HYDERABAD: In 2016, author Anirudh Kanisetti found himself at a popular bookstore on Church Street, Bengaluru, looking for an English historiography of Karnataka. Being new to the city, he was keen on knowing more about the land where he would be spending the next few years of his life. So, when the person at the bookstore informed him that they did not have any English books chronicling the state’s past, he was visibly taken aback. “I was new to Bengaluru and was interested in knowing more about the city and the state. So, when they told me they did not have any English books about its history, I found that very surprising. Over the next few months, I really began to explore Karnataka and realised it must have a tremendously rich heritage. While I could find academic journals about it, I did not come across any engaging historical accounts for a layperson,” says Kanisetti, who is now based in Delhi.
After realising the dearth of English historiographies of Karnataka, Kanisetti spent the next few years working on his book. On January 30, 2022, when the world was still coming to terms with the start of a new year and the third wave of Covid-19, he published his debut book Lords of the Deccan: Southern India from the Chalukyas to the Cholas.
The book opened to widespread critical acclaim and recently won the Book of the Year Award (Non-Fiction) at Tata Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest. Getting the award has been a humbling experience, only because he did not expect to win this and was pleasantly surprised when he was called onto the stage. “I was really moved because I had poured quite a few years into this book. It reflects immensely on who I am and how I look at the world. To see this passion project being recognised so profoundly and be honoured so deeply by people I never expected to read it has been tremendously humbling,” shares Kanisetti.
A big chunk of the research material for the book went through epigraphic sources. “Fortunately for me, many of these archival records, especially the inscriptions made by the kings in the late 1800s and early 1900s, have been digitised and put up online. That was incredibly useful. I was working in a think tank at the time and also had access to academic journals. I referred to sites like Library Genesis as well, which are under assault now, but they are extremely useful to me as a young scholar writing about this period,” says Kanisetti.
He focused on this 500-year era because despite South India being the geopolitical centre of the Indian subcontinent at the time, it is seldom mentioned in retellings of India’s past. “Imagine telling the history of Europe without telling the history of France. That’s basically what we do for India, where we largely focus on the Gangetic plain. But in doing so, we are essentially ignoring land masses that are the sizes of entire European countries. For example, the Deccan is about the size of France and Germany, with over 10 times the population. I show through my book how this region has been very central to making India the kind of country it is today,” says Kanisetti, who is currently working on a book about the Chola dynasty.
In times like these, where there are multiple mediums to consume content, how can we make non-fiction about hefty topics accessible to new readers? “We are all aware of our reduced attention span, given the kind of content we consume nowadays. We need to write books that are as easy to get into as Netflix is, for example. Books that are based on hard historical research but told in a way that is palatable to modern sensibilities. I don’t believe this would take away any of the academic credibility of the work,” concludes Kanisetti, who also hosts two podcasts Echoes of India and YUDDHA: The Indian Military History Podcast.