We dig into François Gautier's "A History of India as it Happened: Not as it Has Been Written," a 2013 revisionist counter-history that puts colonial and Marxist historians on trial. Gautier, a French journalist who has lived in India since the 1970s, argues that everything from the Aryan invasion theory to accounts of Islamic conquest and British rule has been softened, distorted, or deliberately denied. We ask what he gets right about the biases in older historiography, where his own certainty runs ahead of the evidence, and why a book this short can't carry five thousand years without breaking a sweat.

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Hardcover

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Odisha's medieval history rarely gets more than a footnote treatment: a temple here, an Ashokan war there. In this episode, we dig into Sibashis Mahapatra's "Tales of the Past: The Odisha Saga," a nine-essay collection that resurrects forgotten kings, lost battles, and the odd loyal Brahmin general along the way. We talk about why the book skips a straight timeline in favor of standalone stories, what makes the Hamvira Deva chapter hit harder than the rest, and whether a slim essay collection can actually do justice to centuries of Kalingan and Gajapati history. Plus, a few of these chapters had lives of their own before the book, and we get into where they first ran and why that matters.

Order links of the book 'Political letters of Shāh Walīullāh Dehlavī' below:

Amazon India:
Paperback
Kindle

Amazon USA:
Kindle

Flipkart:
Paperback

NotionPress:
Paperback

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In the 1750s, as Mughal power crumbled and Maratha armies pushed deeper into Hindustan, a Delhi theologian named Shāh Walīullāh sat down to write letters — not to fight the coming storm, but to direct it. In this episode, we open a newly translated collection of his political correspondence, Political Letters of Shāh Walīullāh Dehlavī: "Most Systematic Theory of Jihād," translated by Rohit Sahasrabudhe, and ask what forty-two letters written to nobles, regional rulers, and the Afghan invader Ahmad Shāh Abdālī can tell us about the ideological currents beneath the collapse of Mughal India — and why historians still trace a line from these letters to Islamic revivalist and jihādī movements two and a half centuries later. We compare Walīullāh's instrument, the pen and the fatwā, to Aurangzeb's, the army and the treasury, and ask whether two very different eighteenth-century Muslim figures were, in fact, working toward the same end. And we look at why a figure invoked by everyone from Deobandi seminarians to modernist reformers like Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad remains, for most readers, almost entirely unknown.

Order links of the book 'Political letters of Shāh Walīullāh Dehlavī' below:

Amazon India:
Paperback
Kindle

Amazon USA:
Kindle

BookGanga:
Paperback

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Captain John MacLeod was a young Scottish military engineer who marched into the Deccan in November 1817, just as the Maratha Empire's century-long dominance collapsed under the weight of the Third Anglo-Maratha War. His day-by-day field journal, edited by Manoj Dani and Guruprasad Kanitkar, is the subject of this episode. We trace MacLeod's path from route surveys through the Satmala and Sahyadri ranges, to the pursuit of Peshwa Bajirao II, the fall of forts like Sinhagad and Purandar, and finally his travels through a pacified Deccan visiting Bijapur, Aurangabad, and Burhanpur. Along the way, we look at what MacLeod's journal reveals about the mismatch between Maratha guerrilla warfare and Company siegecraft, and what it means that an empire's end got recorded by the engineer sent to help end it.

In this episode of The Historylogy Podcast, we dive deep into the ancient rock-cut heritage of Maharashtra with a comprehensive book review of Echoes From Konkan: Unravelling prehistoric and political tales through the Kuda Caves by Sarla Bhirud.

Nestled in the Raigad district, the Kuda Caves are more than just breathtaking Buddhist rock-cut structures—they are silent witnesses to ancient trade networks, local political dynamics, and human settlements spanning back to prehistoric times along the Konkan coastline.

Join us as we explore the core themes of Sarla Bhirud's research, highlighting how these lesser-known caves bridge the gap between ancient Indian archaeology, coastal politics, and local history.

The Theft of India documents the intense rivalry for spoils that played out between the British, the French, the Dutch, the Portuguese and the impact this had on Indians. It details the political intrigue, the agreements and the betrayals, the oppression, swindling and greed of these foreign powers as they each tried to strengthen their grip on this vast and ‘exotic’ land.

Deeply researched and compellingly narrated, The House of Jaipur is a gripping saga studded with unforgettable characters, their charmed lives often crossed by misfortune and tragedy.

For many Goans, St. Francis Xavier is Goencho Saib—the Protector of Goa. But Gautam Khattar's rhetoric was based on a specific reading of history—one that claims the missionary's methods were anything but saintly.

Exploding the myth of a benign French presence on the subcontinent, Robert Ivermee's extensive research reveals how France's Indian empire relied on war-making, conquest, opportunistic alliances, regime change and slavery to pursue its ambitions.

The Man Who Divided India: An Insight into Jinnah's Leadership and Its Aftermath written by Rafiq Zakaria first published in 2001 (with later editions including updates, such as a chapter on Musharraf's leadership) is a compelling, often provocative examination of Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s role in the partition of the Indian subcontinent.