History has become a hot topic once again due to William Dalrymple’s remarks about ‘WhatsApp History’ and the perceived inability of academic historians to speak to the public. Such topics are now frequently debated. This is rather amusing because history, especially among students, is most popular for being unpopular. In India, it’s often dismissed as an unpromising path beyond secondary school, even more so if pursued in higher education. The sciences, by contrast, have long been viewed as the secure choice. And yet, historians now find themselves in a moment when the past has become increasingly relevant, attracting even those with no serious relationship with the discipline. Some proclaim that the custodians of history have been wrong all along and that measures are needed to ‘fix’ our pasts.
Let us begin with contextualising the comments made about the Indian academic. Public universities steered the illustrious tradition of research in the social sciences since the pre-Independence period. Seminal works addressing the multiple facets of South Asian history emanated from institutions such as Delhi University (DU), Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), and the doyens leading their faculties. But now, private entrants with sizable endowments – for example, Ashoka and OP Jindal universities – offer lucrative research, funding, and publishing opportunities to students and academics alike. Meanwhile, reputed government institutions are overpopulated and chronically underfunded. Their stagnation prevents scholars from taking on much besides teaching responsibilities. Writing for commercial publishers, given the state of public universities, often relies on scholars’ social capital and personal investment in their projects.
Responses to the current debate appear to have pitted academic and popular historians against each other as two ‘camps’, which is a great disservice to the discipline. Popular history writing has picked up pace in India; its elegant prose and exciting characters make for pleasurable yet informative reading. Oftentimes, best sellers – from Ira Mukhoty’s Akbar: The Great Mughal to Manu Pillai’s The Ivory Throne – are accompanied by annotated bibliographies listing foundational (academic!) works in which their narratives are rooted. But, one wonders here, where does academic history end and popular history begin?
Comes to mind Supriya Gandhi, whose biography of the 17th-century Mughal prince Dara Shukoh is written in the most engaging narrative style. Although it is highly academic—boasting over 50 pages of detailed endnotes—the book reads like a story that anyone can savour. writing a biography on Dara Shukoh, an endlessly fascinating figure, naturally makes the book famous. So, did Gandhi shed her academic cloak to become a popular historian? Or does she inhabit both roles at once?
Also read: Why is it fashionable to deride historians? The answer lies outside academia
The delusions of WhatsApp history
The ongoing debate has subsumed the worrying development pointed out by Dalrymple: the dissemination of WhatsApp history, perhaps the most widely consumed form of ‘history’ that is inherently ahistorical. WhatsApp history has unfortunately become a school of thought in its own right, characterised by the manufacturing of mostly fictitious, dubious, and sometimes unfathomable pasts. It involves unverified narratives and voices of those untrained in historical rigour, attempting to convince the public that the majority of historians have been hiding histories and speaking untruths. The Rightward shift of popular discourse, emphasising on ‘reclamation’ of ‘lost histories’, has generated more interest in and discussions on the past than ever before.
However, WhatsApp history is not a 21st-century phenomenon, it’s just a new name for a habit as old as time. Throughout history, chroniclers and their patrons have fabricated pasts, constructed mythologies, and included and omitted versions of history that suited their narrative best. Take, for example, some of the tarikhs (histories) or the prashastis (laudatory poems). The difference, though, is context. Those texts found themselves in a world of limited circulation, whereas we are in the digital age where (mis)information spreads like wildfire. The use of the term ‘WhatsApp’ in ‘WhatsApp history’ denotes the entirety of the digital ecosystem we find ourselves in. There are histories on every platform: YouTube, Spotify, Instagram, and X. What makes WhatsApp different? Our best guess is that it is more imposing than the rest. An unsolicited forward can appear out of nowhere, there are no algorithms or preferences influencing the feeds we so carefully curate on other platforms.
The historian’s burden
Suppose the Indian academic wishes to partake in public discourse. As mentioned earlier, the glaring lack of opportunities, resources, and platforms prevents a vast majority of Indian scholars from writing for larger audiences. There are also few alternatives to writing-for-publication here in comparison to the West. Think of a curatorial job. In London and New York, curators are rightfully lauded for their craft and their exhibitions that memorialise the magnificent arts of Gandhara, the extravagant paintings of the Mughal, Pahari, and Rajput courts, and the splendid bronze sculptures of South India. But do we see the same opportunities for historians here? It is not that the historian has no urgency to animate their subject through different means. What one has to take note of is the lack of support, funds, and to top it all off, administrative and bureaucratic stressors.
Iconic figures like classicist Mary Beard can both be an authority on her subject while also being a cherished television figure who uses David Beckham’s tattoos to teach students Roman numerals. Curator Andrew Bolton can garner global attention for his acclaimed exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art during the MET Gala. In contrast, one of India’s most acclaimed historians, Romila Thapar, is asked to produce her CV after decades of work and continues to face relentless attacks. Another example is of the late scholar Kavita Singh, who was denied leave to accept her Infosys Prize for her contributions to Indian art history and disallowed from going as a visiting professor to Bogota in Colombia for just a few weeks, that too at a time when her university was off session!
The future of the past
As historians, we know that trends emerge from numerous, intertwined threads; there is no single cause behind the rise of distortions of the past and WhatsApp University. And nor are there lone yet famous saviours who have suddenly ‘unlocked’ the gates of history, igniting a eureka moment for the world that India is indeed a trove of chequered pasts. The rise of WhatsApp history also stems from limited access to thoroughly researched, primary-source-backed histories. Factors like shorter attention spans, declining book-reading habits (even in higher education), and a preference for quick, often unsubstantiated information have also created fertile ground for pseudo-historians. Trained historians, whether publishing for academia or the public, should see this as a call to figure out the next steps.
Now that we have identified our problems, the conversation should move to asking what our collective duty toward the past is. With regard to the distribution issue of historical research, the publication of journal articles in open-access formats is a potential solution. Similarly, translations of existing works can facilitate their permeation into non-English speaking audiences. We primarily need to understand that, as mentioned earlier, drawing sharp lines and the blame game is disadvantageous to the subject. Popular historians have helped make academic sources more accessible, easing the intimidation often associated with history. And their work owes much to academics’ years of research — who immersed themselves in primary sources, archaeological findings, and archival discoveries — which have provided rich material for today’s popular historians.
The rise of the past in the virtual world makes one thing abundantly clear: there is an appetite for history, but it is bite-sized. Using social media, some have successfully promoted their own ‘histories’ that are not backed by trustworthy resources or any research. But it is not that there are no alternative voices. For example, through our own profile, itihāsology, we condense lengthy academic writing into 300-word passages for our readers on Instagram, with our posts reaching 100,000+ history aficionados each month. Many such pages have proliferated across social media sites in an attempt to bridge the gap between research-backed history and the public.
What this debate should do is propel us toward collectively addressing larger issues, such as history adapting to the digital age, institutional support, diverse avenues for communicating historical narratives, academic funding, broader opportunities, and more. At the heart of this entire discussion on ‘WhatsApp history’, what has been revealed yet again is the significance of open discourse. After all, it took a popular historian’s comment to spark dialogue across communities, from academics to those forwarding myths in the name of history on instant messaging platforms — the public is listening, so let’s keep talking while finding ways to move forward and secure the future of our past.
Eric Chopra is the co-host of two podcasts: itihāsology’s For Old Times’ Sake and Jaipur Literature Festival’s Jaipur Bytes. Kudrat Singh is the co-founder of itihāsology and co-hosts the For Old Times’ Sake podcast. Views are personal.
This is part of ThePrint opinion series on Indian history in the Whatsapp age. Read all articles here.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)