The book addresses the question of the politics of historical production in India, while addressing the pitfalls of postcolonial consciousness in the domain of history-writing.
'This wide-ranging and polemical study unsettles many settled facts of professional historiography and does so with verve and brilliance. Looking back at the age of post-colonialism, post-modernism, post-truth, and many other posts, Benjamin Zachariah uncovers the self-deceptions, anachronisms, and memory lapses that enable historical narratives as well as styles of history-writing. His book is a salutary reminder of the public duty of the historian, and of history's complicated, but always necessary, relation with evidence and the archive. It should be essential reading.'
