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Anirudh Kanisetti

Anirudh Kanisetti

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Long before LPG queues, here’s how Indian kingdoms dealt with hoarding and famine

From Kautilya’s Arthashastra to Mughal policies and British non-intervention, India’s response to supply shocks has long been defined by the role...

latest 6

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Anirudh Kanisetti

India has lost the language for Iran

When the British replaced Persian with English as the administrative language in 1837, they uprooted a seven-century tradition that had become, in...

12.03.2026 20

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Anirudh Kanisetti

Corruption was widely documented in medieval India. Spies kept an eye on kings, bureaucracy

From the inception of Indian statecraft, political theorists were aware of the dangers of corruption. Arthashastra recommends that all senior...

12.02.2026 20

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Anirudh Kanisetti

India lived in ancient Europe as a positive ‘Other’. Ties are way older than colonialism

Stories of Indian spices, beasts, saints, and kings fired the European imagination for a thousand years. India anchored Europe’s sense of the world.

05.02.2026 10

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Anirudh Kanisetti

Brahmins weren’t always ‘dominant’ in medieval India. How history can decode UGC controversy

Temples, military labour markets, and land-grant regimes structured medieval caste hierarchies. Today, access to education, employment, bureaucratic...

29.01.2026 10

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Anirudh Kanisetti

From Bronze Age migrations to British Raj—how ideas stopped flowing between India and Iran

As early states developed in the Iranian plateau and northern India, ideas continued to circulate between the steppe and the settlements of the...

15.01.2026 30

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Anirudh Kanisetti

Why Bihar migrates has a 500-year old answer — from Mughal taxpayers to peasant warriors

Migration in North India isn’t just due to lack of development today. It was shaped by the evolution of labour markets under Sher Shah, Mughals, and...

04.12.2025 10

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Anirudh Kanisetti

Not just Nehru, even Hindutva stems from Macaulay legacy

The Indian Right and Liberals all accepted the British conception of Hindu, Muslim and British India and the country's eventual decline. What they...

20.11.2025 10

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Anirudh Kanisetti

Zohran Mamdani’s New York win revives a forgotten history — of Gujarati Muslim cosmopolitanism

From Mughal ports to Dutch wars to Bombay’s merchant dynasties, Gujarati Muslims once shaped the Indian Ocean world — long before one of their...

13.11.2025 10

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Anirudh Kanisetti

Nur Jahan to Chand Bibi—Indian women in sports have been erased from history

Dice have been found dating to the Bronze Age in various Harappan sites in present-day northwest India and throughout Pakistan. And it’s very...

06.11.2025 6

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Anirudh Kanisetti

Here’s how Khilji, Akbar, and Hindu rulers dealt with Halal

In Medieval India, the late Prof Satish Chandra demonstrates how Muslim rulers in India quickly grasped that pristine notions of Halal and haram did...

30.10.2025 9

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Anirudh Kanisetti

How did Nepal become a ‘Hindu Rashtra’?

Nepal called itself ‘world’s only Hindu kingdom’ for much of the previous century. However, for most of history, the country was religiously,...

25.09.2025 10

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Anirudh Kanisetti

Fatehpur Sikri was extraordinarily well-provided with water. Lessons for modern India

How three of the most important medieval metropolises—Vijayanagara, Bijapur, and Fatehpur Sikri—managed the challenges of inclement weather.

28.08.2025 10

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Anirudh Kanisetti

What a Tamil town tells us about votes, caste, and fraud in medieval India

Nepotism seems to have been a concern in Uttaramerur elections. That's why the drawing of ballots was done by a child and executives' relatives were...

21.08.2025 9

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Anirudh Kanisetti

Did the Cholas really have a navy?

Much of what we know about the Cholas depends almost entirely on inscriptions—an approach that lags decades behind global academic standards.

07.08.2025 9

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Anirudh Kanisetti

Do Chola kings represent a culturally united Hindu India? It’s a modern fantasy

Rather than encourage a deeper understanding of regional histories, we are instead forcing a remarkable medieval society into today’s culture wars.

31.07.2025 10

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Anirudh Kanisetti

Shaivites wiped out Jain influence in medieval Karnataka—200 years before Delhi Sultans

The Republic of India’s understanding of religious policy should not be based only on this or that North Indian Sultan, but on a sober understanding...

03.07.2025 10

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Anirudh Kanisetti

Indians ruled Gulf through Hormuz. They paid to ban public cow slaughter, built temples

About a third of all homes in Bandar Abbas belonged to Indians. There was a large temple, and Hindu processions were allowed; the Banias also paid the...

26.06.2025 10

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Anirudh Kanisetti

The history of Indian caste censuses is the history of Indian statecraft

By the 18th century, Maratha dominions and other Indian states had developed fairly detailed caste enumerations, used to regulate hierarchies and...

19.06.2025 20

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Anirudh Kanisetti

Dogs were adored in medieval India. They saved cows from asuras, fought boars & tigers

When Alexander arrived in the Indus Valley in 326 BCE, a local Indian tribe entertained him by setting their mastiffs loose on lions.

12.06.2025 20

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Anirudh Kanisetti

Which is the oldest Dravidian language—Kannada or Tamil? Listen to scientists, not celebrities

Multiple lines of evidence show Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic and Indo-Aryan speakers migrated at various points all across the subcontinent. Prehistoric...

05.06.2025 30

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Anirudh Kanisetti

Sanskrit didn’t always drive innovation in ancient India. There are two reasons

Sanskrit was seen as the language of divinity, thus the main current of Sanskrit knowledge tended to be conservative, resistant to new developments.

29.05.2025 10

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Anirudh Kanisetti

Who is the real Vikramaditya? Behind myth & legend is the story of a successful Gupta king

Buddhist legends, Jain stories, Shaivite rituals—everyone wanted a piece of the mythical king Vikramaditya.

22.05.2025 10

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Anirudh Kanisetti

Medieval Kashmir was confidently multicultural. And dazzled the world with art and ideas

Kashmiri art once outshone China, and its poets were sought after as far south as the Deccan — to say nothing of the vast reach of its textiles.

15.05.2025 8

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Anirudh Kanisetti

Cholas and Chaulukyas understood tariffs and taxes better than Trump does

In the 11th century, Chola emperor Kulottunga I abolished all commercial tolls. His policies improved the circulation of commodities, leading to a...

10.04.2025 10

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Anirudh Kanisetti

What you don’t know about Aurangzeb’s tomb. Shahuji’s visit, Sufi love for Ellora Temples

We also know of generations of Deccan Muslim teachers, scholars, and rulers who were buried at Khuldabad before and after Aurangzeb. They had nothing...

20.03.2025 20

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Anirudh Kanisetti

Holi wasn’t always about Holika burning. Medieval India called it festival of Kama

The ‘eastern’ tradition of Holika-burning moved deeper into the Gangetic Plains. Gaudiya Vaishnavism, from Bengal, took root in Mughal-ruled...

13.03.2025 10

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Anirudh Kanisetti

Vedas don’t mention Hindu pilgrimages. When did they become mainstream?

Hinduism is, above all, a religion in motion. More importantly, the loud online proclamations of what Hinduism 'really' is is part of the religion’s...

27.02.2025 10

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Anirudh Kanisetti

Was sati a British myth about India? Medieval memorial stones hold the truth

After Amish Tripathi and Bhavish Aggarwal questioned the reality of sati, liberals are claiming that the ritual was endemic to Hindu society. Neither...

20.02.2025 10

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Anirudh Kanisetti

A Chola queen shaped Hinduism like no one else. Yet you haven’t heard of her

Sembiyan Mahadevi, a 10th-century Chola queen, reshaped Hinduism through temple patronage and art. Her vision turned Nataraja into the most iconic...

30.01.2025 10

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Anirudh Kanisetti

It was a Tamil merchant guild that helped Rajendra Chola become a global conqueror

As much as kings, Tamil merchants are the unsung heroes of medieval India’s global footprint. Sometimes, cultural diasporas can achieve as much, if...

23.01.2025 30

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Anirudh Kanisetti

How Rajaraja Chola became the world’s richest king

Rajaraja alone gifted 38,604 gold coins. This was more than what most European courts at the time could muster.

16.01.2025 30

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Anirudh Kanisetti

Brahmins, Mughal yogis, British propaganda–How Kumbh Mela became world’s greatest gathering

Historical documents suggest the Kumbh Mela is only 150 years old, but it stands as a testament to Hinduism’s amazing ability to reinvent itself...

09.01.2025 20

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Anirudh Kanisetti

A Sanskrit Bible story was written in Ayodhya. The patron was a Lodi, the poet a Kshatriya

Sanskrit poetry did not simply disappear under Sultanate rule: it continued to evolve, and was enriched by contact with Persian and Arabic...

26.12.2024 20

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Anirudh Kanisetti