This journal contains a compilation of talks delivered at the annual conference 2025 'On History and Literature' in Calcutta.

Historians face the daunting task of weaving narratives from scattered fragments, crumbling ruins, dusty archives and bulky manuscripts. Does their craft make them storytellers?

The sources they consult—be they archival or oral—often contain narratives of their own, refracted through the motivations of their authors. As Hannah Arendt noted, the ability to tell stories is how we become historical. It is perhaps time, then, to reimagine the traditional dichotomy between literature and history, or art and science and to question the empire of history.

Traditional history textbooks often present a sterile chronicle of events—a dry, factual record that flattens human civilization into a single authoritative narrative. In contrast, literature provides a deeply personal, immersive perspective on the past, capturing the values, ideas, struggles and transformations of societies. Stories create spaces that have possibilities of sanctifying the truth of experience.

This conference seeks to explore a crucial

question: Can literature serve as a legitimate and effective source for teaching history? If so, how should it be approached and what are its advantages and limitations?

By bringing together educators, historians, writers and literary scholars, this conference will ask:

Why is narrative crucial to history? And how can

literature be used in the classroom to teach histories that humanize?

Contents

Afterwords

Naveen Kishore

The Historian and the Storyteller

Meera Visvanathan

On Shakuntala

Romila Thapar

Gandhi: History, Fiction Truth

Krishna Kumar

Narrating the Nation:

Literature as Archive, Allegory and Antagonist in Historical Understanding

Avinash Kumar

Writing Community Memory:

Reading History through Literature

K. B. Veio Pou

Two Lived Realities:

Exploring the Intersection of Literature and History

Rakhshanda Jalil

Jallianwala Bagh, Rabindranath Tagore and the

Politics of Memory

Sarmistha Dutta Gupta

Exploring Literary Perspectives and Historical Contexts: Manto, Orwell, Kafka

Rosy Singh

Seeing Ourselves in History

Omair Ahmad

Aesthetics in the Making of History

Kavita Panjabi

But thinking makes it so: the perils of persuasive

narratives and the pleasures of bewilderment

Parvati Sharma

In Conversation

Kavita Panjabi & Parvati Sharma

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