission Plan, which Imam regards favourably, would have placed Punjab within a grouping of Muslim-majority provinces. Sikh leaders feared that their own political interests would be subordinated within this arrangement. Thus, a constitutional formula presented as protection for one minority could appear threatening to another.

This is precisely why the history of Partition cannot be written exclusively from the standpoint of either Congress or the Muslim League. It must also incorporate the experiences of Sikhs, Dalits, regional political formations and those Muslims who rejected the demand for Pakistan.

One might also ask why the ideas of Maulana Azad, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Husain Ahmad Madani and other advocates of composite nationalism should receive less consideration than those of Iqbal and Jinnah. They too were Muslims, many deeply committed to Islam, but they arrived at very different political conclusions.

Their existence challenges the assumption that a particular conception of Muslim political autonomy represented the inevitable political expression of Islam.

Secularism is not synonymous with majoritarianism

Imam’s criticism of secular nationalism is among the more provocative elements of his interview. He suggests that the secular consensus has obscured Muslim political interests and that secular nationalism shares certain assumptions with Hindutva, particularly concerning national unity and centralised political authority.

There are genuine historical questions here. Indian secularism has frequently been inconsistent, and governments professing secular principles have sometimes failed to prevent communal violence or protect minorities.

Yet the failure of a political principle in practice does not necessarily invalidate the principle itself.

Md Zeeshan Ahmad cited above, questions Imam’s characterisation of secularism as a trap. Indian secularism emerged through a complicated intellectual and political history. As Shabnum Tejani demonstrates in Indian Secularism: A Social and Intellectual History, 1890–1950 (Indiana University Press, 2008), it developed through competing political and social understandings rather than as a single, predetermined ideological project.

There is also a fundamental distinction between a constitutional arrangement that recognises equal citizenship irrespective of religion and a political ideology that privileges the identity of the religious majority.

Criticism of secular governments is entirely compatible with defending secularism as a constitutional principle. Indeed, such criticism frequently draws its moral force from the failure of governments to honour their professed commitments.

At the same time, secularism must be examined critically rather than idealised. The relationship between religious personal laws, community rights and gender equality demonstrates that protecting religious communities can sometimes generate tensions with the rights of individuals within those communities.

This is a question Imam’s emphasis upon collective Muslim rights does not sufficiently resolve.

Who speaks for the Muslims?

One of the more problematic implications of Imam’s argument is his repeated treatment of Muslims as a collective political subject, frequently expressed through the vocabulary of qaum.

But who constitutes this qaum, and who possesses the authority to speak on its behalf?

Indian Muslims have never formed a homogeneous social or political community. Differences of caste, class, gender, language, region, sect and intellectual orientation have shaped their experiences.

The political concerns of a Pasmanda agricultural labourer may differ considerably from those of an urban ashraf professional. Muslim women have their own histories of struggles over education, property, marriage, divorce and participation in public life.

Md Zeeshan Ahmad raises important questions about the relationship between collective Muslim identity, internal inequalities and the broader solidarities visible during the anti-CAA protests.

Imam does acknowledge the importance of backward-caste Muslims and proposes measures for their representation. Nevertheless, recognition of social diversity is not quite the same as allowing that diversity to reshape the foundations of one’s political argument.

The question remains whether religious identity should become the principal organising category of political life, or whether the struggle against discrimination can be pursued through broader solidarities encompassing caste, class, gender and citizenship.

The anti-CAA protests themselves demonstrated the possibilities of such solidarities. Their constitutional vocabulary, public readings of the Preamble and participation across religious communities constituted an important part of their political character.

To understand that movement primarily as an expression of Muslim communal mobilisation would be to overlook one of its most distinctive features.

A different reading: Asim Ali and radical democracy

Not all responses to Imam have been critical. Asim Ali (The Telegraph, 24 October 2026) offers a more sympathetic interpretation, arguing that Imam’s political ideas should be understood against the accumulated historical experiences of discrimination and violence faced by Muslims.

Drawing upon the historian Reinhart Koselleck’s concept of a shared space of experience, Ali suggests that memories of communal violence and political exclusion help explain why Imam’s arguments resonate with sections of educated Muslim youth.

Ali also interprets Imam’s proposals for decentralisation, proportional representation and political alliances through the framework of radical democracy associated with Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. From this perspective, particular communities can articulate their demands without necessarily abandoning the possibility of broader democratic cooperation.

This interpretation adds an important dimension to the discussion. Religious or community-based mobilisation need not automatically entail separatism or rejection of democracy. Historically disadvantaged groups may organise around shared identities precisely because existing political institutions have failed to address their concerns.

Yet an explanation of why a political worldview emerges is not the same as a demonstration that its historical interpretation is accurate.

The experience of discrimination may explain Imam’s distrust of Congress nationalism and secular constitutionalism. It does not, by itself, establish that his understanding of Partition is correct, that Jinnah’s political programme offers an appropriate model for the present, or that his interpretation of Islam should provide the intellectual foundations of Muslim political mobilisation.

Nor should the historical experiences of Indian Muslims be reduced entirely to victimhood. Their history includes intellectual creativity, political participation, social mobility, commercial enterprise, cultural interaction and contributions to the making of modern India.

A history organised exclusively around persecution risks becoming as selective as one that refuses to acknowledge persecution at all.

The neglected histories of coexistence

What is particularly striking about Imam’s historical imagination is the limited place it leaves for the long and complicated history of coexistence and interaction in the Indian subcontinent.

The history of medieval and early modern India was not simply a history of religious communities confronting one another. It was also a history of shared institutions, overlapping identities and continuous cultural exchanges.

The Mughal nobility incorporated individuals of diverse religious, ethnic and regional backgrounds. Commercial partnerships frequently crossed confessional boundaries. Persianate literary culture flourished alongside Sanskrit, Braj, Awadhi and other vernacular traditions. Religious and intellectual exchanges shaped artistic production, architecture, literature and everyday life.

None of this implies that precolonial India was free from religious conflict or social inequality. Such romanticisation would be equally misleading.

But these experiences demonstrate that religious identity was only one among several forces shaping historical relationships.

Even within the domain of Islamic intellectual history, there were competing understandings of religious authority and political legitimacy. The debates surrounding Akbar’s religious policies, the responses of different Muslim scholars, the intellectual positions of Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi and the traditions of Shi’i scholarship illustrate a much more complicated religious landscape than a singular Islamic political philosophy would suggest.

It is therefore necessary to distinguish between the history of Islam in India, the history of Indian Muslims and the history of Muslim political movements. These are related fields of enquiry, but they are not interchangeable.

The danger of replacing one communal narrative with another

There is a larger issue underlying this entire debate.

Much of the contemporary rewriting of Indian history seeks to portray the medieval period as an age of Hindu subjugation under Muslim rulers. Historians have repeatedly challenged this interpretation by demonstrating the diversity of political relationships, the importance of economic and institutional structures and the inadequacy of reducing historical developments to religious conflict.

But the same methodological standards must apply when history is interpreted from a Muslim communitarian perspective.

If Hindu majoritarian historiography is criticised for treating Hindus as an undifferentiated historical community, it would be inconsistent to accept an equally undifferentiated conception of Muslims.

If the claim that Indian history represents a continuous Hindu struggle against Muslim domination is historically untenable, an interpretation centred upon an equally continuous struggle for Muslim communal autonomy must also be examined critically.

The two narratives arise from different political circumstances, and the unequal distribution of power in contemporary India must not be ignored. They should not be treated as equivalent in their social consequences. Nevertheless, neither should be exempt from historical scrutiny.

History cannot become an instrument for confirming the collective grievances or aspirations of whichever community happens to be narrating it.

It must remain open to evidence, contradiction, complexity and revision.

The Constitution, its limitations and its possibilities

Imam’s constitutional arguments deserve examination beyond the simple opposition between defending the Constitution and rejecting it.

He raises questions about centralisation, minority representation, decentralisation and the inadequacy of existing political safeguards. Some of these concerns have also been discussed by constitutional scholars and advocates of federalism.

K.B.S. Sidhu (ThePrint, 10 October 2026), while disagreeing with Imam’s larger framework, acknowledges the legitimacy of debating proportional representation and the exclusion of Dalit Muslims and Christians from Scheduled Caste recognition. He also points to the constitutional guarantees already available to religious minorities, including their educational and cultural rights.

Sushim Mukul (India Today, 24 October 2026) similarly argues that the Constitution provides mechanisms through which inequalities can be challenged and institutional arrangements reformed. He distinguishes between the failure of constitutional institutions to deliver equality and the claim that the Constitution itself is responsible for discrimination.

The existence of constitutional protections does not prove that they have always been effectively implemented. Equally, failures of implementation do not necessarily demonstrate that the constitutional framework is incapable of reform.

A further question concerns the relationship between communal representation and common citizenship. Electoral arrangements designed exclusively around religious identity may strengthen the representation of particular communities, but they may also institutionalise the very divisions that a plural democracy seeks to negotiate.

These are questions of constitutional design, not matters that can be settled through historical grievance alone.

Islam, history and the plurality of Indian experience

Sharjeel Imam’s interview offers an opportunity to reflect upon the relationship between religious belief, political identity and historical understanding. His arguments emerge from genuine concerns about the condition of Indian Muslims, but they also reflect a particular selection of intellectual traditions and historical experiences.

His interpretation of Islam is one among many. His reading of Partition is one among several competing historical explanations. His conception of Muslim political representation is likewise a political proposition that must be debated rather than accepted as the inevitable expression of communal interests.

Faith can inspire individuals to resist injustice, pursue equality and imagine a better society. It can provide moral strength in circumstances of suffering and political exclusion. But faith, however sincerely held, does not confer immunity from historical criticism.

Nor can any individual, whether a religious scholar, political activist or intellectual, claim to speak for the entirety of a religious community whose members differ profoundly in their beliefs, experiences and aspirations.

The history of Indian Muslims cannot be reduced to the history of the Muslim League, just as the history of India cannot be reduced to the history of the Congress. Equally, Islam cannot be reduced to the interpretations of Iqbal, Jinnah, Maududi, Shariati or Sharjeel Imam.

The central question is whether a politics seeking to overcome exclusion can do so without making religious identity the overriding category through which history and citizenship are understood.

Perhaps the most useful lesson emerging from this controversy is that defending an individual’s constitutional rights and critically examining his intellectual positions are not contradictory obligations. Both are essential to a society that values freedom of thought.

The historian’s task is neither to sanctify the past nor to place it at the service of contemporary political identities. It is to recover its complexities, recognise its contradictions and resist the temptation to turn history into theology, whether majoritarian or minoritarian.

My own view, thus, is that Sharjeel Imam’s interview is best read as a symptom rather than a solution. The grievances it articulates are real, and the state’s prolonged detention of an undertrial without trial remains a standing indictment of our constitutional practice. But the remedy he proposes, reading Indian history and citizenship primarily through the lens of a particular Islamic theology, risks substituting one closed narrative for another. The task before those who genuinely wish to overcome the exclusion of Indian Muslims is not to choose between a majoritarian and a minoritarian reading of the past, but to insist that both be held to the same standards of evidence and complexity. Imam deserves to be heard, and he deserves due process; his arguments, however, deserve to be answered rather than sanctified. A plural democracy is strengthened not by elevating any single community’s faith or grievance into the organising principle of national life, but by defending the constitutional space in which competing claims – religious and secular, individual and collective – can be argued out on equal terms. That, rather than the recovery of a lost political theology, is where the real possibilities of justice lie.

Principal articles Consulted:

Athique Haneef, interview with Sharjeel Imam, The Quint, 29 September 2026.

Md Zeeshan Ahmad, “Where Sharjeel Imam’s Arguments on Constitutionalism and Secularism Fall Short”, The Quint, 23 October 2026.

K.B.S. Sidhu, “Sharjeel Imam Wants to Pick Up Where 1946 Left Off. A Sikh Reads the Fine Print”, ThePrint, 10 October 2026.

Asim Ali, “Demonised Voice”, The Telegraph, 24 October 2026.

Sushim Mukul, “Countering Sharjeel Imam with the Constitution He Challenged”, India Today, 24 October 2026.

Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi

I was recently invited by the HRDC Nainital Academic College (UGC MMTTC), Kumaun University to deliver two lectures. One of which was on Oral History with special reference to late Professor Lal Bahadur Verma. I am posting the text here for the students who may be interested to know something on the topic. I thank Professor Reetesh Sah, Registrar of Kumaun University for inviting me.

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History begins with evidence. This is perhaps the first principle we teach our students. The historian cannot reconstruct the past simply through imagination, however persuasive that imagination might be. Statements about the past have to be supported by evidence, tested against other evidence, placed within context and subjected to criticism. Yet the moment we accept this principle, another question arises. What constitutes historical evidence?

For a long time, professional historians were inclined to give a privileged position to the written document. The archive became almost synonymous with the historian’s laboratory. Administrative records, revenue papers, judicial proceedings, diplomatic correspondence, private letters, newspapers, chronicles and inscriptions formed the material out of which histories were constructed. The more scientifically history sought to establish itself as a discipline, the greater appeared its dependence upon such documentation.

But there is an obvious difficulty here. Human beings were making history long before they began writing it down. Even in literate societies, only a very small proportion of human experience finds its way into written records. A Mughal revenue document can tell us how much revenue was assessed upon a village, but it does not necessarily tell us how the cultivator experienced the collection of that revenue. A colonial police report may describe a demonstration, but the demonstrators themselves might have remembered that occasion very differently. A government file recording communal violence, migration or displacement can provide us with dates, numbers and official decisions, but it cannot necessarily tell us what it meant to lose one’s home. There is, therefore, an enormous realm of human experience which survives outside the conventional archive. It survives in memory, and it is here that oral history begins.

What Oral History Is, and How It Differs from Oral Tradition

In its simplest sense, oral history is the systematic recording and historical interpretation of memories communicated through the spoken word. The historian speaks to people who experienced an event, participated in a movement, belonged to an institution, practised a craft, inhabited a particular landscape or inherited memories from an earlier generation. Their testimony is recorded, preserved, compared with other evidence and subjected to historical analysis. This sounds deceptively simple, because people have always spoken about the past. Grandparents have told stories to grandchildren, communities have preserved genealogies, soldiers have narrated battles, migrants have remembered lost homes, pilgrims have repeated legends about sacred places and artisans have transmitted knowledge from one generation to another. But oral history as a historical method involves something more deliberate. It converts the spoken recollection into evidence while simultaneously recognising the peculiar nature of that evidence.

An oral historian does not merely ask questions and write down the answers. The historian has to ask several searching questions. Who is speaking? When is this person speaking? To whom? Why is a particular event remembered while another has been forgotten? Has the story changed during repeated narration? Is an individual memory being influenced by a larger collective memory? Has something subsequently read in a newspaper or book entered what the speaker now believes to be a personal recollection? These problems do not invalidate oral evidence; they make it interesting. Indeed, we should remind ourselves that written evidence is hardly free from similar problems. Abul Fazl wrote from within the Mughal court. A colonial district officer wrote as a representative of the colonial state. A police officer recording a political demonstration saw it through the institutional assumptions of the police. A newspaper had its readership and political position. An autobiography was written retrospectively. Even an inscription erected by a ruler was intended to convey a particular image of that ruler. No source speaks without mediation, and the oral source is therefore not uniquely unreliable; it is differently constructed. The task of the historian is not to divide evidence mechanically into reliable written sources and unreliable oral sources, but to understand how every source came into existence.

At this stage another distinction becomes necessary. Oral history and oral tradition are closely related, but they are not quite the same thing. Oral history usually involves testimony concerning events that remain within living memory. A person may describe participation in the freedom movement, memories of Partition, life in a princely state, a peasant movement, a strike, a university agitation or the transformation of a town during his or her lifetime. Oral tradition, on the other hand, can travel much further back. A community may preserve memories of migration over several generations. A family may recount how its ancestors came to a particular village. A shrine may possess narratives explaining its foundation. A caste or tribal community may preserve genealogies, songs or legends about its origins. Here we move from individual memory towards collective transmission.

The great methodological contribution of Jan Vansina was to demonstrate that oral traditions could be studied historically rather than dismissed simply as folklore. In his works Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Method and later Oral Tradition as History, Vansina showed that orally transmitted material has its own structures of preservation, transformation and transmission, and that the historian must reconstruct these processes before using such material. The distinction matters. If an eighty-year-old person tells me what he saw in 1950, I am dealing principally with personal memory. If he tells me what his grandfather told him about 1857, I am dealing with transmitted memory. If an entire community possesses a song about 1857 which has passed through several generations, I have entered the domain of oral tradition. All three can be historically important, but they cannot be handled in precisely the same way.

Memory, Archive and the Limits of Documentation

The greatest misunderstanding concerning oral history arises when memory is treated as if it were an imperfect recording device. We ask whether the witness has remembered the event correctly, as though somewhere inside the human mind there existed a film of the past which has either survived intact or become damaged. Memory does not work like that. Human beings continuously reinterpret their past. An event experienced at the age of twenty may acquire a completely different meaning when remembered at seventy. Subsequent political events, family experiences, reading, conversations and public commemorations may alter the way an individual remembers the original experience. This does not make memory historically useless; quite the opposite. Sometimes what people remember about an event may be as historically significant as the event itself.

Suppose the documentary evidence establishes that a particular incident involved twenty people, while local memory insists that hundreds participated. The simplest historical response would be to say that memory is wrong. But the oral historian asks another question: why did this relatively small incident become so enormous in collective memory? Conversely, something extensively documented by the state may disappear almost completely from popular memory, and that silence too requires explanation. Memory therefore possesses two historical dimensions. It can provide information about the past, but it can also tell us how the past continued to live afterwards. This is why oral history becomes particularly important when we move away from rulers, governments and institutions towards ordinary people.

Archives are indispensable, but archives are not innocent. They preserve what institutions considered worth recording. Governments generated documents because they needed to collect revenue, administer territory, settle disputes, punish crime, conduct diplomacy and maintain political control. Colonialism produced particularly enormous archives precisely because colonial states possessed an extraordinary appetite for information. Yet the abundance of documentation can create an illusion. The peasant appears frequently in colonial records, but usually because somebody else is writing about him. The tribal community appears when an administrator seeks to classify it. Workers enter the archive during a strike. Women often appear when questions of marriage, inheritance, crime or social regulation bring them before administrative institutions. The archive speaks extensively about people who seldom had the opportunity to speak for themselves.

This recognition contributed enormously to the development of oral history internationally. Historians of labour, women’s history, African history, migration and popular politics increasingly realised that many of their subjects had left limited written records. The tape recorder, and later digital recording, opened another archive: the archive of living memory. This was also the insight which eventually attracted several Indian historians, among whom Lal Bahadur Verma deserves much greater recognition than he has generally received.

Lal Bahadur Verma and the People’s Past

Lal Bahadur Verma was an unusual historian. He was a scholar of European history, but his intellectual interests extended far beyond Europe. He was a teacher, writer, translator, editor and public intellectual. His books included Europe ka Itihās, Vishva Itihās ki Jhalak, Itihās ke Bāre Mein, Itihās: Kyon, Kya, Kaise, Adhūri Krāntiyon ka Itihāsbodh, Congress ke Sau Sāl, Bhārat ki Jankathā and Mānav Muktikathā. He translated important works of world history into Hindi, including Eric Hobsbawm’s The Age of Revolution. Contemporary accounts of his intellectual life repeatedly emphasise the importance he attached to itihāsbodh, historical consciousness.

Before I turn to his ideas, I should make a personal confession. I am a student of Medieval Indian History, and oral history cannot be applied to that field in the same direct manner. I cannot interview a thirteenth-century chronicler or a sixteenth-century peasant. Yet Verma’s ideas have influenced me deeply, because they force us to ask who is absent from our sources and how historical consciousness is formed. I first met Lal Bahadur Verma in Nainital years ago, during a conference. It was a brief meeting, but it left an impression. I met him again at Allahabad, once more during a conference, and those conversations strengthened my sense that history belongs to people and not only to institutions.

This expression, itihāsbodh, is crucial for understanding him. Verma was interested not merely in history as something professionally produced inside universities. He was interested in the relationship between people and their past. History had to become part of public consciousness. Ordinary people were not simply the objects about whom historians wrote; they were themselves makers of history and possessors of historical memory. This brought him naturally towards what we may call jan-itihās, people’s history. And once the historian begins looking for the jan, a methodological problem immediately arises. Where are the people in our sources? They certainly appear in official records, but they usually appear through the language of administrators, policemen, magistrates, revenue officials or political leaders. If we want to understand their own experience, we must sometimes move outside the conventional archive. Verma did precisely that.

One of Verma’s most significant interventions came from his work on the freedom struggle in Allahabad. Allahabad occupies an extraordinary place in the history of Indian nationalism. It was associated with the Nehru family, Anand Bhavan, Congress politics and some of the most important developments in the national movement. The documentary archive is consequently enormous, and the city possesses abundant records concerning political leaders and organisations. But Verma asked a different question. What about the ordinary people of Allahabad who participated in the freedom struggle? What did nationalism look like from the mohalla rather than Anand Bhavan? What did the movement mean to the student who joined a procession, the shopkeeper who closed his shop, the woman who sheltered an activist, the worker who attended a meeting or the unknown volunteer who carried a message from one locality to another? These people had made history, but many had not written memoirs. Verma therefore turned towards their memories.

His intervention entered the professional forum of Indian historians very clearly at the 54th Session of the Indian History Congress in 1993. The Proceedings of the Indian History Congress of that year record his paper under the title “Significance of Oral History: Allahabad during Freedom Struggle.” The title itself is revealing. Verma was not merely presenting some additional information about Allahabad; he was making a methodological argument about the significance of oral history. His larger work on the popular role in the freedom movement similarly attempted to recover precisely those historical actors who disappear when nationalism is narrated principally through organisations and celebrated leaders. This is what I mean by Verma’s attempt at recovering the people’s past.

There is an important difference between writing a history of the freedom movement and writing a history of people’s participation in the freedom movement. The first may be constructed through resolutions of the Congress, speeches of Gandhi and Nehru, government correspondence, intelligence reports, newspapers and political organisations. The second requires us to ask what happened when these movements entered ordinary life. How was a hartal organised in a particular neighbourhood? Who persuaded shopkeepers to close their shops? How did news travel into villages? Who made food for activists? Who carried messages? Where did underground workers sleep? What happened to the families of those arrested? What songs were sung? What rumours circulated? Suddenly the scale of history changes, and when the scale changes, the sources must change as well.

Verma’s contribution lay precisely in recognising this relationship between historical subject and historical source. If we wish to recover the people’s past, we cannot depend exclusively upon documents produced by institutions which governed those people. There is a useful observation attributed to Verma in a study of Muslim women in the United Provinces: history as text may not always survive, but history as memory remains embedded within society. The same discussion cites his Understanding History and his insistence upon an extraordinarily wide conception of historical sources, encompassing archaeology, oral traditions, myths, legends, folklore, official and private documents, newspapers and private papers. This is an important methodological statement, because it means that oral history should not be isolated from other forms of evidence. It belongs within an enlarged conception of the historical archive.

This brings us again to Verma’s concept of itihāsbodh. Historical consciousness is something larger than historical knowledge. A person may know hundreds of dates and possess very little historical consciousness. Itihāsbodh requires an awareness that our present has been historically produced, that institutions have histories, that social relationships change and that ordinary human beings participate in that process of change. Verma’s historical writing repeatedly attempted to communicate this idea outside the narrow circle of professional historians. This explains his extensive writing in Hindi, his translations and the accessible style of works such as Itihās: Kyon, Kya, Kaise. It also explains titles such as Bhārat ki Jankathā and Mānav Muktikathā. The language is significant; it is the kathā of people, humanity and liberation. For Verma, therefore, oral history was not merely a new technique involving a microphone and an interview schedule. It belonged to a democratic conception of historical knowledge. People who had made history had some claim to participate in its telling.

Indian Historians and the Turn to Oral History

Verma was not alone in turning towards oral testimony. Several Indian historians, working in different fields and from different intellectual traditions, have recognised that the conventional archive cannot by itself recover the experiences of ordinary people. Their work has collectively established oral history as a legitimate and indeed indispensable method within Indian historiography.

Feminist Oral History and the Recovery of Women’s Voices

Perhaps the most sustained engagement with oral history in India has come from feminist historians. The Indian women’s movement of the 1970s and 1980s generated a profound dissatisfaction with existing sources. Women appeared in colonial records primarily when they were the objects of social regulation, and their own voices were rarely preserved. Feminist historians therefore turned to oral testimony as a way of recovering women’s experiences, agency and consciousness. As Medha Kotwal Lele has observed, women historians across the world realised that women’s voices needed to be heard in order to bring forth the layered and complex understanding of events in history. The post-independence feminist movement in India led to the creation of alternative sources of knowledge, and spaces emerged in the 1980s and 1990s to house these resources.

The Aalochana Centre for Documentation and Research on Women, established in Pune in 1989, was one of the earliest institutional efforts to document women’s lives through oral history. Its first oral history project using the interview method focused on Ganguratai Patwardhan in 1990, and the Centre has since recorded the testimonies of numerous women whose lives would otherwise have left no trace in the formal archive. Similarly, the Sound and Picture Archives for Research on Women (SPARROW), founded in Mumbai in 1988, built a national archive for women with print, oral history and pictorial material. These institutions represent a recognition that if women’s history was to be written, new archives had to be created.

Urvashi Butalia’s The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India remains one of the most powerful examples of feminist oral history. Butalia listened to women, children, Dalits and families whose experiences of Partition had been excluded from the high politics of constitutional negotiations and boundary commissions. Her work demonstrated that the history of Partition could not be written adequately without attending to the testimonies of those who lived through it. Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin‘s Borders & Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition similarly used oral testimony to recover gendered experiences that official documents frequently concealed, particularly the abduction and recovery of women during the violence of 1947.

Uma Chakravarti, a distinguished historian of Buddhism, caste and gender, has more recently been documenting the history of feminist activism in India through an oral archive of videotaped interviews and through film-making. Her Fragments of a Past (2010) on the activist Mythily Sivaraman powerfully explores the themes of personal and historical memory. For Chakravarti, documenting the life histories of feminist activists is itself a form of activist oral history, one that can inform and sustain cross-generational and contemporary forms of feminist activism. This is an important insight. Oral history here is not merely a method of recovering the past; it is a resource for political and intellectual work in the present.

Oral History and Partition Studies

Partition has been the single most productive field for oral history in India. For many years the history of Partition was written largely as high politics. Historians studied the Muslim League, the Congress, British policy, Mountbatten, Jinnah, Nehru, Patel, constitutional negotiations and the transfer of power. All of this was necessary, but the millions who actually experienced Partition remained absent from the narrative. The conventional archive could tell us how many refugees crossed a border; oral history could sometimes tell us what it felt like to cross it.

Sucheta Mahajan of Jawaharlal Nehru University has been a leading advocate of oral history in the field of contemporary Indian history. Her article “Beyond the Archives: Doing Oral History in Contemporary India,” published in Studies in History in 2011, directly addresses the methodological and ethical issues involved in extending the historian’s source base beyond the conventional archive. Mahajan has also been closely associated with oral history initiatives on the freedom movement and Partition, exploring how testimony can illuminate aspects of the national movement that documentary sources cannot reach. Her work emphasises that oral history is not simply about adding new information; it is about transforming the way we understand the relationship between past and present.

The 1947 Partition Archive, founded by Guneeta Singh Bhalla in 2010, represents a different model of oral history practice. This community-driven initiative has documented more than 12,500 testimonies from witnesses and survivors across the subcontinent and its diaspora. The Archive collects, preserves and makes available the life stories of ordinary people whose experiences of Partition would otherwise be lost. While some historians have raised methodological questions about the Archive’s approach, its sheer scale and its commitment to public accessibility have made it an important resource for both scholars and the wider public. The Archive demonstrates that oral history can be a democratising practice, one that allows communities to participate in the preservation of their own histories.

Gyanendra Pandey‘s Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism and History in India pushed the methodological problem still further. Pandey asked how violence itself could be written historically when testimony was fragmented, painful and sometimes silent. He demonstrated that silence itself could be historical evidence. Sometimes an interviewee’s refusal to speak, or the gaps in a narrative, reveal more about the trauma of Partition than any explicit account could. This is a crucial insight for oral historians. The task is not simply to collect stories but to attend to what is not said, to the pauses and the omissions that carry their own historical weight.

Anindya Raychaudhuri‘s work on Indian Muslim voices and the 1947 Partition has also contributed to the growing field of Partition oral history, demonstrating how oral testimony can illuminate the experiences of communities whose histories have been marginalised in both Indian and Pakistani national narratives. Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar‘s The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia combines oral history with archival research to trace how refugees and migrants negotiated the transition from empire to nation-state. Uditi Sen has similarly combined oral history with archival records to trace how subaltern groups, including widowed women, Dalit refugees and indigenous Andamanese tribes, negotiated state policy and the transition to nationhood.

Dalit and Bahujan Oral Histories

One of the most exciting developments in recent Indian historiography has been the use of oral history to recover Dalit and Bahujan pasts. Badri Narayan, a social historian and cultural anthropologist at Jawaharlal Nehru University, has been a pioneer in this field. One of his major contributions has been to invent new sources for writing history, such as folklores, songs, pamphlets, myths, memories and interviews. His work on the making of the Dalit public in North India uses alternative sources alive in the oral tradition and collective memory of the oppressed and marginalised to explain the contemporary history of Dalit mobilisation.

Narayan’s political biography of Kanshi Ram, the founder of the Bahujan Samaj Party, draws on myriad oral and written sources to illuminate how Kanshi Ram roused Dalits’ self-respect with his homespun idiom and cycle rallies. This is oral history in the service of a broader project: the recovery of Dalit agency and the reconstruction of a political tradition that the conventional archive has largely ignored. Narayan’s work demonstrates that oral history is not only a method for recovering the past; it can also be a resource for understanding contemporary political consciousness.

The work of Gail Omvedt, an American-born scholar who became a foundational pillar of India’s Dalit-Bahujan movement, also deserves mention. Omvedt immersed herself in the philosophies of Phule, Ambedkar and Marx, travelling through villages and connecting with people working with the Dalit-Bahujan and non-Brahmin movements. While her primary method was not oral history in the strict sense, her engagement with grassroots movements and her attention to the voices of ordinary people reflected a similar commitment to recovering histories from below.

Oral History and Labour

Labour history in India has also been enriched by oral history. Chitra Joshi, formerly of Indraprastha College, University of Delhi, has used sources beyond the official archive, including oral narratives and popular literature, to reconstruct the lives and struggles of workers. Her work demonstrates that the history of labour cannot be written adequately from trade union records alone. The experiences of workers, their forms of organisation, their cultures of resistance and their everyday lives require oral testimony if they are to be recovered.

Kanchi Venugopal Reddy of Pondicherry University conducted oral interviews with more than thirty labourers and labour organisers in different locations of the Madras Presidency as part of his research on industrial labourers and their participation in India’s struggle for freedom. This kind of fieldwork is labour-intensive and often goes unacknowledged in the discipline, but it is essential if we are to understand how the national movement was experienced by those at the bottom of the social and economic hierarchy.

Oral History and Adivasi Communities

The histories of Adivasi communities offer perhaps the clearest example of why oral history and oral tradition matter. These communities have often been represented in colonial and post-colonial archives only through the categories imposed upon them by administrators, anthropologists and state officials. Their own histories, preserved in songs, stories, genealogies and memories, have rarely entered the written record.

Ezra Rashkow, a scholar of modern South Asian history and environmental history, has collected oral histories of Bhil, Gond, Baiga, Kurku and other Adivasi communities facing conservation- and development-induced displacement in western and central India. He situates these oral histories in dialogue with the colonial archive, anthropological accounts and activist engagements with these communities’ histories. This approach is methodologically sophisticated. It does not treat oral testimony as a simple supplement to the written record but as a distinct and equally valid form of historical knowledge.

Nandini Oza‘s An Oral History of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, based on interviews with Adivasi leaders Keshavbhav and Kevalsing Vasave, demonstrates how oral history can document resistance movements that have received limited attention in the formal archive. The Narmada Bachao Andolan was one of the most significant social movements in post-independence India, and oral history has been essential to recovering its internal dynamics, its grassroots leadership and the experiences of those displaced by large dams.

Nationalist historians drew on folk songs and legends about figures like Birsa Munda and Sidhu Murmu to construct narratives of anticolonial resistance. While these early efforts were not always methodologically rigorous, they established a precedent for using oral tradition as a source for Adivasi history. The challenge for contemporary historians is to build on this precedent while applying the rigorous source criticism that oral history demands.

Institutionalising Oral History

Indira Chowdhury has played a crucial role in moving oral history in India from occasional individual experimentation towards a more self-conscious field of historical practice. Her research on science and scientific institutions demonstrated that oral testimony could illuminate institutional cultures that were poorly represented in formal archives. Her work has also addressed the conceptual relationship between oral traditions, contemporary history, event, memory and experience. When Verma advocated oral history, the method still needed to defend its legitimacy within mainstream historical practice. By the time a later generation of historians developed institutional oral-history projects, the question had changed. The problem was increasingly how interviews should be recorded, catalogued, archived, preserved and made available for future research. Oral history itself had begun producing archives, and there is a certain irony here; a methodology which originally challenged the authority of the archive eventually created new archives of its own.

The work of the Archives on Contemporary History at Jawaharlal Nehru University, which Sucheta Mahajan chaired from 2007 to 2011, represents another institutional effort to collect and preserve oral testimony. These initiatives have ensured that oral history in India is not merely a matter of individual scholarship but an organised and cumulative enterprise, with its own archives, methodologies and standards of practice.

Reliability, Ethics and the Digital Archive

Students inevitably ask whether we can trust oral history. My answer would be another question. Can we trust a Persian chronicle? Can we trust a colonial revenue report? Can we trust a newspaper? Can we trust an autobiography? The historian does not trust sources; the historian interrogates them. Suppose three people remember the same demonstration differently. That does not necessarily mean that oral history has failed. It may reveal that different groups experienced the same event differently. The historian must nevertheless apply rigorous source criticism. The age of the interviewee matters. The date of the event matters. The interval between experience and recollection matters. Leading questions must be avoided. Whenever possible, testimony should be compared with contemporary documents and other interviews. The historian must distinguish between what the witness personally experienced and what the witness subsequently heard. Above all, we must resist the temptation to romanticise the voice of the ordinary person. The subaltern can misremember too. Memory does not become accurate merely because the speaker belongs to a marginalised group. Oral history democratises the archive; it does not abolish historical criticism.

India offers extraordinary possibilities for oral history and oral tradition. Consider 1857. Official reports, military correspondence, proclamations, court records and contemporary newspapers provide enormous evidence, but alongside them survive family traditions, village memories, songs and stories about local participants. Some may contain historically verifiable information; others may have transformed dramatically over generations. Both remain interesting. The historian must ask how a rebel remembered in 1857 became a hero in 1957, and perhaps a different kind of hero in 2007. The same is true of tribal histories, regional traditions, pilgrimage centres, local shrines and memories of migration. Here oral tradition becomes particularly important because the absence of writing should never be confused with the absence of history. This was one of the points that Lal Bahadur Verma repeatedly emphasised in advocating a wider conception of historical evidence.

There is another dimension of oral history which deserves attention. An interview is not simply a source waiting to be collected; it is an encounter between two human beings. The questions asked by the historian shape the testimony, and the age, gender, language and social position of the interviewer may influence what the interviewee is prepared to say. An elderly woman may tell a female researcher something she would never tell a young male researcher. A former political activist may construct his story differently for a historian whom he believes sympathetic to his politics. The historian is therefore present inside the creation of the source. This differs from entering an archive and opening a document written a hundred years ago. In oral history, we participate in producing the evidence that we subsequently analyse, and that imposes an ethical responsibility. Interviewees must understand what is being recorded, questions involving trauma require sensitivity and researchers must think carefully about consent, privacy and the future preservation of recordings. Oral history is therefore both historical method and human relationship.

Today the possibilities are greater than Verma could have imagined when he began advocating oral history. A mobile telephone can record an interview of remarkable quality. Digital storage allows thousands of hours of testimony to be preserved, and photographs, maps and documents can be connected with recorded recollections. Interviews can be indexed and searched, and artificial intelligence will undoubtedly transform this further. Speech can increasingly be transcribed automatically, and large collections of interviews can be searched for names, places and recurring themes. But technology cannot solve the fundamental historical problem. A machine can transcribe a pause; it cannot automatically tell us what that pause means. It can identify that a person mentioned Partition seventeen times; it cannot by itself explain why the eighteenth time the speaker suddenly became silent. Historical interpretation remains a human activity.

Recovering the People’s Past

We can now return to Lal Bahadur Verma. His importance in the development of oral history in India should neither be exaggerated nor underestimated. He was not the inventor of oral history in India. Anthropologists, folklorists, sociologists and historians had used oral testimony in different ways before him. Nor did he develop a theoretical literature comparable to Jan Vansina, Paul Thompson or Alessandro Portelli. His contribution was different. He understood relatively early that democratising the subject of history required democratising the sources of history. This is the central point. If peasants, workers, women, local activists, tribal communities and ordinary participants are to enter historical narratives, historians cannot depend exclusively upon archives created by states and elites.

Verma’s 1993 Indian History Congress paper, “Significance of Oral History: Allahabad during Freedom Struggle,” provides clear documentary evidence of his attempt to place this methodological issue before the professional community of Indian historians. But his contribution went beyond a single paper. His commitment to itihāsbodh, his writings in Hindi, his concern with jan-itihās, his interest in local history and his insistence upon widening the historian’s source base formed parts of the same intellectual enterprise. He wanted history to recover people, and he wanted people to recover history. There is an important difference between those two propositions. To recover people means writing ordinary men and women back into historical narratives. For people to recover history means enabling them to recognise that their own lives, families, neighbourhoods, workplaces and struggles possess histories worth preserving. That is perhaps the most democratic possibility contained within oral history.

When Memory Becomes History

We may therefore return to the title with which we began. Memory does not automatically become history merely because somebody remembers something. It becomes historical evidence when the historian begins asking questions of it. Who remembers? What is remembered? What has been forgotten? When was the story first told? How has it changed? Can it be compared with documentary evidence? What does the manner of remembering reveal about the relationship between past and present? These questions transform recollection into historical inquiry.

Oral history therefore does not represent a rebellion against the archive. At its best, it represents an enlargement of the archive. The document and the memory should speak to each other. Sometimes they will agree. Sometimes they will contradict one another. And sometimes their disagreement will tell us more than either source could have told us independently. This is why the contribution of Lal Bahadur Verma deserves to be remembered. His concern with oral history arose from a larger intellectual commitment: the recovery of people’s agency within history and the cultivation of itihāsbodh outside the narrow confines of professional scholarship.

Shahid Amin‘s Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura, 1922–1992 remains one of the finest Indian examples of the historical use of memory. Amin brought judicial records and other documentary evidence into conversation with interviews and local memories, asking what happened to Chauri Chaura after the event and how local memory interacted with the national memory of Gandhi and Non-Cooperation. His work demonstrated that oral history could be something more than the recovery of missing information; it could become a history of memory itself.

Partition scholars such as Urvashi Butalia, Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin demonstrated how testimony could recover experiences that political narratives had concealed. Gyanendra Pandey taught us to take seriously even the silences surrounding traumatic memory. Sucheta Mahajan has insisted that oral history belongs within the practice of contemporary Indian history, not as a supplement but as a central method. Indira Chowdhury helped institutionalise oral history and extend it into the history of science, institutions and public history. Badri Narayan has shown how oral tradition and collective memory can illuminate Dalit politics and consciousness. Uma Chakravarti has used oral history to document feminist activism, creating an archive for future generations. Ezra Rashkow has collected Adivasi oral histories and placed them in dialogue with the colonial archive. Chitra Joshi and Kanchi Venugopal Reddy have used oral testimony to recover the histories of labour.

But Verma occupies a distinctive position within this larger Indian genealogy. His starting point was the jan. The people were not simply crowds appearing occasionally in somebody else’s archive. They possessed memories, experiences and historical consciousness of their own. To listen to them was not an act of generosity on the historian’s part; it was a historical necessity.

Conclusion

And perhaps this is the thought with which I should end. Every generation leaves behind documents, monuments and material remains. But it also leaves memories. Documents may enter archives. Buildings may become monuments. Objects may enter museums. Memories have a more fragile existence. When the person carrying them disappears, an entire archive may disappear with that person. The oral historian therefore sometimes works against time. An elderly freedom fighter dies, and a particular memory of the national movement disappears. A Partition survivor passes away, and the remembered geography of a village across the border may disappear with her. An artisan dies without transmitting his knowledge, and a technological tradition extending across generations can vanish. A woman who witnessed an event but never appeared in an official document takes with her a history which no archive may ever recover.

Lal Bahadur Verma understood the importance of listening before those voices disappeared. So did the feminist historians who created Aalochana and SPARROW. So did Butalia and Menon and Bhasin when they sat down with Partition survivors. So did Badri Narayan when he collected the songs and stories of Dalit communities. So did Sucheta Mahajan when she insisted that oral history belonged within the professional practice of Indian historians. That is why oral history matters. It reminds us that history does not survive only in archives. Sometimes the archive is sitting before us. Sometimes it speaks. And the historian must learn to listen.

Essential Reading List

The following list is intended for students, teachers and researchers who wish to pursue the study of oral history and oral traditions in greater depth. It is organised thematically and includes both foundational theoretical works and significant contributions from Indian historiography.

Foundational Works in Oral History Theory and Method

Abrams, Lynn. Oral History Theory. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2016.

Portelli, Alessandro. The Battle of Valle Giulia: Oral History and the Art of Dialogue. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997. Portelli reflects on how to connect personal memories with history and how to fittingly collect and represent the complexity of memory, drawing on interviews with Italian steelworkers, Kentucky coal miners, veterans, refugees and student protesters .

Portelli, Alessandro. The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991. A foundational work offering a new and challenging approach to oral history from an interdisciplinary and multicultural perspective, examining cultural conflict and communication between social groups and classes in industrial societies .

Portelli, Alessandro. They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. The culmination of more than thirty-five years of interaction between one of the most influential writers on oral history and memory and the people of Harlan County, Kentucky, weaving together dozens of individual narratives .

Ritchie, Donald A. Doing Oral History. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Thompson, Paul, with Joanna Bornat. The Voice of the Past: Oral History. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Vansina, Jan. Oral Tradition as History. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.

Vansina, Jan. Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965.

Key Theorists and Practitioners

Clark, Mary Marshall. “Case Study: Field Notes on Catastrophe: Reflections on the September 11, 2001, Oral History Memory and Narrative Project.” In The Oxford Handbook of Oral History, edited by Donald A. Ritchie. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Clark, director of the Columbia University Oral History Research Office and co-founder of its Oral History Master of Arts programme, reflects on the methodological and ethical challenges of documenting catastrophe through oral history .

Clark, Mary Marshall, Peter Bearman, Catherine Ellis, and Stephen Drury Smith, eds. After the Fall: New Yorkers Remember September 2001 and the Years That Followed. New York: New Press, 2011. A landmark volume of oral history in which Columbia’s Oral History Research Office deployed interviewers across New York City to collect accounts from first-responders, taxi drivers, school teachers, artists, religious leaders, immigrants and others, producing a deep and revealing look at how the attacks changed individual lives and communities .

Aras, Ramazan, Douglas Boyd, Mary Marshall Clark, Mehmet Kurt, S. Mohammad Mohaqqeq, Claudia P. González Perez, and Lucine Taminian. Documenting and Interpreting Conflict through Oral History: A Working Guide. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. A human rights publication co-produced by Columbia University and the American Institute for Research in Iraq, offering practical guidance on oral history in conflict zones .

Sinclair, Sara, Mary Marshall Clark, and Peter Bearman, eds. Robert Rauschenberg: An Oral History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019. A model of institutional and artistic oral history, drawing on interviews with the artist’s collaborators, friends and contemporaries .

Oral History and Indian Historiography

Amin, Shahid. Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura, 1922–1992. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

Butalia, Urvashi. The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1998.

Chowdhury, Indira. “Memory, Orality and Learning: Reflections of an Oral Historian.” Studies in History 41, no. 1 (2025): 1–18.

Joshi, Chitra. Lost Worlds: Indian Labour and Its Forgotten Histories. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003.

Mahajan, Sucheta. “Beyond the Archives: Doing Oral History in Contemporary India.” Studies in History 27, no. 2 (2011): 281–298.

Menon, Ritu, and Kamla Bhasin. Borders & Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1998.

Narayan, Badri. The Making of the Dalit Public in North India: Uttar Pradesh, 1950–Present. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Pandey, Gyanendra. Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism and History in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Rashkow, Ezra. “Dispossessing Memory: Adivasi Oral Histories from the Margins of Pachmarhi Biosphere Reserve, Central India.” In Memory, Identity and the Colonial Encounter in India: Essays in Honour of Peter Robb, edited by Ezra Rashkow, Sanjukta Ghosh and Upal Chakrabarti. London: Routledge, 2017.

Oral History and Partition

Butalia, Urvashi. The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000.

Chawla, Devika. Home, Uprooted: Oral Histories of India’s Partition. New York: Fordham University Press, 2014.

Menon, Ritu, and Kamla Bhasin. Borders & Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998.

Pandey, Gyanendra. Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism and History in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Raychaudhuri, Anindya. Narrating South Asian Partition: Oral History, Literature, Cinema. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019.

Zamindar, Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali. The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.

Oral History and Dalit Studies

Narayan, Badri. Women Heroes and Dalit Assertion in North India: Culture, Identity and Politics. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2006.

Narayan, Badri. The Making of the Dalit Public in North India: Uttar Pradesh, 1950–Present. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Omvedt, Gail. Dalit Visions: The Anti-Caste Movement and the Construction of an Indian Identity. New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1995.

Oral History and Adivasi Studies

Oza, Nandini. An Oral History of the Narmada Bachao Andolan. New Delhi: Routledge, 2021.

Rashkow, Ezra. “Dispossessing Memory: Adivasi Oral Histories from the Margins of Pachmarhi Biosphere Reserve, Central India.” In Memory, Identity and the Colonial Encounter in India, edited by Ezra Rashkow, Sanjukta Ghosh and Upal Chakrabarti. London: Routledge, 2017.

Oral History and Labour

Joshi, Chitra. Lost Worlds: Indian Labour and Its Forgotten Histories. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003.

Reddy, Kanchi Venugopal. Industrial Labour and the National Movement in the Madras Presidency. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Pondicherry University.

Oral History and Gender

Chakravarti, Uma. Fragments of a Past: A Memoir. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2010.

Kotwal Lele, Medha. “Oral History: Telling Our Stories from India.” La Lettre de l’IRMC (2025).

Srigley, Katrina, Stacey Zembrzycki, and Franca Iacovetta, eds. Beyond Women’s Words: Feminisms and the Practices of Oral History in the Twenty-First Century. London: Routledge, 2018.

Oral History and the History of Science and Institutions

Chowdhury, Indira. “A Historian among Scientists: Reflections on Archiving the History of Science in Postcolonial India.” Isis 104, no. 2 (2013): 371–380.

Oral Tradition and Folklore

Beck, Brenda E. F., Peter J. Claus, Praphulladatta Goswami, and Jawaharlal Handoo, eds. Folklore of India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Blackburn, Stuart H., Peter J. Claus, Joyce B. Flueckiger, and Susan S. Wadley, eds. Oral Epics in India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.

Oral History and Memory Studies

Pandey, Gyanendra. Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, Histories. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006.

Novetzke, Christian Lee. History, Bhakti, and Public Memory: Namdev in Religious and Secular Traditions. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.

Reference Works and Guides

Perks, Robert, and Alistair Thomson, eds. The Oral History Reader. 3rd ed. London: Routledge, 2015.

Ritchie, Donald A., ed. The Oxford Handbook of Oral History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

MacKay, Nancy. Curating Oral History: From Interview to Archive. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2016.

Indian History Congress Papers

Verma, Lal Bahadur. “Significance of Oral History: Allahabad during Freedom Struggle.” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 54 (1993).

Notes on the Reading List

The works listed above represent a comprehensive introduction to the field. Students new to oral history should begin with Thompson’s The Voice of the Past and Vansina’s Oral Tradition as History for theoretical grounding, and with the works of Portelli and Clark for a sense of the method’s range and ethical depth, before turning to the Indian works. Those interested in specific themes such as Partition, Dalit history or labour history will find the thematic sections particularly useful. Researchers planning to conduct their own oral history projects should consult the practical guides by Ritchie and MacKay alongside the more theoretical works. The list is by no means exhaustive, but it provides a solid foundation for further exploration of this vital and expanding field.

Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi

Recently, at a seminar organised by Janki Devi Memorial College at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, I witnessed a demonstration of Dāstāngoi by Ms Poonam Girdhani and Ms Amina Sayed. With little more than their voices, expressions and occasional gestures, the two performers held the audience spellbound. There were no elaborate costumes, stage settings or theatrical devices. Yet characters came alive, situations unfolded and an entire imaginary world emerged before us. The experience recalled a once-flourishing tradition of oral storytelling that, after nearly disappearing from public life, has found a new audience in contemporary India.

Storytelling is perhaps as old as human civilisation itself. Long before people began recording their experiences in writing, stories served as repositories of memory, imagination and collective wisdom. They preserved accounts of heroes and rulers, celebrated love and courage, explained the inexplicable and entertained successive generations. Among the many traditions that developed across the world, Dāstāngoi acquired a distinctive character in the Persian-speaking lands and subsequently in India, where it became an important part of Indo-Persian and Urdu literary culture. To understand its development in the subcontinent, however, we must look beyond its Persian ancestry and recognise the rich indigenous traditions of narration with which it came into contact.

The term Dāstāngoi combines two Persian words: dāstān, meaning a tale, and gūʾī, meaning narration. But the dāstān, as it developed into a distinct performative tradition, was no ordinary story. Its most remarkable feature was its open-ended character. Unlike a conventional narrative proceeding towards a predetermined conclusion, a dāstān could be extended almost indefinitely. New characters might enter, fresh adventures could be invented, earlier episodes modified and unexpected twists introduced according to the imagination of the storyteller and the response of his listeners. One story could generate another, which in turn might lead to several more. There was no necessary finality to the narrative.

The dāstāngo was therefore much more than a narrator. He was also an improviser and, in a sense, a creator who continually reshaped inherited material. A battle might be prolonged, a romance elaborated, a magical encounter transformed or an entirely new episode inserted without disturbing the larger narrative. The audience also played its part, for its reactions could influence the pace, emphasis and direction of the performance. Dāstāngoi was thus a living art in which the tale was never entirely finished. Its appeal lay as much in the manner of telling as in what was being told.

The roots of this tradition can be traced to the heroic and romantic narratives of Iran and the wider Persian-speaking world. Professional storytellers entertained audiences in royal courts, marketplaces, caravanserais and public gatherings. Their repertoire included accounts of legendary kings, warriors, lovers and supernatural beings. These narratives travelled across regions, absorbing local beliefs, customs and imaginative traditions along the way. But it would be misleading to regard Dāstāngoi as an exclusively Persian cultural import that took root in an otherwise unfamiliar environment. India already possessed a remarkably rich tradition of oral storytelling, extending from the great epics and the Kathāsaritsāgara to regional kathās, heroic ballads and romantic narratives. Many shared with the Persian dāstān a fondness for elaborate adventures, supernatural encounters, stories within stories and the freedom to expand a narrative through digression and improvisation. The kathavāchak, much like the dāstāngo, depended upon memory, verbal skill and an intimate relationship with his listeners.

Particularly significant was the medieval premakhyān tradition, represented by Maulana Daud’s Chandāyan (1379), Qutban’s Mrigāvati (1503), Malik Muhammad Jayasi’s Padmāvat (1540) and Manjhan’s Madhumālati (1545). These works brought together conventions of Persian romance, Sufi ideas of love and spiritual fulfilment, and the languages, imagery and narrative traditions of North India. Their stories of separation, journeys, adventure and extraordinary encounters belonged to a cultural world in which Indian and Persian literary influences were already deeply intertwined. Although the premākhyans were generally verse romances, often possessing allegorical meanings, while the later Urdu dastans developed into expansive prose narratives, both reflected a common delight in imaginative storytelling.

The development of Dāstāngoi in India should therefore be understood not simply as the transplantation of a Persian literary form but as part of a wider process of cultural interaction. Its inherited narrative conventions encountered indigenous traditions that had long celebrated the storyteller’s freedom to elaborate, embellish and reinterpret. The precise extent of direct borrowing is not always possible to establish, but the result was unmistakably Indian in its language, imagery, humour and social references. By the time Dāstāngoi reached its fullest expression in the Urdu-speaking world of Delhi and Lucknow, it had become a distinctive product of the subcontinent’s shared literary culture.

Among the most celebrated narrative cycles was the Dāstān-e Amir Hamza, centred upon the adventures of a legendary hero associated with Hamza ibn Abd al-Muttalib, the uncle of the Prophet Muhammad. The resemblance, however, was largely nominal. The Amir Hamza of the dāstān inhabited a world far removed from historical reality, encountering sorcerers, demons, enchanted kingdoms and formidable adversaries. The narratives drew upon Iranian heroic legends, Islamic traditions and a wide range of popular stories. Their adaptability made them particularly suitable for an oral tradition in which each generation of storytellers could contribute something of its own.

With the spread of Persian literary culture under the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals, these narratives found a receptive environment in India. Persian was not merely the language of administration and courtly correspondence; it was also a medium through which ideas, literary conventions and cultural practices circulated. The Indian subcontinent, with its own rich traditions of oral narration, provided opportunities for the older Persian tales to acquire new forms and meanings. The Mughal emperor Akbar appears to have been particularly fascinated by the adventures of Amir Hamza. Under his patronage, the celebrated illustrated Hamza Nāma was produced during the second half of the sixteenth century. This monumental undertaking, originally comprising approximately 1,400 paintings, was among the most ambitious artistic projects of the Mughal atelier. Its surviving illustrations depict battles, royal assemblies, fabulous creatures and extraordinary adventures, often with remarkable dramatic energy.

One of the most remarkable features of Akbar’s Hamza Nāma was the unusually large size of its illustrations, measuring approximately 69 by 54 centimetres. These paintings were not merely intended for private viewing or as decorative accompaniments to a manuscript. The surviving folios contain Persian narrative passages written on their reverse, corresponding to the episodes depicted on the front.

The arrangement itself is significant. While the audience viewed the illustration, the qissago could consult the written narrative behind it. Indeed, the paintings were sufficiently large for the storyteller to remain at least partially concealed behind them. The written passages provided the narrative framework, but the performance depended upon the storyteller’s ability to elaborate upon it, introduce dialogue, embellish descriptions and develop the episode in his own particular style. Thus, the same narrative material could acquire different dimensions in the hands of different storytellers.

The Hamza Nāma therefore represents something more than an extraordinary achievement of Mughal painting. It provides tangible evidence of the close relationship between the written word, pictorial representation and oral narration at Akbar’s court. The Persian passages on the reverse of the paintings are surviving material evidence, not merely a conjectured feature of the performance. The precise manner in which individual storytellers handled and elaborated upon these passages cannot always be reconstructed, but the arrangement of the folios clearly demonstrates the relationship between image and narrative. The painter provided the visual setting, the written text supplied the substance of the episode, and the qissago transformed it into a living performance. In this sense, the Hamza Nāma also illustrates the open-ended character of the dāstān itself, in which an inherited narrative could continually be expanded and reshaped through the imagination and skill of the storyteller.

The Mughal Hamza Nāma, however, belonged to an earlier phase of the Hamza tradition and should not be confused with the elaborate Urdu Dāstāngoi that developed subsequently. It was during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that Dāstāngoi acquired its most distinctive Indian form. As Urdu emerged as a major language of literary expression, the older Persian narratives were increasingly recast in its idiom. Delhi became an important centre, but it was in Lucknow, particularly under the patronage of the rulers and aristocracy of Awadh, that the tradition reached an extraordinary level of refinement.

The decline of Mughal political authority did not mean the immediate disappearance of the cultural practices associated with the imperial court. Many found new patrons in the regional centres that emerged during the eighteenth century. Lucknow, with its cultivated urban society, elaborate etiquette and enthusiasm for poetry, music and conversation, offered particularly favourable conditions for Dāstāngoi. Here the storyteller’s command over language became as important as his narrative imagination.

The Lucknow dāstāngos developed a style rich in idiom, wit, poetic expression and elaborate description. They could evoke the splendour of a royal assembly, the confusion of a battlefield, the delicacy of a romantic encounter or the terrors of an enchanted palace with equal ease. Their narratives frequently moved between razm, the world of warfare and heroic combat, and bazm, the world of assemblies, festivities, romance and refined sociability. Equally important were tilism, the realm of magic and enchantment, and aiyyāri, the art of disguise, cunning and deception.

The aiyyār was among the most fascinating figures in these tales. Unlike the conventional hero who depended upon strength and martial prowess, the aiyyār relied upon intelligence, resourcefulness and the ability to assume different identities. He could outwit powerful enemies, penetrate guarded fortresses and overcome apparently impossible situations. Such characters introduced humour, suspense and unexpected reversals into the narrative. They also reflected an appreciation of wit and ingenuity within the cultural world of the dāstān.

Among the celebrated storytellers of nineteenth-century Lucknow was Mir Ahmad Ali, whose name became closely associated with the Hamza tradition. Muhammad Husain Jah and Sheikh Tasadduq Husain were among those who subsequently contributed to its literary elaboration. Their work coincided with the expansion of printing, which transformed the relationship between oral performance and the written text. The Naval Kishore Press of Lucknow played a particularly important role in preserving and disseminating these narratives. The enormous Dāstān-e Amir Hamza cycle eventually appeared in forty-six substantial volumes. Within this tradition, the Tilism-e Hoshruba achieved particular fame. Its enchanted world was inhabited by sorcerers, warriors, tricksters and extraordinary beings, all engaged in adventures that could continue almost without end.

The very size of these publications illustrates the essential character of the dāstān. Its expansion was not simply the result of excessive literary ornamentation. It arose from a narrative structure that permitted almost unlimited elaboration. Episodes could be inserted, characters multiplied and adventures prolonged without necessarily bringing the larger story closer to a conclusion. What might appear repetitive to a modern reader could, in an oral performance, become an opportunity for displaying the narrator’s ingenuity and verbal skill.

Interestingly, the imaginative world of the old Persian and Urdu dāstāns did not disappear altogether with the decline of professional storytelling. It continued to find expression in popular literature, cinema and eventually television. Many would remember the adventures of Hatim Tai, which were adapted for Indian television, including Dāstān-e-Hātimtai on Doordarshan and the popular Hātim, broadcast on Star Plus in 2003–04. Although the adventures of Hatim Tai belonged to a different narrative cycle from Tilism-e Hoshruba, both drew upon a common tradition of fabulous journeys, magical kingdoms, sorcerers, supernatural encounters and heroic adventures. The popularity of such productions demonstrated that the fascination with the world of the dāstān had survived, even though its traditional mode of oral performance had largely disappeared. What had once been conjured up through the voice and imagination of the dastango was now recreated through moving images and television special effects.

These tales also provide interesting insights into the cultural imagination of their times. Although their settings were frequently fantastic, descriptions of dress, food, architecture, weapons, ceremonies and social behaviour often reflected the world familiar to their North Indian audiences. The royal assemblies of imaginary kingdoms could resemble the refined gatherings of Lucknow, while the conversations of heroes and tricksters echoed contemporary manners of speech. The historian must naturally distinguish between literary imagination and historical evidence, but the dastans remain valuable for understanding social aspirations, aesthetic preferences and the ideals of conduct prevalent among their listeners.

Dāstāngoi was, above all, an art of performance. The successful dāstāngo required an exceptional memory, command over language, familiarity with poetry and an ability to change his voice and expression according to the demands of the narrative. He might narrate an episode with great solemnity, introduce humour through a sudden change of tone or prolong suspense by withholding the expected conclusion. The pleasure of the audience lay not merely in discovering what happened next, but in appreciating how the story unfolded.

In this respect, Dāstāngoi shared something with the mushaira, where verbal accomplishment and the response of the audience were central to the performance. Both belonged to a culture that valued eloquence, wit and the subtle possibilities of language. Dāstāngoi, however, was not confined to elite gatherings. Storytellers also performed in bazārs and other public spaces, enabling the tradition to reach audiences beyond the aristocracy. It was this interaction between courtly refinement and popular entertainment that gave the art much of its vitality.

By the late nineteenth century, however, the social and literary environment that had sustained Dāstāngoi was changing. The growth of print culture, the emergence of the modern Urdu novel and new expectations of realism gradually diminished the prestige of the older fantastic narratives. Literary reformers such as Muhammad Husain Azad and Altaf Husain Hali advocated different standards of expression, while changing forms of entertainment altered public tastes. The subsequent popularity of theatre, cinema and radio further reduced the space available to professional oral storytellers.

One of the last great representatives of the classical tradition was Mir Baqar Ali of Delhi, who died in 1928. With his passing, Dāstāngoi as a continuous professional tradition had effectively come to an end. Its enormous literary inheritance survived in printed volumes, but the art of performance, with its improvisation, dramatic timing and intimate relationship between narrator and audience, had largely disappeared.

Its revival in the early twenty-first century was therefore a significant cultural development. Much of the intellectual groundwork was laid by the distinguished Urdu scholar Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, whose pioneering studies of the Dāstān-e Amir Hamza and Tilism-e Hoshruba restored scholarly attention to a literary tradition that had long been neglected. Faruqi demonstrated that these narratives possessed their own aesthetic principles and should not be judged merely by the standards of the modern novel. His meticulous scholarship, including his work on the poetics of the dāstān, established the intellectual foundations upon which the performance tradition could be rebuilt. By treating these tales as worthy of serious literary analysis, he helped restore the cultural prestige of a form that had been dismissed as mere popular entertainment.

Building upon this scholarship, the modern performance tradition of Dāstāngoi was revived in 2005 by Mahmood Farooqui, in collaboration with Danish Husain, drawing upon the pioneering literary research of Shamsur Rahman Faruqi. The modern presentation frequently involves two narrators seated together, dressed simply, who alternate between narration, dialogue and dramatic expression. Although this form cannot be regarded as an exact reproduction of the older tradition, it retains its essential reliance upon the spoken word and the imaginative participation of the audience.

The revival has also demonstrated the adaptability of Dāstāngoi. Contemporary performers have moved beyond the adventures of Amir Hamza to explore historical events, literary works and present-day social concerns. In doing so, they have remained faithful to one of the fundamental characteristics of the tradition: its capacity to absorb new material and reshape itself according to changing circumstances. What was once a vehicle for narrating fantastic adventures can now also become a means of reflecting upon contemporary society.

The history of Dāstāngoi is particularly revealing when viewed against the wider background of India’s cultural development. Originating in Persian narrative traditions, drawing upon Islamic legends and Iranian heroic literature, flourishing under Mughal patronage and subsequently finding expression in Urdu, it exemplifies the continuous interaction of cultures that shaped the Indian subcontinent. Its language, imagery and social references were neither exclusively Persian nor simply Indian in origin. They emerged through a long process of borrowing, adaptation and creative transformation.

Such traditions remind us of the limitations of dividing India’s cultural past into rigid religious compartments. The world of Dāstāngoi was shaped by Persian, Arabic and Indian literary influences, while its audiences belonged to the shared urban culture of North India. Its history cannot be adequately understood through categories that treat Hindu and Muslim cultural experiences as separate and self-contained.

For the historian, Dāstāngoi also raises an important methodological question. Much of what we know about the past comes from written records, inscriptions, buildings and other surviving material remains. Yet oral traditions and performances were equally important in shaping how people understood their world. They preserved memories, communicated values and offered imaginative interpretations of social experience. The fact that many such traditions have disappeared makes their reconstruction difficult, but it does not diminish their historical significance.

The performance by Poonam Girdhani and Amina Sayed at the India Habitat Centre brought these reflections into focus. The world that had sustained the classical dastangos has largely vanished, and the modern auditorium is very different from the courtly assemblies and public gatherings of earlier centuries. Yet the essential attraction of the art survives. Two performers, with no elaborate theatrical apparatus, could still transport their listeners into another world through the power of narration.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Dāstāngoi is that it resists finality. The dāstān does not necessarily end when the narrator falls silent. Another episode may be imagined, another character introduced and another adventure begun. In this sense, the recent revival is itself a continuation of the old tradition, a new chapter in a story that has travelled across languages, regions and centuries. Dāstāngoi survives because its possibilities, like those of the human imagination, are never entirely exhausted.

Note: This essay is inspired by the talk delivered by Ms Poonam Girdhani which she delivered at the Janki Devi seminar held at India Habitat Centre.