CHENNAI: In the heyday of American podcaster Dan Carlin’s acclaimed podcast ‘Hardcore History’, Christopher R Matthews praised his work saying, “Carlin puts the ‘hardcore’ in Hardcore History by focusing his narratives on the most violent and dramatic moments in human history, filling his show with colourful anecdotes that were most likely left out of your high school history class.” Just like Hardcore History, many other podcasts have changed the way listeners perceive history. It can be said that historian and author Anirudh Kanisetti and creator Kevin Fernandes are on a similar path.
For Kanisetti, already the creator of two history podcasts Yuddha and Echoes of India, the latest feather in his cap is ‘The Altar of Time: A History of India’s Christian Art’, a podcast about the art collection of the Museum of Christian Art (MoCA), Old Goa, which he co-created with Fernandes. Working with the India Foundation For The Arts (IFA), Bengaluru, ‘The Altar of Time’ is regarded as India’s first-ever museum podcast.
“No other museum in the country has a podcast dedicated to its collection. Of course, the use of audio guides is a popular curatorial tool in museums across India. But what makes a podcast different is space. One can only access an audioguide in the museum, but a podcast takes the museum outside its original space and makes it accessible to people across the world, through the curation and storytelling prowess of the narrators,” says Kanisetti.
So, what made him work with Fernandes on this project? “We began this project with the IFA and MoCA in September ’21. The project emerged after I visited the museum in March of that year, and after subsequent conversations between Fernandes and myself about the objects in the collection. When I saw that the museum had issued a call for proposals with the IFA, I was immediately captivated by the idea of doing a podcast. As a dear friend, as a practising Catholic, and with his interest in the history of his own community (the Mangalurean Catholics, who are part of the Goan diaspora), I was sure that Fernandes was the right person to work on this with, and he was gracious enough to come on board,” shares the 28-year-old, who is an admirer of historian William Dalrymple’s podcast ‘Empire’.
He mentions that he was driven to podcasting due to the lack of well-researched and well-told history podcasts focusing on India. ‘The Altar of Time’ tries to break the myth of Christianity’s origins
in India.
“Contrary to popular belief, Indian Christianity is not a colonial import. Nor was it uninterested in or impermeable to Indian ideas. Indian Christianity has a history of nearly 2,000 years; it is as old as Christianity itself, and it is certainly older than Eurocentric notions of Christianity.
At a time when the Indianness of non-Hindus is constantly being contested, a collection like that of the MoCA is a perfect space to explore how Indians have engaged with Christianity on their own terms, and how Christianity in turn has been enriched by Indian traditions and people,” shares the author of Lords of the Deccan: Southern India from Chalukyas to Cholas, adding that they have used storytelling narratives to bring the artefacts to life in their original settings.
Kanisetti firmly believes podcasts humanise and narrativise history, making it more alive and engaging. “Instead of dry words in a book, we can have living, breathing people telling the stories of others like us, who lived many centuries ago. By restricting ourselves to a purely audio format, we have to be creative with how we evoke vivid visual images and emotions in our listeners. And podcasts also suit the needs and lifestyle of our times — our listeners can learn history and be entertained and moved while stuck in traffic, doing the dishes or working out,” he concludes, adding they are looking to translate ‘The Altar of Time’ series to Konkani, thereby breaking new ground in regional-language podcasting.