The Internet today has a surplus of videos and stories that claim Indian history needs redressal, rewriting and revision. A staunch group of historians, pandering to agendas of higher powers, have already managed to inject and infuse newer narratives into our social and historical fabric to support their argument. But beyond the Right, Left, and Nehruvian-Communist driven histories is scientific rigour that has shaped histories since time immemorial.

This is why the just-released The Indians: Histories of a Civilisation (Aleph Book Company; R1,299), edited by GN Devy, Tony Joseph, and Ravi Korisettar, is such an important book. This tome is not of ordinary ambition. It is vast in scale and depth, and draws essays from the finest historians, scholars and domain experts, who cover 12,000 years of the South Asian landscape, from the Ice Age to the 21st century, to tell India’s story.