HYDERABAD: The student edition of A History of Early and Medeival India by Upinder Singh, Professor of History in Delhi University and Prime Minister Manmoham Singh’s daughter was released at a glittering function in Hyderabad on Friday.
Printed in full colour, the paperback edition costs Rs 495 as compared to the original price of more than Rs 3,000 for the hardback edition. In a glittering launch function at Osmania University, Upinder Singh talked about her book and fielded questions.
The book is well designed and is intended to get the causal reader, usually the undergraduate student, interested in ancient Indian history. It has over 350 photographs, maps and sketches. It also contains boxes on key concepts, primary sources and recent discoveries and new areas of research in history. An attractive feature of the book is that it gives links to sites that contain additional readings on history.
Upinder Singh has been teaching at St Stephen’s College in Delhi for the last 20 years. The idea for the book germinated after teaching a paper on ancient Indian history for 20 years. “I found that the fundamental concepts in History of most of my students was weak,” she said. There are lots of reasons for this including difficulty of finding primary sources, the bad state of libraries and the pack of good textbooks by historians.
She said that writing the book was a challenge because it is more difficult to retain the student’s interest the further back in time you go.
Upinder Singh took five years to put the book together. “I wanted to write a history that was as inclusive as possible of religions, communities and regions,” she said.
She said that her book was not aligned either to the right or the left in history writing.
“I see myself as a non-aligned, liberal historian. It is important for historians to break out of ideological camps,” she said.
The book has a very strong visual component: Not only photographs, but line drawings of Mesolithic cave paintings are included. There are 10 chapters that cover a time period from before 7000 BC to 1200 CE. Each chapter opens with an interesting story about that age. The book also explains what mounds are and has maps that show the historical trade routes within the Indian sub continent and between India and other parts of the world.