A critical review of Speaking of History recently appeared in Frontline magazine. Its editors were kind enough to invite me to respond to it, but they abridged my response by nearly 30%—without consulting me! 🙄 Their unauthorized, mutilated version just appeared online with this tagline: “Namit Arora defends public history, challenging academic gatekeeping and addressing the ‘pop history’ critique in a rebuttal to R. Mahalakshmi.” But I’d rather you read my original, unabridged response below. 👇🏼

To the Editor, Frontline:

This is in response to R. Mahalakshmi’s recent review of Speaking of History, a book of conversations co-authored by Prof. Romila Thapar and myself. In this work, we explore for a general audience the evolution of historical writing and its methods, why history has become so controversial today, and various contested aspects of India’s past and present.

Mahalakshmi, an academic historian at JNU, concludes that the book ‘has little to offer the serious reader’ and is ‘not really one for the bookshelf.’ She seems particularly vexed by my part in the conversation, referring to my ‘often presumptuous judgments’ and accusing me of employing ‘the typical pop historian’s cherry-picking methods.’ Curiously, she offers no examples to substantiate these charges, without which her critique reads less like a reasoned assessment and more like an unsupported dismissal.

Mahalakshmi does speak of ‘two glaring examples’ in my remarks that supposedly illustrate ‘the differences between professional academic histories and the popular variety.’ Let us consider them in turn.

The first concerns my passing reference to Śrīmālā as the author of The Sutra of Queen Śrīmālā of the Lion’s Roar.I’ve discussed this text and its context in Indians: A Brief History of a Civilization, as part of a chapter-long discussion of the Ikshvaku kingdom (and a full episode in my web series). Here is a relevant extract from it:

“Powerful women weren’t just passive donors but were active participants in the spiritual-philosophical life of the community. An early Mahayana Buddhist text, The Lion’s Roar, attributed to a woman named Srimala, a Buddhist queen of unknown historicity, is believed to have been written [in the Ikshvaku realm]. Lost in Sanskrit and available only via Chinese and Tibetan Buddhist canons, it is ‘one of the chief scriptural sources for the theory that all sentient beings have the potentiality of Buddhahood within them’. Its translator from the Chinese, Diana Y. Paul, admires ‘its egalitarian and generous view concerning women, portraying, on the one hand, the dignity and wisdom of a laywoman and her concern for all beings, and, on the other, the role of woman as philosopher and teacher’. In the text, ‘Srimala is praised for her intelligence and compassion, not for her beauty or wealth, which are implicit’. Advancing the then radical idea of female Buddhas, Queen Srimala embarked on the bodhisattva path, and gained the ‘lion’s roar’ or eloquence of an enlightened being. Scholars have noted striking similarities between the textual style of Srimala, aspiring to nirvana, and Chamtisiri [a Buddhist queen of the Ikshvaku era] doing the same in her inscriptions. The Srimala text may well have been influenced by Chamtisiri herself, or written to honour her.”

Mahalakshmi rightly corrects me—as my own earlier writing makes clear—that Śrīmālā (or Shrimala) did not live in the Ikshvaku period, nor did she author this text. But in focusing on this, she misses the forest for the trees. The point of mentioning this text in our conversation was to highlight that the Brahmanical tradition lacks comparable works about or attributed to women, such as the Therigatha or The Lion’s Roar. Rather than engaging with this comparative observation, the reviewer seizes on a ‘gotcha’ moment, starts a gratuitous lecture, and accuses me of ‘superficial understanding’, based on what is essentially a minor slip in recollection—which, crucially, has little bearing on the argument being made in our conversation. One wonders if this constitutes the kind of substantive engagement that authors hope for in a critical review of their work. Is this really the ‘glaring example’ of flawed method and ‘distortion’ that plagues ‘pop history’ in India? And does this demonstrate the reviewer’s claimed ‘real understanding of where the fight lies’?

The second ‘glaring example’ stems from Mahalakshmi’s defensive misreading of our discussion regarding how academic historians respond—or might respond—to the pseudo-history being peddled in our public sphere. In the book, I ask Prof. Thapar:

‘[What] I would like to discuss is that too few historians are now stepping up to challenge fake history that’s flooding our public arena. They seldom weigh in on conspiracy theories—about historical figures, events, or sites—that go viral and worsen communal strife. They rarely review bestselling popular history books and authors that are poisoning minds. There are now so many historical dramas on TV and film, but historians hardly review or offer assessments of their quality in mainstream forums [across regional languages]. Shouldn’t more academic historians play a greater role in resisting and critiquing the appalling quality of popular history that’s polluting the public sphere? What explains their substantial silence? And how might this change?’

Mahalakshmi reads this as an accusation that historians are not speaking out at all, calling it ‘offensive’ that I failed to mention Mridula Mukherjee. But this is neither a literal, nor a reasonable reading of my question. Prof. Thapar herself responds by acknowledging that more historians could indeed speak out. She then reflects on why many remain silent today: abuse and harassment on social media (notably worse for women and religious minorities), fears of legal or physical intimidation, career repercussions, preferring immersion in specialized research, and other factors.

The reviewer then speaks of all the ‘historians who have remained in public institutions when they could just as easily have slipped into sinecure positions in private universities’. One wonders at the need for such a personal assertion, given that I am at pains, in my conversation with Prof. Thapar, to acknowledge other ways in which many historians contribute. As I state, ‘Many contribute in less visible ways, such as in classrooms—quietly teaching credible history well.’

I describe the academic historian Meera Visvanathan’s critique of Sanjeev Sanyal’s work as one example of how historians can intervene against those who promote dubious history and whose books often outsell academic works by orders of magnitude. I note that such critiques are rare, which is undeniably true. How many academics have critiqued the bestselling books and ideas of Rajiv Malhotra, J. Sai Deepak and their ilk, which have an outsized influence on the Indian public imagination? Visvanathan herself concedes that Sanyal continues to peddle his narratives ‘because professional historians have never taken him seriously [and] he has never been contested or critiqued [by them].’

Yet, Mahalakshmi continues to misread the remainder of this discussion, where Prof. Thapar and I turn to a different but related question: Is the rise of fake history in India due to the failure of academics to write accessibly for the public—a recurring accusation made afresh by William Dalrymple in 2024? Curiously, the reviewer credits and applauds only Prof. Thapar for rejecting this claim—implying that I hold a different view—when in fact we both do so, not just Prof. Thapar. We both state that it is misguided to hold academic historians responsible for the rise of ‘WhatsApp history’. The deeper causes, we both argue, are structural and owe much to a deeply flawed education system and the sustained efforts of political and ideological movements that have promoted chauvinistic narratives about the past for over a century.

No less vexing is Mahalakshmi’s tendency to see the relationship between academic and ‘pop history’ as a simplistic and fraught binary. Across the wide range of histories being written today by non-academic writers, she seems to find little of value and admits few distinctions of quality. This is a deeply unhelpful—and unscholarly—stance. It smacks of an identity and purity politics that risks alienating natural allies and enlarges the odds of losing the real fight. Contrast this with Prof. Thapar’s inclusive vision in our book:

‘In most fields of knowledge, there is indeed some difference between the understanding of professional researchers and that of interested laypersons. There are publications of a highly specialized kind accessible only to those knowledgeable in that discipline. But there are also other publications that aim to present that knowledge in a manner that is comprehensible to the non-specialist. Such publications are generally not written by the professional specialist but by an intelligent middle-man as it were, who consults with the professional specialist, so that what is presented is authentic as far as possible. We need more such people not only with reference to history but to many forms of knowledge.’

In other words, there is a legitimate place for informed intermediaries who convey specialized scholarship to wider audiences. Physical and social sciences rely on them the world over. Mahalakshmi however writes, somewhat irritably, that ‘Arora suggests that the gap left by academic historians has been filled by these figures and some independent news platforms.’ But nowhere do I suggest that the gap has been ‘left’ by academic historians. A wide gap naturally exists between specialized scholarship and public understanding in every society, across all fields of knowledge.

And as I note in the book, ‘it’s not just the responsibility of academics to fight bad history in the public realm,’ not least because this cannot scale in a country of 1.4 billion—and because ‘good history also matters to other sober members of society, many of whom are not lacking in critical thinking.’ Some of them incorporate a compelling mix of skills—storytelling, powers of synthesis, public speaking, outsider perspectives, or insights from other walks of life—to bring credible history to life for wider audiences. I mention a few such individuals who are attempting to do precisely this. Yet, rather than consider the necessary role such intermediaries can play in the ecosystem of historical knowledge, Mahalakshmi bristles at the very mention of such figures, labeling my remarks ‘self-congratulation.’ Contrast her dyspeptic approach to how Prof. Thapar thinks about some of them:

‘A few have taken the time to familiarize themselves with the historical method, undertaken impressive research, engaged thoughtfully with the work of academic historians and written worthwhile history. Their work often has broad appeal and is considered part of what we call “public history”. Academic historians take these individuals—public historians—seriously and recognize the merit of their work.’

Perhaps differences of opinion on this topic are unresolvable. Social media, after all, is full of turf wars—driven by petty egos, rivalries, and jealousies—over who is qualified to produce public history and how.  Amid all the jockeying, some voices end up blurring the crucial distinctions between rank propagandists and serious public historians. Even the two titles I’ve seen of this Frontline review—‘The great history divide’, ‘Pop history meets Romila Thapar’—suggest that the real fault line runs between non-academics like me and academics like Prof. Thapar. Is that a sensible way of framing the issue? *

While working on this book, I interacted with many senior academic historians, some of whom even reviewed earlier drafts. They all showed a deep appreciation for public history of many kinds, including work by non-academics. Mahalakshmi, however, doesn’t seem to understand that even the best public history must operate in a different register and level of detail from academic history. Its goals and modes are necessarily different. This miscomprehension is laid bare when she faults our discussion for not examining certain historical questions—such as the absence of varna-jati terminology in Ashoka’s edicts—with the full nuance of academic debate. To her, this omission exemplifies the lamentable ‘differences between professional academic histories and the popular variety.’

But is this truly a serious critique? The inherent constraints—and the benefits—of a conversational format designed for a general audience are self-evident. To suggest this as a failing rather misses the point by a mile—and raises more awkward questions about the reviewer than about the book.

As a reviewer, Mahalakshmi has little else to say about the vast majority of topics we discuss in the book, dwelling instead on a few cherry-picked points. Near the end, however, she finds time to belittle another non-academic writer—without naming him, though she clearly means Anirudh Kanisetti—for rejecting the idea that the Chola state maintained a strong permanent navy. In a tactic she deploys throughout the review, she resorts to hit-and-run smears on a work that she has evidently not properly read. One wonders if she would similarly mock other academic historians of South India such as Kesavan Veluthat and Y. Subbarayulu, who broadly align with Kanisetti’s views in this debate.

Critical reviews are valuable when they engage closely and fairly with a text. I welcome such engagement. Mahalakshmi’s review however is not a good example of such engagement, suffused as it is with unsubstantiated smearing, persistent misreadings, and a problematic understanding of the purpose and the demands of public history.

—Namit Arora, 16 March 2026

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* “Headlines are meant to reflect the content of the specific article.”
—Frontline editors, 25 March ’26

Thank you, editors. Your two headlines indeed reflect what M is saying in her review!
—Namit Arora, 28 March ’26