Indian history at the turbulent core

At a time when WhatsApp University hands out one-way history thick and fast, a 500-page book appears challenging. Especially if it is methodical, wide-ranging and well-referenced. But we live in interesting times, in which viral half-truths are more evocative than verifiable facts. This book cuts through some of the nonsense masquerading as history. What you get is an ambitious overview of India's Hindi heartland, covering roughly 1,000 years in a single, racy volume.

- VIPUL MUDGAL

Ghazala Wahab theorises the contemporary with the tools of history and a sprinkling of current politics. Her Hindi heartland is a region familiar with the rise and fall of empires. It is here that Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam have clashed and coalesced. She unravels not only the wars and invasions but also the ideas, beliefs, and follies of the victors in varied time frames, including the most recent. The big idea is to grasp where we are today and how we arrived here.

The Hindi heartland embraces the vast expanse between Rajasthan and the states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Bihar, now subdivided into Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. However, the narrative wanders beyond the heartland, to Lahore onwards to Iran and Afghanistan, to Indore across the Vindhyas, into the Maratha enclave, and to Chittagong in the east. The chronicle is enriched with fascinating stories. The timespan is from the early Sultanate period to present-day North India, winding through the Mughal and British eras.