Articles by Rajan Gurukkal

India and the Unthinkable: Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics edited by Vinay Lal and Roby Rajan, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016; pp xlvii+228,₹850.

A statement in November by a group of academics, tacitly over-defensive of the ruling power, rails against historians for adopting a blinkered and reductionist view and looking at Indian society through the prism of caste. The accusations betray a familiar ignorance of a certain category of academics about the diversity in Indian historiography.

This article argues that none of the reasons and objectives stated by way of justification for the replacement of the University Grants Commission by the National Higher Education Authority are genuine. There is no compatibility between the nature of problems identified and the functional capability of the institutional solution proposed. This proposal exhibits a lack of comprehension and analysis of the fundamental problems of higher education. It is a poorly disguised cover to turn this sector into a handmaiden of the corporate sector.

The Indian Council of Historical Research has played a crucial role in the development of history over the past four decades. A member of the Council recounts the importance of the institution and takes issue with those who have criticised its "Marxist" tilt. These critics' claims even fall well short of the academic standards of ancient Indian philosophy, which were rigorous by contemporary standards.

An independent evaluation of the latest archaeological data unearthed at ancient port-sites of the Egyptian desert and Indian west coast confirms that the classical overseas trade, celebrated in ancient Indian historiography as the "Indo-Roman trade", was an exchange of serious imbalance, because of its being between an empire and a region of uneven chiefdoms. The Tamil south was a region characterised by the interactive coexistence of several unevenly evolved and kinship-based redistributive economies structured by the dominance of agro-pastoral means of subsistence and predatory politics. It was distinct for its semi-tribal political economy that precluded any demand for Mediterranean luxury goods. Even the presumption that the chieftain had shipped his goods only up to the Red Sea coast, and had depended on intermediaries for the remaining jobs, is difficult to accept.