Brilliant work, Shehzad. Thanks for taking the time to come up with this beautiful conversation. And yes, we were witnesses to a historian with a sense of humor and a comedian who is intelligent. Leave the thankless comments by the wayside and march on ! Naya saal kaafi nafeez jaaye aapka ❤️
Absolutely loved the discourse. This is what education needs to be about: question the simplistic prejudices and beliefs thrust upon us and open our minds to various shades of grey that define the true reality of our past and present. Please continue this important work🙏🏽
While I am a big fan of Manu's work, I think while discussing origins of communalism he does under-emphasise the pre-modern roots of communalism. For example Chris Bayly and Ajay Verghese's work does show the existence of localised violence that we can now loosely term as communal violence. I don't mean to essentialise these categories just like Manu said as Bhakti period was a time of shifting categories, but I think the idea of saying that census and colonial categorisation were the principal factors behind the rise of religious violence in the sub-continent would be going a bit too far as it would negate the bridges that connect contemporary to medieval. Also thanks a lot for hosting him on your channel. Loved his insights!!
His books are brilliant ! Most of Indian history are basically North Indian and present day Pakistan ‘s history ! South India was always excluded . Manu pillai does justice to South Indian history
@@jam-ss2jc post independence historians reacted to call of nehru to give fine touch to the rough edges, which were more prominent in North. South is more glorious vis a vis Indic civilization
@@parthachoudhury4332 yes started to know about the great people of North East Everything is interconnected only one need to start peeling every layers
Bring on somebody to talk on history, evolution and ideology of RSS as they understand it or something related. Maybe Vijai Trivedi, Vikram Sampath or Sunil Ambekar. I feel we have little understanding of RSS although it's become very prominent today.
yes, but do also read and listen to badri narayan, purushottam aggrawal, AG Noorani, aakar patel, christophe jaffrelot to understand the RSS, because these people that you have mentioned above don't have the best credentials to their name, They have dubious sources, they end up quoting each other in a circular fashion, there work lacks a lot of academic rigour that is expected of works of such nature, just because someone can shout the loudest and for the longest period of time doesn't make them correct or significant!
@Ayush Yadav Sure, I don't know anything about this. These are the people that I've just seen on the internet being interviewed about their books. I just didn't want to leave no suggestions in my comment, as long as it's informative I don't care who's brought on.
Wasn't Sir Syed and Jinnah responsible for creating and reinforcing the schism - by way of their 2 nation theory? Isn't what is happening in IN a resultant of their efforts?? It takes two or more to tango.
What about hundreds of thousands of Indian(Hindus) were enslaved and sold in Central Asia and Middle East which Hindu King sold Indians outside? What about Jhazia?
Mapilla massacre can be justified because muslims once who were politically influential were marginalized. However, godhra massacre can’t be justified because the innocent hindus who got burned should have kept quiet and accepted the reality that the train was caught on fire.
1.11.00 RSS used to tell the story of 3rd battle of Panipat in Sakhas in 1970-80s with inferences that entire North India went against Marathas . So it is important for RSS to have unity at any cost. One reason why RSS people leave BJP do not like Modi but never revolt because it will destroy nation. Modi was himself pushed out of Gujarat almost into wilderness in Haryana/ HP but he also did not revolt.
I can imagine how tough it will be for him, to listen to people who are factually and logically so correct at the same time opposite to what he likes to hear from India.
@@prashantp2029 how 'factually & logically correct' Sampath is has already been exposed on twitter. Esp his claims on Bose praising Sawarkar. And what is the connection of facts and logic with the right wing?
History will bail me out that the Deccan plateau was red with blood of the Shaivites and Lingaites. Shaivites claimed that it was Lord Shiva’s divine order to kill the followers of the opponent sect. And that’s why he brandished his trident. Krishna, if at all he existed (though chances of his existence are very very bleak), was the main cause of Kurukshetra that witnessed unprecedented bloodshed. That’s the reason, scriptures of Jainism consign him to Raurav, the seventh and the lowest hell. When a religion believes so much in sanguinary myths and violent ways through its deities, how can it claim to be non-violent and peace-loving? Peace’s at loggerheads with such blood-thirsty faith. Brutally speaking, Hinduism institutionalised violence.
@@syafiqfirdaus1620 This is all nonsense. tell me where are shaivites and vaishvites fighting today ? if they had conflict 1000 years back , this doesnot meanit has to continue unlike islam does. As Will Durant says "Islamic conquest of India is perhaps most bloodiest story in history so much so that no parallel can be found in any other civilization of such a devastation and horror". Ants cannot be compared to elephants. Hinduism id ofcourse non violent and peace loving because it doesnot divide humanity into us vs them and law of karma says if you do bad to anyone you have to pay for it in this life or the next births
@@karanbhoir2441 no. The fact is marathas lost the battle of Panipat and couldn't conquer Mysore during the reign of Tipu Sultan even when in an alliance with the Hyderabad Nizams.
@@anambutt8127 read about tribes of andaman and sentinel Islands..... even how they live today will not match ur morality but then they r ok with it.....there is a tribe in Africa where after marriage boy goes to girls house not the other way....now that might not fit into ur morality too but then they are ok with it
@@Excelbuddy-fl3mj i know, i have seen a couple documentaries. But they are very very small percentage of human population. Being topless a norm and Women considering covering up as provocative feels very strange to me.
@@anambutt8127 now that is the point where civilization clashes....just kidding 😂.... every society has a morality which might be a taboo for u..... think about it this way man rome around bare chest without any problem they should cover up too....and in some parts of India heat is too much covering up can never be a solution always.....and secondly the whole purposes of covering up was to protect your self from weather so covering up in heat is anyways stupid but then that's the norm now
As a Bengali, I am bare witness of the fact that, rural women forever wore sarees without a blouse. Even i saw that myself. Old bengali movies have such figures quite often. I think that is a practice throughout our subcontinent, till the male gaze took over.
The way author is portraying Mughal period is a bit inaccurate. The jaziya was destroying local livelihood. Mughals could not force islam because they were minority and would have made lower class revolt. But still the jiziya was very burdensome. There was a reason why Marathas were not very happy with Mughals and revolted. He also doesnt get why mughals could not destroy maraths by just killing people. Well thats because it was gorilla warfair. Second mughal army itself was mostly indians they would not being that type of stuff. One could argue that Mughals indeed were slightly less aggressive as compared to the afghan invaders. Mainly because it was their own kingdom to just go on full killing spree.
51:03 Not entirely true. People still have their Kuldevataas although they're given more importance on some yagna related activities and not on daily basis. And the concept of kuldevataas is more common in villages.
Yes kuldevataa is still a large part of religious life of even non religious people. We have to tevel to visit kuldevata temples after marriage and after birth of child
44.1 aurangzeb deccan me shivajimaharaj ke mrutyu ke baad aaya tha 28 years maratha se ladha jit nahi paya yahi Mar Gaya aur jo jaising wali baat kr rahe he wo early times ki he jisme shivaji maharaj aur jaising me treaty Hua tha lekin within few years shivaji maharaj ne fir se woh kile jit liye
*58:23** kitna bada historian h bhai, ye statement Dene se pahle ye to soch leta Indian subcontinent me 50% muslim h or ye ese hi nahi bane h, these all are converted forcefully by Mughal, kam se kam sach bolna to dikh le*
Do call Vikram Sampath another historian from India who too is Sahitya Academy award winner. And he isn’t typical left wing historian too whitewash history just to propagate his political affiliation.
@@juhebhassan2617 He's the factual expert on savarkar right now - you can choose to live in echo chambers or try to understand what the Indian right actually thinks.
57:30 While I agree with most of what Manu says, this coming of circles is a false equivalence. It's built around the myth that steppe people migrated in 1500-1000 BCE brought in Indo-European language, got Sanskrit out of it, then composed Rig Veda in record time (!) and that if such a circle is only 1800 years prior to Islam's arrival, India was to define itself by even more circles. (1) This false equivalence is precisely what's fuelling Hindutva; more evidences (from Max Planck institute on proto-Indo European; satellite imagery of dried Saraswati river) etc are indeed pushing the Rig Veda to a couple of thousand years prior to 'received wisdom' from colonial/ marxist historians. To concede at least some level 'primacy' to Hinduism in the subcontinent (as a broad term, not just for Vedic, but other earthy beliefs) does not mean it's a recipe for dissonance. It's like acknowledging Daoism is native to China (despite them having a good % as Muslims/ Christians now) or that Shintoism is native to Japan and so on. To constantly peddle that Hinduism was just one more circle in a quick set of circles to arrive in quick succession is intellectually dishonest and isn't even a prerequisite for modern secular values to flourish. Acknowledging one civilisational primacy and continuity in a given land (after all, Hindiuism isn't claiming any other territory as its bedrock) (2) Argument sake - if kings were kings by any means necessary (violence, propaganda, subterfuge, ...) regardless of religion - would Indian landscape "abound" in 800+ year old temples in Sultanate/ Mughal ruled areas ? Isn't it coincidental that while village life, tax system, military conquests etc happened under Muslim kings just as good/bad as Hindu kings, and somehow, we don't have great monuments to speak of a religion practised by 80% subjects ? Manu comes as close to a honest historian as feasible, outside the marxist camp; yet, his hesitation to not let his work or words be picked up by Hindutva seems to make him tone down his critique of even rules like Aurangzeb.
Manu, my friend, I agree with you every bit but surely don’t agree your view on Aurangzeb. He was undoubtedly bigot who caused irreparable damage to social fabric of India. You literally carry sea of knowledge but I don’t know why you show little affinity to Dara Shikoh. I mean you would go in length when it comes to Aurangzeb. To me seeds of partition of India were sowed when Dara was murdered by bigot!! Dara, the Last Mughal who tried tolerant, secular society and failed!!!
Can you do a podcast with uzair younus bhai on indian economy presnt and future. What youth can do to improve economy. Actually we mostly see biased reviews on this. Want a non biased nutral review. Thank you in advance
Loved the podcast bhaijaan, please invite Vikram Sampath and J Sai Deepak as well. They have nuanced perspectives on the current socio-political and historical discourse in India.
You are so naive "bhaijan".. These "historians" protect their turf by excluding other schools of history who challenge existing prevalent narratives... They don't even recognise likes of sampath as serious scholars bz he successfully challenged the lies fabricated around legacy of savarkar.
39:56 is he from some different universe? He's like Hindus use aurangazeb to label indian muslims negative? Does he not know the indian muslims see aurangazeb as a hero?😂 Atleast he accepted that aurangazeb was a crackhead zihadi, even though he tried to whitewash him by saying ohh it was just politics and political gimmick! Who was babar? Why people love babri masjid so much? Because they love babr? No not because he was great king but because they see him as a there hero! When people literally offered to pay whatever they say or asked them to build masjids anywhere they want, they still were like...ohh! No! It's a property issue 😂 like we don't see the bigotry...
Sab historian bane he lekin kisi ko marathi modi bhasha parsi sanskrit nhi aati agar aati toh Pata chalta aurangzeb ke bare me usss waqt ke log kya kahte the or kaha kb konsa temple destroy kiya
Your comment is a 'LIVE Example' of the point he just made there. Every Indian Muslim considers Aurangzeb as his hero? This is exactly how you stereotype, and use aurangzeb as justification for propagating hate against a section. That was his precise point..
@@karanbhoir2441 Exactly. Ye sab biased translations ko padh kar apne aap ko historians kehlate hain. Politics ke liye ek mandir todta, 2 toda...puri life hazaro mandir kaun todta hai? Aur aise kaunsi politics thi uss waqt jo politics ko itna lamba kheencha. Ye sab bass whitewash karke apne aap ko already left ecosystem ka hissa banne ki koshish hai.
Well it must be so hard for you to be ignorant as well as insecured about the people of different faith who are in minority. You neither have interacted with muslims of our country nor have seen them. Well I also guess you dont know that the one of the 10 personal bodygaurd of Maharaja Shivaji was a muslim and one of the three naval chief of Shambhaji was also a muslim. Acha hua tab tum nahi the ye batane ko ki ye log gaddar hai vishwas nahi karna inpe. Bigotry is for those who reject the entirety of history with facts and arguements & questioning those evidences, but i guess tumhare liye questions bhi matlab ke nahi hote. Good for you, in any case, there was a country, where for every problem existed and every evil deed of past, was associated with a certain minority. Then the minority were eliminated and later on that country was destroyed. I hope we dont end up like them
@@krushnasispradhan8397 *Employing Muslims by shivaji doesn't mean we got good relationship with Muslims.. Example Afghan Muslims and hindus saw babur as an outsider,who came to destroy their kingdoms.Due to this, they worked together in few wars too.* *but in afghan, babur and turks ruling they imposed religious taxes, targeted hindus and their temples.* *I can give you a similar example in present geopolitics too: if Pakistan and India voted in favour of Palestine in UN doesn't mean both India and Pakistan got good relations..It means They have their own reasons like hatred for Jews for pak, need of oil from arab for India.* **
Wow! I hate myself for loving the accurate (can't get the exact one) history. I always get depressed reading or listening history, but this is something else. It's hopeful. Thanks Shahzad for this 🙏
Also, as Shashi Tharoor says….yes, the Mughals came as invaders, but they didn’t come to India to steal the wealth and take it somewhere else…they came to India and became Indians, generation after generation. Taxed the local population but spent the money right here in India as compared to the British, under which all the projects were aimed at how to transfer wealth away from India overseas.
yeah, mughals were god gift to this humanity and india. the best apologist historian in current times. Indians should be beware of historians like him.
In regards to covering the top, even today, men are suppose to be topless when they enter the temples in Kerala. Entry with shirts on is absolutely prohibited in Kerala temples.
Invite me on your show. Let's talk. I am a VP with global bank, lives in Europe and know both India and pakistan intimately, both literally and figuratively. We will have an interesting conversation. I want explain the basics of Dharma to a pakistan audience
i would also like to explain basics of islam to the indian audience. they judge all muslims by the actions of few and attribute it to the islam. like i refuse to accept that hinduism teaches to lynch someone to death for eating beef or worse, even on suspicion.
Excellent podcast Shehzad. One thing I want refute too Manu is the part where he spoke about the Siege of Golconda. Like I understand where he is coming from in his explanation and I agree that indeed it was for politics. However, it's really discounting Aurangzeb's tainted xenophobic checkered history. I'm not trying to be biased; I am coming from genuine observation and understanding. I believe for Aurangzeb that additionally his reasoning to take out Sultan Abul Hasan Tana Shah for being Shia was like knocking out two birds with one stone. The rebuttal Manu made in regards to Aurangzeb's mother and generals being Shia doesn't hold up to Aurganzeb's intolerance of Shias. Proximity means nothing, it's like the argument made in white middle America of "Oh all my friends are black how can you call me racist" or even "my spouse is black" it honestly proves nothing. To me I reflect on the Kufans during the Battle of Karbala who they themselves were Shia and also pledged allegiance to Imam Hussain A.S. , only to betray him after basically being propositioned by Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad to join his side instead. Like it doesn't take a lot of make a Benedict Arnold, man is fickle beyond reason and can easily throw their morals to the way side given the right circumstances. No hate all love, I am just making a clarification on this very serious matter as I don't want it to be misconstrued or be taken from granted by anyone..
good one. 1. what can be done for the exclusive ideas on all sides, i know they don't matter as much as we think they do, but when we are out to solve the problems between communities , exclusive ideas do come in . just curious. 2. why does the speaker differentiate village life in the ancient times as the "real" culture? doesn't seems fair . but open to discussions.
Brilliant conversation..Manu is one of most sensible guys of our times... In today's highly polarised society, we need sane guys like manu to decipher and put forward thigs in sensible, rational manner. RW from India will never like Manu :-) keep up good work..lets create atmosphere where sensible , balance guys like Manu are given visibility and platform .
When he said, people use aurangazeb to label today's muslims negative, did you think it was sensible statment? I heard the same statment from tharoor, but hes a politician so I give him a pass but a full time historian saying that only indicates that hes got some personal political ideology that he secretly mixes with his history. And btw Indian muslims see aurangazeb as their hero so calling out that is not labeling.
@@prashantp2029 What he saying that in today's time..there are certain elements in India who are using Aurangzeb to punish present day fellow Indian Muslims. There is no denying in this observation. these small group of RW Hindus who are Blaming present day Indian muslims for actions of one King centuries back..is nothing short of bigotry and uncivilised thing, bringing shame to all Indians and Hindus around world .
@@SanJay-tb5zr Yes.. agreed to that but the radical left wing is literally glorifying Mughals now... saying stuff like they contributed to Indian history and gave us monuments . can you imagine saying this about Christopher columbus and Europeans in a left leaning state in USA. Not to forget the mu-sanghis who disguise as "liberals" and consider Mughals as their heros because of religious aliments.
@@ayushs6099 Interpreting past will always be controversial. But using actions/ inactions of Aurangzeb as A whip to beat up fellow Indian Muslims is a Criminal act. Latest propaganda against Aurangzeb is more to spread Hatred against Indian Muslims rather than past events. No country can progress with such bigotry , backward thinking. Right Wing spreading Hatred, genocide against fellow Indian Muslims is treachery , let's not forget Indian Muslims fought Colonial British rule while Right Wing RSS workers like ms golwalkar refused to even protest British Raj. Hence , all these Hatred by RW Hindutva elements against Indian Muslims seems laughable and hypocrisy.
He is so wrong about moplas in kerela and the way they butchered hindus in malla puram and kalicut (Kozhikode) ! Instantly he came out as a left wing apologist for the most peaceful people!¡!! This is what is wrong with left wing narrative, they are so critical about Hinduism but very protective about m PPL ! The main reason why this lopsided narrative has no takers in India or even entire world today!¡!
He means that the soldiers( Indian or otherwise)who fired, are bigger culprits compared to Dyer or O’ Dwyer who gave the orders. And I tend to agree with him.
He spoke so well that it felt like a scripted interview. He was ready for every question with a concise answer, without any hums and pauses. He also sounds relatively unbiased/nuetral. It was interesting and not depressing.
@@ThePakistanExperience I can not be this fluent even in urdu unless i have prepared for the questions. That was really impressive. To do that in angrezi is a bonus (unless angrezi is his first language).
@@anambutt8127 No actually, In India we dont have any national language and we have two official languages :- Hindi and English. We are taught two languages as 1st language, where english is compulsary and Hindi or State language ( mother tongue ) as 2nd language. So anyone from middle class family must have studied in a CBSE or ICSE school, have quite a hold in english.In fact, In today's metropolitan scenario, it;'s actually a thing that we people tend to mix up a lot of hindi and english while normally conversing and call it "HINGLISH"😅😅
@@krushnasispradhan8397 In Pakistan when i studied (in Punjab) we had 2 types of schools, english medium (some semi govt and most private schools) and urdu medium. In my case (semi govt english medium school) teachers talked to me in urdu, while the text books and exams were in english , students talked to each other in urdu, parents talked to me in urdu and with each other in punjabi. So i think in urdu then translate it in english or punjabi. About "Hinglish" yes i have noticed, it is like using english alphabet to write urdu while texting. So people are using english language but the loaded body language, pronunciation, expression is all native.
@@anambutt8127 yup like if you have watched Tanmay Bhat streams you can notice that constant back and forth switching from eng to hindi. Yeah that is Hinglish
Yeah. Examples were nice. I also have example Modi loves board Muslims and he loved by them. Modi also has a muh boli Behan who is from pak now settled in India she tie Rakhi every year, these examples shows Modi blamed for Gujrat riot is not entirely true as they are shown right?? Here we have almost 600 mn Muslims in subcontinent they converted out of free will because beautiful sufism trend and all. I never see said good thing of past(fake) often countered but said bad thing(fake) must be countered. Having a commander or minister of different religion does mean that that kings were not prejudiced against other community? Really? Don't be that dumb.