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The present-day poisonous milieu foisted upon us by the regime and its support bases derives its strength from its imaging of the history of India’s medieval centuries, especially of the Mughals, as starkly dark where the mighty state power was driven by the singular objective of erasing the glories of ancient India, i.e. the Hindu society, religion and culture, of which Sanskrit was the supremely elegant manifestation. This image reduces an extremely complex history to a ridiculous simplicity, good enough for popular consumption on TV channels, WhatsApp university and morning shakhas.

However, a few steps up the ladder, at the professionally academic level, the picture loses its simplicity and points to some less-than-dark shades. Even as the simplicity of dark image has never gone unquestioned, a good number of excellent recent works have highlighted the complexity of the interaction between Sanskrit scholarship and medieval Indian society and state.

The 16th-17th centuries, which mark the height of Mughal power, also witnessed the efflorescence of Sanskrit language and Hindu philosophy in society, as well as state patronage of Sanskrit scholarship. In several outstanding recent works, the close interaction between state, society and the dynamics of Sanskrit scholarship has been highlighted; of these I mention only a........

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