Who Owns the Past India's Cultural Coup: How Memory, Monuments, and Power Shape India's Cultural Destiny - Paperback

Who Owns the Past? India's Cultural Coup

By Chintan Chaturvedi

India's history is not just written in textbooks-it is carved in stone, buried under silence, and shouted through statues, courtrooms, and hashtags.In this pathbreaking non-fiction narrative, Chintan Chaturvedi explores the complex battle for India's cultural memory. From the Harappan ruins and Mauryan pillars to Mughal mosques and post-Independence temple politics, the book traces how history in India is continuously rewritten sometimes revived, sometimes erased, and often contested.Drawing from original sources like the Baburnama, Chinese travelogues, colonial records, and temple inscriptions, this book maps the journey of sacred spaces turned into battlegrounds of ideology. It investigates the politics behind renaming cities, demolishing statues, reviving temples, and passing landmark laws like the Places of Worship Act. Far from a one-sided commentary, this is a meticulous, sourced account that asks uncomfortable yet necessary questions: Who gets to define the past? Who edits public memory? And what happens when history itself becomes a political weapon? Bold, factual, and deeply thought-provoking-Who Owns the Past? is not just a book. It's a mirror held up to India's soul.