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Final instalment in Uday Kulkarni’s ‘Peshwa trilogy’ launched on Sunday
The Mastery of Hindustan: Triumphs and Travails of Madhavrao Peshwa chronicles the aftermath of the third battle of Panipat between the Maratha and Mughal empires
Prolific historical nonfiction writer Uday Kulkarni’s book, The Mastery of Hindustan: Triumphs and Travails of Madhavrao Peshwa was launched on Sunday at an event that saw several prominent people in attendance. The 576-page book - complete with unreleased documents, photographs of eminent people and forts, diagrams of family genealogies, and 24 maps including 10 appendices and several footnotes – is the final instalment in Kulkarni’s ‘Peshwa trilogy’ and the seventh in his series of historical nonfiction books. It is the successor to his The Extraordinary Epoch of Nanasaheb Peshwa released in 2020 and The Era of Bajirao released in 2017.
The Mastery of Hindustan: Triumphs and Travails of Madhavrao Peshwa chronicles the aftermath of the third battle of Panipat between the Maratha and Mughal empires, while focusing on the 16-year-old Madhavrao Peshwa as a young ruler dealing with domestic and national adversaries in Pune. The book follows a chronological format from 1761 to 1772, a period which Kulkarni describes as the ‘macro history of the 18th century’ and ‘micro history of each event during the realm of someone who was arguably the greatest Peshwa’.
“The book is an honest narrative which may have some level of subjectivity,” Kulkarni said, advising future chroniclers of history to give unbiased coverage sans social prejudices. “I also visited the areas where the events took place to add more credibility to the events in the book,” Kulkarni said. He said that he had conceived the idea of The Mastery of Hindustan in 2012 after Solstice at Panipat was published, and that he enlisted the help of several historians and resources from Marathi, British, Persian, and Portuguese documents to work on the book.
Swapan Dasgupta, former historian; Vijay Gokhale, former foreign secretary of India; and entrepreneur Amit Paranjape were the chief guests at the occasion.
Dasgupta said, “To get India back to recognising its own past, it’s the job of historians as well as people who are interested in history to acknowledge that history does not belong to historians alone. Until that is acknowledged, when we actually open up this vast treasure of history, only then will we be able to rediscover our past.” He added how poor writing has killed students’ academic interest in pursuing history.
While Gokhale lauded Kulkarni’s layperson writing style in the book. “There is a pressing need for Marathi history to be known. And today after unveiling the trilogy, Kulkarni ‘s books did just that. One feature I liked about the book is that he brings out that the Marathi empire is not just one man. It is the collective effort of men and women who came together. While it is important to study the Maratha federacy, it is equally important to study the fall of the Marathi empire. To know the future, we must understand the mistakes of the past,” Gokhale said.
Asked how the book may engage readers given the dwindling readership numbers, Kulkarni told Hindustan Times, “The book has around 74 coloured pages. The beauty of it cannot be captured on Kindle because it is black and white. At the same time, reading online misses out on the smell and feel of a physical book,” he said. He also revealed that a book featuring historical events from January 1773 to January 1783, following the reign of Naryanrao Peshwa till the end of the first Anglo-Maratha war is in the works and may be published in the next one-and-a-half years.
