Associate Professor of History. Find me here since I am migrating from this hellsite on Bluesky (@achakrava)
Apr 12, 2023 • 40 tweets • 9 min read
While I am pleased to see international coverage of the strategic erasure of history in Indian textbooks, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Understanding how this happened holds lessons for historians everywhere. 🧵washingtonpost.com/world/2023/04/…
Like most of its other social objectives, the RSS has an organization dedicated to the remaking of history to its own ends. The Akhil Bhartiya Itihas Sankalan Yojana (ABISY- lit. Plan for Indian history collection) was founded in 1973 by the pracharak Moropant Pingle. 2/
Apr 11, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
This gift is on top of Harvard’s current endowment, valued at over $53bn, built in part by selling Romanian forests to IKEA, land speculation in Brazil’s Cerrado, buying up water rights in drought-ridden CA, while it’s grad students were taught how to apply for food stamps.
If we are in any way serious about protecting academic freedom or the educational mission of the university, then confronting the implication of our own institutions in the worst kinds of capitalist, anti-labor and anti-democratic abuses worldwide is vital. This is a poison apple
Mar 16, 2023 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
Like any historian who has worked in Indian and other archives, I have felt the same frustrations as the author. Yet, having digitized material myself, I have gone to believe his proposed solution is wrong on every level 1/ hindustantimes.com/opinion/the-cu…
Firstly there are technical issues the author doesn’t consider- digital records are not necessarily more sustainable or durable. If you know why 16th C records are often in better shape than 19th C ones, then you know newer technologies are not necessarily more robust 2/
