Anniversary146;s Crowded Errata

Is this sloppiness, bad eyesight while proof correction or ignorance? Here are some examples to establish the ignorance hypothesis. 8220;The Ramlila, or the play of Ram, was based on a sixteenth-century text and tells the story of Ram, the ideal Hindu king, whose wife and kingdom are stolen by the evil god Ravanna sic and then restored after epic battles.8221; This may certainly be a reference to Tulsidas, but there is no evidence that the author knows a Valmiki Ramayana existed. Harischandra the king, meanwhile, is a manifestation of Krishna p. 178.

Vishvamitra is called a lower-caste sage p. 178. Vishvamitra was born a kshatriya, but one could hardly call him 8220;lower-caste8221;. While the 8220;Swaraj8221; part is fine, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands were named 8220;Shaheedi8221; p. 225. In 1931, the Indian Statistical Institute was established near Calcutta8217;s Botanical Gardens p. 275. The ISI was actually set up in a room in Presidency College and the Botanical Gardens are a fair distance away. Varnashrama dharma means the caste system p. 455. Even if one ignores the equation of varna with caste, what happened to the 8220;ashrama8221; part? 8220;High8221; and 8220;real8221; Hinduism can be found in the Rig Veda, the Laws of Manu and the Puranas pp. 25-26.

Since this is the ersatz understanding of Hinduism, it isn8217;t surprising that there is an assertion p. 50 that the Brahmo Samaj was set up in 1818 it was actually set up in 1828 to amalgamate Hinduism and Christianity. Ramakrishna Paramahamsa is described as setting up a 8220;bizarre cult8221; pp. 58-59 and Swami Vivekananda is described as a 8220;mystic8221; p. 118.

8220;In his Krishnacharita sic Life of Krishna, 1892 he reinvented the bucolic and erotic child-god Krishna as a heroic warrior-politician, a battling saviour figure p. 61.8221; Bankimchandra analysed, but re-invented nothing and the title of his book is incorrectly stated, not just the content. 8220;Bande Mataram 8212; the unofficial anthem of Indian nationalism, which espouses anti-Muslim sentiments in later verses8221; p. 169. No verse in Bande Mataram espouses anti-Muslim sentiments. The controversy was about the image of the Mother and the tenor of 8220;Anandamath8221;.

The date for setting up Vishvabharati, as opposed to the ashrama Santiniketan or the Institute for Rural Reconstruction Shriniketan, is wrong p. 76; no IMF investigation suggested that 1 billion were deposited in private bank accounts in Switzerland p. 373; Amartya Sen

wasn8217;t trained at the Delhi School of Economics p. 393, he taught there. Subhas Chandra Bose may not have died in the plane crash in 1945 the author seems to think it was in 1944 and one should get the name and designation of Colonel Prem Kumar Sahgal correct p. 228, not Captain Prem Saghal. And mind you, this is only a small sample of inaccuracies the volume is ridden with.

Is Misra an academic in modern history at Oxford University, as her profile states or is she a TV presenter? If she is the former, such inaccuracies, bad research and ignorance are unpardonable. Why do academics not stick to what they know and attempt unified field theories in subjects they know little about? Just because she has 8220;spent many weeks8221; at the IIC she gets the IIC expansion wrong too? The parts she knows about history aren8217;t bad, content-wise. But they are boringly written and she has nothing new to add. A TV presenter may be good for bytes, but bytes don8217;t add up to a good volume. On independent India8217;s 60th birthday, the publishers have promised 8220;more than thirty great India books8221;. If this is a sample, that8217;s a threat. Misra has the right to write and publish what she chooses. But you also have the right not to waste your time and the idea of India is resilient enough to withstand vilification.