A southern perspective of Indian history

With this expansive chronicle of South India between the sixth and 12 centuries, Anirudh Kanisetti seeks to challenge the North India-centric approach in textbooks and academia

Why do some dynasties come to mind almost immediately when you try to recall the most powerful rulers in Indian history? Do they command your attention because of what they built, or what they destroyed? How do you know of their valour and wealth, and the size of their empire? What evidence did they leave behind? How much of this is self-congratulatory? If these questions interest you, please read Anirudh Kanisetti’s book Lords of the Deccan. 

The author is a history researcher and writer based in Bengaluru and Hyderabad. His writing style is fairly visual, bordering on the theatrical. Sometimes, he writes as if he is speaking directly to you, telling you a story, and taking you places. This comes from his experience as a podcaster. He hosts two of them— “Echoes of India”, and “Yuddha”.

You will spot a number of insightful and entertaining analogies in this book. Here’s one: “Ignoring the history of the Deccan in recounting the history of India is like ignoring the history of France or Germany in telling the history of Europe.” A key objective for him is to challenge how north Indian history is taught as Indian history in school history textbooks.

He wants to offer a corrective approach because “we are used to ignoring the histories of entire peoples, eras and regions when thinking about how India became India.” The book, however, is not an attempt “to replace a north Indian ‘imperial moment’ with a south Indian one”. It is an effort to “develop a more complicated and interconnected narrative of the history of this enormous and diverse land between the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean.”

In this book, you will learn about the Chalukya, Pallava, Rashtrakuta and Chola dynasties. Kanisetti tries to stay away from depicting historical personalities as either heroes or villains. He takes delight in demolishing this neat binary, and is particularly wary of using the lens of “human rights” to analyse their actions since the concept did not even exist between the sixth century CE and 12th century CE. This is the period on which the book chooses to focus.

Kanisetti has divided the volume into three parts. The first part is titled “Dawn — The Rise of the Chalukyas”. The second part is called “Apogee — The World of the Rashtrakutas”. The third part is titled “Twilight — The Kalyana Chalukyas and the Chola Empire.” There is a fine introduction before you plunge into exploring these parts, and the book is rounded off with copious end notes and bibliographic references if you want to keep learning about the subject.

One of the recurring themes is the use of religion towards political ends. Kanisetti writes about the construction of temples and pilgrimage centres as activities undertaken by rulers to establish their authority and ingratiate themselves with the locals. He uses the term “architectural arms race” to discuss how rulers competed with each other for influence, highlighting the fact temple-building was not necessarily an outpouring of devotion.

A case in point is Maha-Malla-Puram, a new Pallava royal city, which literally means “City of the Great Wrestler” — a title associated with Narasimha, a Pallava ruler whose father Mahendra initiated the process of building it. Today, it goes by the name of Mamallapuram.

“It was built on the shore to connect the Pallava court directly to the profits of the Indian Ocean trade, and it would be decorated by dozens of unique monolithic shrines carved from entire boulders, many of which still survive today,” writes Kanisetti. He adds, “This was a natural step upwards from carving temples out of caves, and may have been intended to outdo Pulakeshin II’s freestanding temples at Vatapi, assembled from blocks of cut stone.”

This book also examines how Buddhist and Jain monasteries competed with Hindu temples for royal patronage. These religions are often represented as promoting asceticism, and therefore completely disconnected from turf wars and power games. Monastic institutions did not exist in a vacuum. They needed resources. On the other hand, rulers needed validation. It was commonplace for both parties to court each other in order to secure their own interests.

The author is particularly skilled in helping you compare the past and present; for instance, he calls elephants “the tanks of the ancient world.” He writes, “These deadly creatures possessed the mass and sheer shock value needed to break almost any immobile enemy formation sent against them. Indian kings could deploy elephants in a variety of ways depending on the kind of logistical capabilities and strategic requirements they were working with.” If you tend to think of elephants as cute creatures taking mud baths, this book will alter how you view them.

The section on ashwamedha, “the horse sacrifice”, might be particularly challenging if you have grown up believing that Hinduism has no place for animal sacrifice or meat consumption. Kanisetti writes at great length about the ritual that involved “setting loose a white stallion with black spots to wander at will for a year, followed by an army.” The animal’s travels were meant to parallel “a king’s enjoyment of his kingdom’s expanse.”

The animal was sacrificed upon its return. According to this book, the priests sliced the horse’s corpse into pieces, roasted the flesh, and poured its blood into the sacrificial fire. Kanisetti writes, “After it was eaten by the attendees of the sacrifice, the power of the stallion was believed to have entered the royal bloodline.” 

The practice of shedding blood to signify rebirth and renewal is not unique to Indian history. Such practices exist across cultures.

If this seems hard to believe, you might want to know that the book draws on scholarship, inscriptions and medieval texts. Thankfully, Kanisetti does acknowledge the limits of his research. Not knowing Sanskrit and Old Kannada meant that he had to rely on English translations. This gap, however, does not diminish the significance of his magnificent book.