Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History

Romila Thapar is a historian of ancient and early medieval India, and this Verso, originally Penguin India, book is her historiographical study of the Somnath temple, examining not just the temple's history but the competing, often politically charged, ways that history has been told and retold across different periods and communities. Its strength is that reflexive method, Thapar treats the very act of narrating Somnath's history, including the colonial era account of its raid by Mahmud of Ghazni, as itself a subject of study rather than settling on one uncontested version. Its limit is that its focus is historiographical and interpretive rather than a straightforward chronicle, so a reader wanting a simple factual timeline of the temple's history should read it alongside, not instead of, a more conventional narrative account.