It is interesting that you bring up Ms. Doniger's book, The Hindus: An Alternative History, which has invited more than its fair share of controversy largely ignited by the lawsuit brought about by a Hindu nationalist group, which actually led the book to be yanked from shelves in India, by the publisher, Penguin Books.[1]

I have to admit that I never actually got around to reading the book although I did follow the events surrounding its release in India, which brings me to the question at hand.

The question of historiography of India.

Is India's history and the study of that history, really so murky that it is uniquely mired in so much debate, that any form of consensus, at least among objective outsiders and non-stakeholders, cannot be arrived at?

Surely the Indian subcontinent could not be the only place where scant archaeological evidence and written records remain. Historians do construct rudimentary historical narratives - albeit however poor and discontinuous - from similarly poor records, elsewhere. Don't they?

This leads to the more troubling question of the state of historiography at large.

Is the writing of history largely political, even in this day?

Is it groomed by the prevailing norms, mores and sentiments of society?

Is academia - whether in the West or elsewhere - still a forbidding place for contrarians and detractors ?

If enough institutional power is brought to bear on the historical study of a certain region, people of that region and the culture of that region, could the history of that region be - for all intents and purposes - be whitewashed?

I know historical revisionism and self-censorship - in some quarters of Western academia - has been in full vogue for quite some time.

If a relatively secular and democratic India, poses these problems for scholars, I can easily imagine whole departments & institutes at prestigious academies of higher learning, engaged in the study of even more problematic places like the Middle East (for reasons of hurting Islamic sentiments), China (for reasons of risking bristling a rising economic power) and Africa (for reasons of regret, for the ravaging the continent has endured at the hands of Western powers), being persuaded to cast their findings in a more positive light - or at least in less negative light - should they want their research be continually well funded through grants and bequests, from benefactors both public and private.

It greatly saddens and irks me at the same time, to ask this because I fear that my thoughts and suspicions, might actually be validated.

Are we still living through the effects of a post-colonial interpretation of historiography ?

In 2014 ? Really ?

[1]

Wendy Doniger's book is a tribute to Hinduism's complexity, not an insult

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/12/wendy-d...

India: Censorship by the Batra Brigade

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/may/08/india-c...

Wendy Doniger and the Hindus

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/jul/10/wendy-d...