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UPDATED: March 27, 2020 @ 1:45 p.m.

Students and graduates across America are in the same boat struggling with mounting student loan debt. Now, they have one more crisis to unite them: the coronavirus pandemic.

In response to the ever-growing health and economic crisis, President Trump on Friday signed a $2 trillion bill, which includes pausing federal student loan payments and waiving the interest for six months, reported Forbes.

This comes after President Trump announced a 60-day suspension of student loan payments and interest late last week, reported Politico.

Thomas Minter, an East LA College student who will be transferring to Cal State LA, was pleased with the presidents decision, though he emphasized personal responsibility, including in regards to finances.

My wife, who is a Cal State LA student, and I both have student debt at the moment but completely understood the contract that we were entering into, Minter wrote in an email sent a day before the stimulus package deal was reached. Eventually, it will have to [be paid] back and there will be only limited chances to postpone payment. This is why money management is VERY important.

Minter asked to keep in mind that he and his family have experienced homelessness, due toliving off credit instead of saving. He continued, We learned a hard life lesson and had to work our way back from that, which is a lesson beyond priceless.

In addition, on Tuesday, Politico reported the administration paused collecting from borrowers who defaulted on their federal student loans.

A total of $1.56 trillion student loan debt has affected 44.7 million Americans, according to Forbes.

The Trump administration response is the scraps bare minimum, said Ryan Perez, a Bernie Sanders supporter.

Former Vice President Joe Biden has put forth his own proposal on tackling student debt in light of the pandemic. While his Democratic rival for the partys presidential nomination, Sanders, has done well among very liberal voters and young people, Biden is trying to win over that crowd after a series of recent progressive proposals, including eliminating $10,000 of student debt for every borrower in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Perez, a business administration major, is not convinced of Bidens proposal either. Echoing Sanders, he said free education and wiping out student debt is a basic right. He added: Younger voters should not fall for this and should not accept it.

The different philosophies like that between Minter and Perez are a part of the countrys culture wars, but now Americans are united in an even greater war against a common enemy, one that keeps spreading and taking lives with no care for political ideology. In the meantime, folks across the U.S. are coping with the challenging times.

For Perez, its listening to music and playing video games with his online friends. For the Minter household, it includes board games and Bible study.

See the original post here:
BREAKING: One crisis on top of another: Student loan debt amid the coronavirus pandemic - CSULA University Times

All last week Peter Jukes, co-founder of Byline Times, fought with coronavirus. He posted updates on his condition on social media and even published a powerful piece on the investigative site denouncing the UK governments herd immunity response to the pandemic.

No doubt his recovery was aided by thoughts of his ambitious plans for Byline Times, the start-up newspaper launched last year to challenge the UKs established national press. It recently expanded into documentary filmmaking and will shortly launch in broadcast radio.

The investigative paper, run on a shoestring budget from an office in Southwark, south London, is already on the point of break-even by hitting its target of 5,000 subscribers ahead of its first anniversary this month, putting it in a stronger position than many centuries-old regional titles.

With the press under intense pressure from a collapse in physical sales and free handouts as readers stay at home, Byline Timess lack of dependency on the newsstand is insulating it from the crisis. At around 5,000 we are just about washing our face, explains co-founder Jukes, who says its business model was a year ahead of schedule. Our next aim is to move to 10,000 subscribers. We believe we could get there in a year. We will then invest that into marketing and to getting better and better journalists.

While the site is currently dominated by a series of critical pieces on the UKs failings in its approach to stopping the spread of coronavirus, Byline Times has a broad editorial mission. It ranges from exposing dark money corruption to analysis of the identity culture wars currently being exploited by the new political right. It reports critically on Russian state interference and the worst excesses of authoritarianism in China.

After Easter, it will expand into radio. Stephen Colegrave, the projects co-founder and a former executive at Saatchi & Saatchi, says that an established broadcasting partner is in place to host Byline Times on its platform. Within a couple of months we will be up and running on radio. [Rupert] Murdoch is launching on radio and we want to do a drive time show positioned up against Radio 4 and Murdochs Times Radio.

The worlds most famous press baron is a nemesis for Byline Times. Jukess journey in journalism began when, as a television dramatist, he took up a position in the gallery of the Old Bailey to live blog the phone-hacking trials of Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson. His endeavours were paid for by crowd-funding. When I covered the phone hacking trial I thought: we have one of the worst presses in the world, he recalls.

In 2016, Jukes and Colegrave inherited Byline, a web-based experiment in crowd-funding investigative journalism. Three years later they pivoted to a subscription model, which costs 29 for the digital format and 36 for the monthly paper to be delivered by post. When we started we thought it would be an advertising model and we didnt even think of printing a newspaper, says Jukes. We printed a newspaper for the launch so that people had something to take away and we realised that everyone wanted a newspaper.

The Byline Times website remains free to access. Traffic is not insignificant, says Colegrave. We are reaching up to half a million a month now and are planning to be over 1m a month by the end of this year. The audience is five times bigger than it was a year ago.

Byline Times hosts a network of contributors that includes investigative reporters such as David Hencke and Iain Overton, and cultural commentators including Bonnie Greer, CJ Werleman, Open Democracy founder Anthony Barnett and film reviewer Chris Sullivan. The site and paper are edited by Hardeep Matharu, a journalist with a background in covering social affairs.

Matharu has written extensively for Byline Times on the culture wars that are shaping modern politics. She explored why her Punjabi parents and other Asian immigrants were being charmed by Boris Johnson and the rhetoric of Brexit.

She identifies a failure of the political left to engage in the culture war and says that has aided the rise of populism. Its an area she claims is not properly covered by traditional media, leaving a void which Byline Times is attempting to fill.

We believe the left must work out how to offer a new narrative around people's cultural concerns and properly acknowledge the rise of English nationalism an area which must be explored further in the media as a whole. As the child of parents who were born under the Empire and who voted to leave the European Union in 2016 my own instinct is that economic and social factors are not the only ones now at play.

Jukes, who worked with Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr in her investigation of the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandal, says he has watched the British right import a playbook developed in America by Steve Bannon, the former adviser to Donald Trump who was executive chairman of reactionary media platform Breitbart News. The Conservatives, for 50 years sold economic probity, now they are selling damn economics, what matters is identity, Jukes claims. I think they are following Bannons template.

He argues that Murdoch is a master of culture wars and that Piers Morgan, a former Murdoch editor, is fighting similar battles from his breakfast television sofa. He is constantly playing these culture war games against Meghan [Markle], using the fairness principles of the sixties and the idea that men and white people are victims of prejudice.

As well as moving into radio, Byline Times is embracing documentary making. The new Byline Films commissioned filmmaker Sheridan Flynn to make a series called The Great British British Break-Up, an exploration of the pressures on the United Kingdom. His opening film, released in February, highlighted how English nationalism was seen in Northern Ireland as a threat to the UK.

Jukes says that next film will be made in Scotland to see how they turned this Scottish nationalism which was quite exclusive and anti-English into a civic nationalism which welcomes English people if they are resident in Scotland.

Before the spread of coronavirus, Byline Times was due to examine the issue of English nationalism in a live debate in London featuring Labour MP David Lammy who has called for a new civic nationalism talking with Byline contributors.

The Byline Times growth story has thus far benefited from alignment with the Byline Festival, an August bank holiday weekend celebration of journalism and culture in the Sussex countryside that hosts its own media circus, alongside classes in investigative reporting and comedy stages. Performers have included John Cleese and Hardeep Singh Kohli (both Byline Times contributors) and last years festival attracted 5,500 people.

Like the rest of the entertainment sector, the event is threatened by the current crisis. But Byline Times will be hoping that continued subscriber growth and a rising profile will ensure a viable future as an alternative voice in UK media.

Ian Burrell's column, The News Business, is published on The Drum each Thursday. Follow Ian on Twitter @iburrell

Original post:
How investigative title Byline Times is extending its alternative voice into film and radio - The Drum

Ive been on to my solicitor to draft a certificate setting out why I should be saved when the Great Triage comes.

I cant think of a single reason off the top of my head but hell come up with something. Hes good. Hes expensive. I want the document on me when Im wheeled into ICU.

Meanwhile, we wait. Those who matter most to us are putting their lives at risk on the frontline. Politicians are frantic. The media is in overdrive. But the rest are part of a waiting nation.

Some of us wait at home. Some in queues. In Redfern this week, the line waiting for Centrelink to open went all the way up the street, a disciplined queue, each citizen a little apart, sitting on milk crates and cradling takeaway coffee.

God bless the milk crate, there for us in good times and bad to gawp at Mardi Gras or disarm a killer rampaging round the Sydney CBD and now the crates are indispensable as we queue, perhaps endlessly, for help.

Strange how old-fashioned the responses are to this new-fangled intruder in our lives. Were washing our hands. Grandmothers are cutting hair again. Rolled oats are in short supply. One of my in-laws is selling chooks at $35 each.

Whats happening is clear: the virus is taking us back to our childhoods. But a word of caution. The happy memory of hens in the garden and fresh eggs for breakfast doesnt survive much scrutiny. I know. I fed the buggers. It means a lot of work with never enough eggs. How I loved the sight of my father at the chopping block killing the chooks too old to lay.

Pity he wont be round when all this is over. There will be work. But when will that time come? We havent a clue. The most remarkable thing about these remarkable times is having so little idea when and where this story will take us. Its arc is a mystery.

Theres no left or right way to approach this catastrophe. Theres only doing it badly or getting it right

The virus is reminding us how much time and energy we spend predicting the future. We do it automatically. And despite the twists and turns that catch us off guard, we humans are pretty good at working out whats coming down the track. Its how we survive.

But not this time.

Thats why the virus has overwhelmed the news cycle. With the future so uncertain we cant tear ourselves away. We keep reading and watching and listening though the story wasnt different this morning and will be the same tomorrow the same yet new.

Mind you, the old are beginning to tire. Im so sick of the news, a celebrated whinger raged at me the other day. Twenty-five minutes of coronavirus and then the weather. Its not enough. What about a murder every now and again

The mysteries of the future are throwing politics in the air. Politics divides over the best way to deal with reasonably predictable outcomes. Politicians and commentators throw the words unprecedented around all the time. But its rarely justified. Now it is.

Politicians are feeling their way forward into the unknown. Old divisions are all but meaningless. Theres no left or right way to approach this catastrophe. Theres only doing it badly or getting it right.

So were seeing an extraordinary sight I cant remember in my lifetime: conservative governments making radical choices and spending huge sums of money to address a national crisis.

How trivial this makes the politics of the last decade seem, all those years conservatives spent blocking solutions to that other great challenge we face. Its too expensive to do anything about climate change, they said. Too daring. Too disruptive. So they deliberately pursued the politics of logjam.

But now the purse is open. Extraordinary demands are being made of the country. And perhaps, in the end, it will work. The great lesson of the coronavirus may well be that we have it within our grasp to address and solve the problems of this country.

That would change Australia, a nation thats grown increasingly pessimistic over recent years about the possibilities of politics and increasingly reluctant to demand political solutions to the problems we face in the future.

Perhaps the culture wars might be abandoned at the same time out of sheer pointlessness. Its sweet to see the panic merchants of the media those who revved up the nation about refugees and Indigenous land rights and transgender kids and the high price of doing anything about climate change urging calm in the face of the virus, calm and trust in the government.

We wait. One day we will tell stories about being there when handshaking stopped; when we held our breath passing people in the street; when cruise ships roamed the seas; when the Minister for Keeping Out Foreign Contagion came down with the bug; and, for a couple of days, Bondi beach was closed while Crown Casino stayed open.

We all have friends waiting on milk crates and know grandparents in exile from their families. With dry coughs and breathlessness, the pandemic has also brought loneliness and, of course, ruin everywhere.

The business of a woman I know has gone kaput and 15 employees are facing the sack. Shes a big figure in her trade. Shes always grown vegetables as a hobby but you should see her garden now. Its never been so planted, weeded and fed. Its a picture.

Over the road, friends of friends are hunkered down for a fortnights self-isolation. The prisoners sit with their little girl in the doorway and their families gather at the gate. They bring picnic chairs and, of course, takeaway coffee.

Theyre learning not to kiss and hug. It isnt easy. Worse, we all find, is learning to stand a little apart. It feels so awkward, so cold, so wrong.

A woman known for her extreme attitudes on a number of fronts has stood apart rather dramatically by retreating to the remote hinterland of Canberra where she is running her business from a tent pitched in a paddock. From here, she explained, I get line of sight to the Telstra tower.

Theres a reassuring lesson for capitalism here. From that great distance, even though they are scattered to their own homes, she is still able to terrify her staff.

Im working from home as I always have. As usual, I sit in a bubble of good fortune. But Im getting on. When the kids call the virus the Boomer Doomer, they had my kind in mind.

Which reminds me, Id better get on to my lawyer again.

See the article here:
One day we will tell stories of the virus, a time when we held our breath passing people in the street - The Guardian

God the Father with His Right Hand Raised in Blessing, with a triangular halo representing the Trinity, Girolamo dai Libri, c. 1555 Public Domain

Steven Andrew is pastor of the USA Christian Church in San Jose (CA) who warns, Obeying God protects the USA from diseases, such as the coronavirus. He goes on, Bible thumping, Our safety is at stake since national disobedience of Gods laws brings danger and diseases, such as coronavirus, but obeying God brings covenant protection. God protects the USA from danger as the country repents of LGBT, false gods, abortion and other sins.

Andrew is not alone in decrying the coronavirus as gods curse. Rick Wiles, a Florida minister and founder of the media outlet TruNews,said the virus is a plague sent by god. My spirit bears witness that this is a genuine plague that is coming upon the earth, and God is about to purge a lot of sin off this planet, he ranted. He stressed that such a plague is part of the end times, a period of tribulations that precedes the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Both Andrew and Wiles share a belief that the coronavirus plague is due to widespread immorality, especially involving abortion, homosexuality and gender nonconformity.

Andrew declared March to be Repent of LGBT Sin Month. He claims, Gods love shows it is urgent to repent, because the Bible teaches homosexuals lose their souls and God destroys LGBT societies. He calls himself the leader of the American Christian Denomination, an association made up of Christians of all denominations who believe like our founding fathers. Hes gone so far as to declare 2020 as Jesus Is King Year a year of liberty and blessings. His press release notes that he has monthly revival events. These outreaches cost $350,000 for the year. Those wanting to help share the Gospel can donate at USA Christian Church.

Wiles rants, Look at the spiritual rebellion that is in this country, the hatred of God, the hatred of the Bible, the hatred of righteousness. He goes on, Just vile, disgusting people in this country now, transgendering little children, perverting them. Look at the rapes and the sexual immorality and the filth on our TVs and our movies.

For postmodern secularists, the opinions of Andrew and Wiles may seem absurd if not ridiculous, easily dismissed. Their moralistic judgements seem more appropriate to the 19th if not 17th centuries then to 21st century America. Sadly, their religious fundamentalist beliefs appear to be shared by millions of Americans who helped elect Donald Trump. Most worrisome, they embody a moralistic authoritarianism that has congealed into a powerful political movement threatening the nations very democratic being.

***

The rise of the religious right should be cause for alarm among all who care about the future of democracy in America, warns Katherine Stewart in her new book, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-power-worshippers-9781635573459/

Stewarts invaluable study is a detailed investigation into how, over the last quarter century, the culture wars morphed into a political campaign. The book documents how as this movement failed to gain popular support for its moralistic agenda, it turned to politics to impose its Christian fundamentalist values on American society.

When Trump and other top administration officials took office, they pledged to fulfill the 2016 Republican Partys platform that asserted:

Traditional marriage and family, based on marriage between one man and one woman, is the foundation for a free society and has for millennia been entrusted with rearing children and instilling cultural values. We condemn the Supreme Courts ruling in United States v. Windsor, which wrongly removed the ability of Congress to define marriage policy in federal law.

Trumps election occurred as Republicans controlled both Houses of Congress and, once in office, he appointed two conservatives to the Supreme CourtNeil Gorsuchand BrettKavanaughconsolidating the religious rights control of the nations legal authority. Compounding this situation, numerous members of Trumps inner circle are drawn from the religious right, including Vice Pres. Mike Pence; William Barr, Attorney General; Jay Sekulow, the presidents counsel; and Education Sec. Betsy DeVos.

The hardcore Christian nationalist movement played a key role in Trumps 2016 victory and will likely do so again in 2020. The Christian nationalist movement, Stewart notes, is far more organized and better funded than most people realize. And then she warns, It seeks to control all aspects of government and society. Its successes have been stunning, and its influence now extends to every aspect of American life, from the White House to state capitols, from our schools to our hospitals.

Stewart details how the Christian right effectively employs anetwork of think tanks, advocacy groups, pastoral organizations and the fortunes of the very, very rich to achieve its power. She is a journalist who anchors each chapter in a compelling story of a distinct facet of the Christian nationalist movement. In one chapter she visits Unionville (NC) to attend a seminar sponsored by Watchmen on the Wall considering how to end the Johnson Amendment restrictions on religious organizations endorsing political parties or candidates.

Stewart introduces the cabal of key leaders of the movement, including: Ralph Drollinger (who offers weekly Bible study groups for White House of officials); Paul Weyrich (who led the antiabortion movement); Jim Domen (an ex-gay anti-gay activist who leads Church United, a voter-outreach group); David Barton (of Project Blitz that seeks to end separation of church and state); and R. J. Rushdoony (who she calls an unacknowledged leader of the movement). She also explores the role of the religious right in the rise of the homeschooling movement and how calls for free speech led to the erosion of the traditional wall separating church and state.

As Stewart warns, Christian nationalism is a movement that aims to replace our foundational democratic principles and institutions with a state grounded on a particular version of Christianity . . . that also happens to serve the interests of its plutocratic funders and allied political leaders.

***

The Puritans landed in New England four centuries ago, in 1620. During the first quarter-century of settlement, occasional accusations of witchcraft were raised, but no one was executed. However, during the following half-century, 16471693, over 200 people were accused of witchcraft and about 30 were executed. Most of these alleged witches were women who came from more than 30 communities in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, including Easthampton, Long Island, now part of New York. Following the notorious Salem trials of 16921693, convictions and executions for witchcraft essentially ended

Few remember just how troubled the lives of the early Puritans was. Their settlement was inspired by the desire to civilize the New World, to wrest from the devil both the natural world and the aboriginal people, and thus create New Jerusalem. Yet, they found themselves confronted at every turn by formidable threats, in constant fear of natures uncertainties and in dread of innumerable battles with hostile Native tribes. The New World was a troubled environment in which to create heaven on earth.

Making matters worse, their attempt to establish New Jerusalem was hampered most by the very fragile humans who were expected to accomplish this religiously inspired mission. Humans were imperfect creatures, scarred for all eternity by original sin yet, given the predetermination that directed all of gods actions, capable of being saved and achieving a state of grace. These troubled beings were subject to a nearly inexhaustible list of sins that fell into two broad categories, sins of character and sins of the flesh.

Among the former were pride, anger, envy, malice, lying, discontent, dissatisfaction and self-assertion. Among the latter were seduction, lust, bestiality, masturbation, fornication, adultery, incest, polygamy, sodomy and temptations like carnality, drunkenness and licentiousness. Almost anything could be a sin.

The Puritans fought mightily against the overpowering threats that were as much external as internal, especially sexual threats. They fashioned, in the words of historian Richard Godbeer, a culture of sexual surveillance and regulation to strictly oversee and control interpersonal relations. First and foremost, this surveillance was intended to prevent premarital sex and pregnancy or what was known as bridal pregnancy. It was not uncommon for neighbors to carefully observe interpersonal encounters taking place in homes or in fields, on roadways or in the woods.

https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/sexual-revolution-early-america

For Puritans, no place was considered private, beyond the bounds of community monitoring. This control was only intensified given the close physical proximity under which Puritan settlements existed. The personal information garnered through surveillance provided the basis for many of the reported scandals involving alleged witchcraft.

Puritans distinguished between a sinner, even one convicted of a sexual offense, and a witch. According to historian Elizabeth Reis, a witch [was] the most egregious of sinners. She insists: Those who admitted signing [the devils pact] crossed the forbidden line between sinner and witch. This act, signing the devils book with ones own blood, marked forsaking God and aligning with Satan. Equally critical, it was a voluntary act, a personal decision, motivated neither by seduction nor temptation.

https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/82/1/15/736368?redirectedFrom=PDF

The sinner and the witch could engage in the same sexual act, but the meaning for each was fundamentally different. For the sinner, sin was a survivable offense and offered a chance for redemption. This was especially true for male as opposed to female sinners. For the witch, however, there was only hanging and eternal damnation. In addition to fornication, women accused of witchcraft could also be charged with other sex offenses, including adultery, illegitimacy and, the worst, sex with the devil.

As judgment for a sinners bad conduct or warning to one so tempted, the Puritans drew upon a wide assortment of punishments to enforce social control. They ranged from excommunication, disenfranchisement and banishment, to public shaming and whippings, to selling a convicted persons children into bondage, to branding, cutting off body parts (e.g., an ear) and body mutilation (e.g., disfiguring the nose), and, when all else failed, to hanging and even being pressed under rocks until death. Unfortunately, these threats and punishments did not work.

***

Its now 2020 and old-world Puritanism survives as postmodern Christian nationalism. It is, as Stewart argues, a complex phenomenon. On one level, it is a populist, nonviolent movement, a militant minority. She estimates that it consists of 26 percent of the voting age population who supported electoral candidates in 2016. That year, the voting age population (VAP) was 250 million people, so it would seem that 65 million Americans might be part of the Christian nationalist movement.

U.S. trails most developed countries in voter turnout

However, given the sizable population that Stewart suggests as composing the Christian nationalist movement, it also operates on still other levels. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) identified within its a host of segments the broad religious right Christian Identity groups, neo-Confederate groups, Ku Klux Klan groups, racist skinheads and other sharing white supremacist beliefs. In a recent report, The Year in Hate and Extremism, 2019, it found that the number of white nationalist groups was up slightly to 155 from 148 in 2018. It notes that since 2017, there has been a 55 percent increase in the number of these groups, some of which are calling for bloodshed and a race war.Most notably, it found, some are advocating violence and encouraging their foot soldiers to prepare for (and precipitate) a race war.

https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/yih_2020_final.pdf

The SPLC notes that the movements followers are breaking into two major strategic camps, between mainstreamers and accelerationists. The mainstreamers are often referred to as or the dissident right faction who are attempting, with a degree of success, to bend the mainstream political right toward white nationalist ideas. The accelerationists wholeheartedly embrace violence as a political tool and, as the SPLC warns, much of the movements energy lies in the growing accelerationist wing, which, for the most part, is organized in informal online communities rather than formal groups.

One factor that might have contributed to the increased militancy of some aspects of the religious right is the significant decline among those who self-identity as Christians. Pew Research finds that in the decade between 2009 and 2019, there was a 12 percent decline among such people, from 77 percent down to 65 percent. Perhaps more revealing, those who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular now stands at 26 percent, up from 17 percent in 2009.

In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace

The worldwide spread and unraveling global crisis caused by coronavirus pandemic seems like a perfect historical moment for religious fundamentalist and other racial identity nationalists to invoke the Puritan past to persecute alleged offenders, nonbelievers. For some religious ranters, when moral suasion fails, its time to invoke the power of the state to impose order.

As Christian nationalists secure ever-greater influence, if not control, of the American political system at the federal and state levels they will exploit of the power of state authority to impose their values as law and enforcement. For these religious reactionaries, the 2020 election is not about Trump but about power their power to control America and increasing aspects of the lives of all of us.

***

David Rosen can be reached atdrosennyc@verizon.net checkout http://www.DavidRosenWrites.com.

More:
God's Vengeance: the Christian Right and the Coronavirus - CounterPunch

The age in which Sarkar worked was dominated by nationalism, given Indias struggle against the British Raj. But these words also hold substance in our time of hyper-nationalism, as Indians turn against other Indians with history (or imitations of it) as their preferred weapon. Reading T.C.A. Raghavans History Men, one is, in fact, startled that while the specifics might have changed, the broad dynamics remain the same in many ways. Then, as today, history provided raw material for multiple visions of the past, interpreted in different ways to cement conflicting ideas of the Indian nation. Debates on historiography, method and even historians own biases afflicted the writing of history in Sarkars time, and scholars found themselves in the cross hairs of chauvinism, regional and national sentiment, language and culture wars, and even plain old-fashioned clashes of ego, then as today.

Raghavans book is a splendid examination of these issues through the constructive and warm relationship Sarkar enjoyed with two other historians, G.S. Sardesai and Raghubir Sinh. The three men held each other in high regard, which is not to say that they agreed with each other on everything. Sarkar often found Sardesai too sympathetic to Maratha pride in his approach to Maratha history, for example, while Sardesai felt Sarkar did not give enough value to understanding different sides of the same story, and the purpose these served for each partys identity. Sinh, the youngest of the three, and the most unusual, given his royal heritage, was deferential to his seniors, but did not hesitate in his work to nuance arguments and challenge some of their conclusions and deeply held beliefs. It was, in fact, their own internal debates and mutual criticism that nourished the partnership for decades.

The relationship began, as Raghavan relates, when Sarkar approached Sardesai in 1904 with a proposition: He was an expert on Persian documents and could provide inputs to Sardesai, if the latter helped him with Marathi sources pertaining to the Mughal period. It was the launch of a fascinating coalition, lasting till death, but fraught also with the troubles such an alliance caused in other quarters. Sarkarwho in many ways dominates the book as the grandest of the threewas a celebrity of sorts, publishing as he did in the English language universe. His work on Aurangzeb, particularly his attacks on the emperors orthodoxy, marked him as a communal" historian for secular nationalists, even as his less than reverential take on Shivaji (who appears in his books as simply Shiva") upset proud Hindu elements with opposite political leanings, in another part of the country.

Naturally, Sardesai, who emerged in the 1920s after a long career at the court of the maharaja of Baroda, received flak from fellow Maharashtrian historians (specifically, the Poona School) for his closeness to Sarkar. That Sarkar used his influence with the British (whose police at one point had tried to charge him with sedition) to help Sardesai gain access to coveted but sealed archives further upset doyens of the Poona School who were denied this and refused even to acknowledge Sardesai as a proper historian. Language politics also played a role: Sardesai wrote in Marathi for the most part, but Sarkars support highlighted Sardesais work outside Maharashtra, to the angst of his rivals. Sarkar, of course, dismissed their criticism, putting it down to envy and labelling the Poona School a clique" unable to rise above its own pettiness.

Raghavanhaving mined a rich archive of correspondence between these men as well as Sinhs library in Sitamau, Madhya Pradeshdoes an excellent job in the book, in clear language and at a pace that never slackens, in explaining how much networks mattered, along with determination and the traditional skill sets of a historian. Sinhs princely connections, for instance, were of great value in gaining access to royal archives, even if these came with their own problems. For instance, Sarkar would write a history of Jaipur for that princely state, only to see the manuscript gather dust. The issue, evidently, was that the court was not keen to have Jaipurs time under Maratha domination advertised, and it was only in the 1980s that Sarkars book was posthumously published, thanks to Sinhs efforts. Sardesai too tried to help Sarkars book see the light of day: A mother-in-law of the Jaipur ruler was Sardesais student, and he made an attempt to use this connection to persuade the maharaja to publish the manuscript.

Among the strengths of this charming book is the biographical element it contains. Sinhs love for history saw him renounce claims to his princely seat, while the quest for the tale of his own ancestors led him to produce a superbly original revisionist account of Malwas history. Sarkars life witnessed tragedy, with two daughters widowed, a son murdered, and a grandson killed in an accident. Sardesai had to face the ire not only of the Poona School but also of his former employer, the Baroda maharaja, who, upset with him for retiring from service, slashed his hard-earned pension. We also get a glimpse, on a happier note, of Sardesais marriage in an entertaining diary entry by his wife. My husband," wrote a scandalized Mrs Sardesai once, thinks I should wear my sari according to the new fashion without one end tucked up behind my back." The issue led to a quarrel between the author of the 3,800-page Marathi Riyasat and his sartorially conservative spouse.

What shines ultimately in the bookand this is Raghavans underlying focusis the sheer love for history that united all three men. They worked in a time of slow communications, when India was still forming itself into a single, modern whole. Their work involved plodding through fields, hunting for forgotten monuments, persuading hesitant families to publish their records, fighting court cases and legal threats, not to speak of negotiating a bureaucracy that had its own interests in manufacturing obstacles. Their work was criticized then, and their methods are in many ways outdated now, but these history men" made phenomenal contributions and authored works of striking quality. And while students of history will entirely relate to Sarkars use of the term mouth-watering" in the context of finding new records, Raghavans tribute to the man and his peers is equally delightful, revealing also to the lay reader what investigating the past entails, and the dynamics that shape any mission to understand Indias historya story not just of chronicles but also of the chroniclers.

Manu S. Pillai is the author of The Ivory Throne (2015)and Rebel Sultans (2018).

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.

Link:
The three men who wrote modern Indias history - Livemint