ABSTRACT
This essay draws on the afterlife of the Cold War to offer an implicit engagement with Dipesh Chakrabarty’s question about what prevents “fact-respecting, secular historians” from realizing their aspirations to intervene in public life. The essay points out that during the Cold War an “expert nationalism” focused around development was influential in India. But in the post-Cold War era, a popular nationalism – combined with growing access to education and information – has led to a popular demand for national history alongside a need to account for the place of the Indian nation in world history. Here, polemic and myth-building have had the advantage over academic historiography, which has been relatively late in turning its attention to the postcolonial period, instead dwelling mainly on the colonial era and the triumph of anticolonialism. The essay suggests that in India, history has been globalized by identifying with the victors of the Cold War, by claiming (misleadingly) that India too was a victim of socialism like the East Bloc, and by asserting that India emerged from this past only due to the worldwide triumph of market forces (and – in some increasingly ascendant narratives – also due to the triumph of a Hindu identity).
