BHI101 | History I

History I is designed as survey of South Asia as a region from the earliest times to the disintegration of the largest empire of the early modern period, i.e. Mughals. The modules are arranged both chronologically and thematically, with special attention to major debates in the historiography of pre-modern South Asia. Each module has two lecture classes based on secondary literature and one historical writing and reading class designed with an objective of acquainting students with primary sources with respect to the research and study of premodern South Asia. Class lectures will cover themes like the formation of earliest states, social and gendered realities, religious processes, transregional empires, conceptions of space, commerce and circulation, institutions and networks of power, and the constitution of the knowledge of the political. Apart from histories, we will study literature, paintings, architecture, and maps towards understanding multiple iterations of the past in the precolonial. The course offers a comprehensive understanding of South Asia in the precolonial period alongside introducing students to historical method and writing.