You have primarily written for adult readers. How did you end up writing a children’s book, Dhruv and Tara: The Great Indian History Quiz?
This began with a discussion with my 17-year-old son, Neil. I am 51, and I saw a lot of colonial nonsense being taught to me when I was Neil’s age. But now, Neil is still being taught a lot of that nonsense. It’s not that everything is exactly the way it was. The overhyping of everything from a European lens has reduced. Some things have been decolonised, no doubt. But a lot of things are still colonial, particularly our history. I asked myself, why not be the change I want to see? So, I’ve written my own book, where a decolonised version of history is presented in the garb of a fun adventure.
When you say decolonisation, is it primarily about moving away from the British perspective of looking at history?
For example, the achievements of ancient India are downgraded. We are taught that India was basically an oral culture and that we weren’t a writing culture. That’s not true. Ancient Indians actually wrote a lot more than the rest of the world. But that’s not taught in our history books. We are taught that Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to India, which is not true. He was actually helped by an Indian trader called Kanji Malam. But Malam’s name is wiped out. So many things like these are not taught.
What were the things you kept in mind while approaching writing for children?
Writing for children is tougher because they can be unforgiving. You can’t even have a few slow pages because otherwise they switch off. The book has to be a lot shorter. My usual books are 400-500 pages. I can’t release a children’s book that long. I also did some research into Gen Z language. I obviously don’t know that language, and I didn’t overuse it because that would sound fake. That’s what I was trying to do: appeal to them.
The book doesn’t follow the chronology of a typical history textbook. How did you decide what to include and how to structure the narrative?
The thing that bores children the most about history books is dates. A textbook has to be structured chronologically. But this is a storybook. I wanted the facts to come across in the garb of a story, rather than through chronology. The idea was to include as many historical facts as I can. But how they get included depends on the story. If something doesn’t flow naturally into the story, it will not work.
This is the first part of what is planned as a seven-book series. Could you tell us more about what you have in mind for next ones?
In the second book, I want to cover ancient Indian businesses. I’m talking about pre-British times, something only a few people know about. India had multinational companies in ancient times. It had formal accounting processes, influence techniques, and money transfer systems. It will be in the garb of a good adventure. We initially thought of seven books, but it could be more.
How have children been responding to the book?
Some children have told me that they’re learning these facts and then going home and shocking their parents. They know things that their parents don’t know. Many of them are also realising that history can actually be cool. Let’s see if the second book also does well. Then we’ll know it wasn’t a fluke.
One interesting aspect of the book is how it explains the origins of familiar phrases and expressions that we use in everyday life.
Exactly. There’s that famous Amitabh Bachchan dialogue, which I have included in the book: “Mere paas paanch phutti kaudi nahi hai.” We hear this expression and wonder what a phutti kaudi is. There are so many things that are part of our culture but are not taught to us. If the knowledge comes across in a fun story format, it stays in your mind.
When you discuss the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals, there seems to be a certain dismissal of their contributions. What are your thoughts on this?
One of the things I’ll probably cover in my future books as well is something interesting that the British did. They didn’t call British colonial rule the Christian invasion, but they called Turkish colonial rule the Islamic invasion. If you ask me, it was a very mischievous formulation. Indian Muslims were as oppressed by the Turks as Indian Hindus were. Indian Muslims were never given positions such as mansabdars, for example. They were all foreigners.
This, again, is a colonial way of looking at things. The British wanted to divide India. I can understand why the British did it. But why did India continue with this formulation after 1947? It’s obviously to create Hindu-Muslim fights today. We need to take an honest look at these things.