Amit Schandillia’s new book demystifies the haze from populist history

Amit Schandilia
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Did Aryabhatta invent the zero? Is the Swastika a Hindu symbol? Who owns the biryani? Did algebra originate in India? Who gave cotton to the Chinese?

Cover of Dont Forward That Text!
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Amit Schandillia’s new book Don’t Forward That Text, (published by Harper Collins India) reminds us of TS Eliot’s famous lines, “between the idea and the reality falls the shadow”. For, the book treads the shadowy space between pre-conceived historical ideas and reality. The book attempts to translate history’s grey areas based solely on “the spirit of enquiry” and credible resources, as the author puts it.  

“You have to see things as they are without a value judgment and that’s non-negotiable. There is no black and white, there is no hero and villain, it doesn’t work like that. In life, bad people do good things and good people do bad things. This nuance has to be respected,“ adds the author firmly.

The book begins with a foreword by Devdutt Pattnaik. The mythologist remarks, “Through the haze of opinions, we have to work with facts, gathering them meticulously and studying them comprehensively.”

Amit’s tweets on Twitter are widely shared — in each, he shares bite-sized information loaded with credible data from history. Each tweet aims to unpack and shed light on historical events or attributes that have been grossly misrepresented/misattributed in unreliable WhatsApp forwards, emails and memes. His new book collates these bite-sized pieces of information and makes an acute inquiry into the events of history that have largely been misconstrued or mistranslated.

In the book, the author questions whether Damascus steel was really from India, the origin of the biryani, whether Vasco da Gama was the first European to reach India, and many more.

Amit believes that “a big responsibility lies on the writer because the reader reads what is written, so if your subjectivity shows in your writing that’s what cascades onto the reader, so it’s very crucial“.

Although the author has a background in computers and finance, he has authored an audio series on Indian history called India Uncharted. With this book, Amit aims to make history as accessible and easy as storytelling.