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New Book Announcement!
Back in 2022, the historian Rana Safvi and I set out to document the forgotten temples of Old Delhi.
We had been spurred to action after a botched “restoration” had destroyed the city’s oldest surviving Hindu frescoes - artworks dating back to the 18th-century reign of the Mughal Emperor Muhammad Shah. Following this loss, we launched a social media campaign to protect what was left of Delhi’s historical temples.
To our surprise, the most common response online was absolute shock that Delhi - as the historic capital of succesive Muslim Empires - even had historic Hindu temples.
In today’s political climate, the destruction of temples during the centuries of Islamic rule in India is a fiercely contested issue. For many, the idea that the heart of the Mughal Empire was filled with hundreds of active temples seemed entirely preposterous.
This central paradox has obsessed me ever since. How did so many temples survive, and even thrive, in the capital of an Empire commonly associated with temple desecration?
The deeper I researched, the more it became clear that temple construction and destruction were often two sides of the same coin. For example, the reign of the 17th-century Emperor Jahangir saw both the destruction of a sacred Varaha temple in Pushkar and the construction of the largest Hindu temple in North Indian history in the city of Orccha. Both events are essential to understanding the era.
Four years on, my obsession has evolved into a full-length scholarly volume, and I am thrilled to announce that Beyond the Mughal Arch: Temples in Early Modern Hindustan, guest edited by me, is OUT NOW.
I have written four of the articles myself but there are also essays by other incredible scholars: Naman Ahuja, Pushkar Sohoni, Giles Tillotson, Supriya Gandhi, Sushant Bharti, Aditi Jain, Samuel Wright, Rana Safvi and Shandip Saha.
Meanwhile the publisher, MARG, is probably my single favourite guide to South Asian art, history, archaeology, architecture, performance studies and more.
ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY.
