The Loss of Hindustan

Dazzlingly erudite...An intellectual tour de force...Exceptionally stimulating...with its meticulous piecing together of the jigsaw that reveals an entire conceptual universe, complete with its own geography, peoples, history, and archives. -- Vivek Menezes * Mint Lounge * By examining Firishta's understanding of the history of Hindustan, and how the colonial historians re-ordered his work to fit entirely different narratives, [Asif] argues for a re-examining of our understanding of the pre-colonial past and a need for others in his field to acknowledge the influence of colonial knowledge on the practice of writing history. -- Rohan Venkataramakrishnan * Scroll * How has the great Indo-Islamic tradition of history-writing been used and misused, bowdlerized or simply effaced, in more recent times? Manan Ahmed Asif delves deep into this question by focusing on the legacy of the important Deccani historian Muhammad Qasim Firishta, a contemporary of Akbar and Jahangir. This is a significant contribution to intellectual history, as well as to the long-term political and cultural history of South Asia. -- Sanjay Subrahmanyam, author of <i>Europe's India</i> A sharp, gripping book. Asif eloquently revitalizes Firishta's Hindustan while also uncovering the colonial epistemologies that sought to efface it. The Loss of Hindustan is at once a reflection on a place imagined, remembered, and forgotten and a powerful affirmation of the historian's task in our present world. -- Supriya Gandhi, author of <i>The Emperor Who Never Was</i> The Loss of Hindustan takes us far beyond critiques of majoritarian nationalisms buttressed by colonial epistemology and reintroduces us to alternative histories of India that once circulated globally. Manan Ahmed Asif has given us nothing short of a master class in the ethics of history writing, illuminating the path to a South Asian future free of intercommunal prejudice and the oppression of minorities. -- Cemil Aydin, author of <i>The Idea of the Muslim World</i> In this remarkable and pathbreaking book, Manan Ahmed Asif peels back layer after layer of the colonial histories of Hindustan. The result is a radical rethink of colonial historiography and a compelling argument for the reassessment of the historical traditions of Hindustan. -- Mahmood Mamdani, author of <i>Neither Settler nor Native</i>