Abstract
T.C.A. R
From being a biographer of two nobles of the Mughal Empire (Attendant Lords, 2016), Raghavan has now turned his attention to three historians of Mughal India, named in the title. Raghavan provides us with the biographies where not their private lives, but their academic work receives the major emphasis. This is but natural, since it was the interests of the three men in the India of seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that brought them together. Sir Jadunath Sarkar was mainly concerned with the Mughal Empire, under Aurangzeb and his successors; Sardesai with the rise and fall of Maratha power; and Raghubir Singh, Maharajkumar of Sitamau, with Malwa under the Mughals and the Marathas. Of the three, Sir Jadunath undoubtedly towers over the other two; this clearly comes out in the record of their mutual relationships as well. Raghavan has delved deep into their correspondence to trace how they cooperated with each other, despite differences in interest and outlook. He makes the reader aware of the little bit of factionalism involved throughout in the combination, which set Jadunath Sarkar and G.S. Sardesai averse to cooperation with a Poona-based group of historians and even with the Indian History Congress (formed in 1935). This reviewer could not have darshan of the first two members of the group, but had seen Maharajkumar Raghubir Singh actively participating in a session of the Indian History Congress. He had graciously invited me to the library he had built at Sitamau with manuscripts, transcripts and photocopies of texts from all over the world: I regret I could not avail of his invitation.
If there is one major criticism that one can level at this very readable biographical venture, it is perhaps this that it offers little critical assessment of the individuals’ contributions to history and historical method (apart from a description of their writings). One looks invain for the simple statement that Jadunath Sarkar was the first to trace Mughal political history (especially in his five-volume History of Aurangzeb, published 1912–24) by going beyond contemporary narratives to letters, court news (akhbārāt) and other documents mainly surviving in cursive Persian script in order to add many details that had escaped the notice of earlier historians. This was in itself a major achievement. But there was a downside to it as well: Sarkar’s indifference towards precise source citations. Often it is not clear precisely what documents he is relying on. One knows that Sarkar was most careful in laying out facts derived from varied sources, but it surely vexes one when, even in respect of very significant events, one cannot just trace the text or report that he was depending upon for his narrative. Another aspect that Raghavan ignores is the exclusive attention to straightforward political history that all the three historians tend to display. They uniformly show little concern among them with trends in social and economic history. This is surprising in the case of Sarkar since quite early in his academic career he had published a book titled Economics of British India (4th ed. 1917). After all, they were contemporaries of Marc Bloch and R.H. Tawney; but it seems as if that wind from Europe never touched any of them. All this may be admitted, but one still admires the persistence and dedication of all the three men; and all of us should be grateful to Raghavan for bringing them back to life for us.