The Marathas, the Bengal Subah, Durrani's Afghanistan, the Hyderabad Sultanate, the Konbaung Empire, Mysore, and Thanjvur were contemporaries similar or larger in scope and size than the Sikh Empire.
And this is OP's point.
Most "India History" in the West has an extremely colonial British bias which only concentrated on Delhi and unpartitioned Punjab.
Tbf, Babur was equally disdainful about Islam and would wax eloquently about getting drunk on wine and high off opium.
He was just a Chagatai raider who somehow ended up the ruler of a principality.
The actual empire was built by Akbar and Shah Jahan.
Political Islam, Hinduism, and Sikhism only arose in South Asia in 19th century with the collapse of the Mughal, Maratha, and Sikh Empires and early British attempts at mass Christian conversion which led to political religious movements arise in the late 19th century.
Even the Mughal focus is superficial in nature. There just aren't many serious historians about Indian history in the West in the same manner that Sinology developed.
South Asia Studies in the West needs its John K Fairbanks, but that will not happen. Most India scholars who are decent end up returning to India where policymaking roles abound.
It was the same with how China Studies was treated in the West until the last 5 years - barely 15 years ago all China was in the western zeitgeist was Mao, the Great Wall, pollution, poverty, and ill-paid migrant workers.
> The Deccan Sultanates and Vijayanagara were more relevant to world history in the 16th Century India
It's not an either/or situation. There were a whole gamut of states all equally important.
Read what I wrote, and reread it again. I don't think you understood what I said.
What I'm positing is that the crux of the issue with the Western crop of South Asia is that it is hagiographic in nature, not quantitative.
My argument is an institutionalist and political economy approach to studying historical and contemporary South Asia solves most of the problem.
This was what John Fairbanks argued back in the 20th century that China studies needed to be quantitative and testable in nature, as he was an Intel officer posted in China during WW2. This was not the mainstream view on China studies and China history in the west until the late 2010s.
That said, anyone with this muscle isn't going to teach history in the West in 2026 unlike those who did something similar for China in the 1980s-2000s who made a new generation of China scholars who returned to China.
There is a new generation of India scholars who specialize in this (a number of whom trained under economists like Arvind Subramanian, Raghuram Rajan, etc) but most of these scholars either return to India to take positions at INIs and are thus not visible to Western academia) or (and this is the more common route) end up in the Policy space as the newer crop of IAS, NITI Aayog staffers, World Bank or IMF staffers, India-specific VC/PE, or India specific think tanks.
Edit: can't reply
> why is the academic work being done in Indian institutions so inaccessible in the US and the rest of the anglosphere
Because they publish in Economics journals and work on Political Economy, not "History". This is what the best South Asia scholars in America (eg. Subramanian, Varshney, Rajan) do as well.
It's the same with China scholars - the best ones are economists and are quantitative in nature.
Turns out the skills needed to understand the political economy of the Bengal Subah or the incentive structures of coinage reform in Qing China are also useful to craft economic policy for contemporary countries.
Why work in underfunded and frankly low impact history when you can actually affect change (and make good money and a career) in the various applications of Econ.
In your view, why is the academic work being done in Indian institutions so inaccessible in the US and the rest of the anglosphere? Naively, I would have assumed a lot of this work would be conducted in English, or at the very least translated into English for the sake of international conferences, journals, etc.
> why is the academic work being done in Indian institutions so inaccessible in the US and the rest of the anglosphere
Because they publish in Economics journals and work on Political Economy, not "History". This is what the best South Asia scholars in America (eg. Subramanian, Varshney, Rajan) do as well.
It's the same with China scholars - the best ones are economists and are quantitative in nature.
Turns out the skills needed to understand the political economy of the Bengal Subah or the incentive structures of coinage reform in Qing China are also useful to craft economic policy for contemporary countries.
Why work in underfunded and frankly low impact history departments when you can actually affect change (and make good money and a career) in the various applications of Econ.
There is a community of those kinds of scholars now, but most of them are generally affiliated with Econ departments (eg. Subramanian) or Business Schools (eg. Rajan) and when given the opportunity, leave academia to take an Indian government position at the WB, IMF, NITI Aayog, or a national or state level economic adviser like Krishnamurthy Subramanian or Nirupam Bajpai.
I knew one back at my Alma mater who if they decided to remain in academia probably would have become a tenure track India studies professor, but he was given an opportunity to directly work on FDI and Tech Policy at PMO which was more exiciting, had more impact, and opened more doors.
"Kalshi identified the candidates as Democratic Minnesota state Senator Matt Klein, who was seeking the nomination to run for the U.S. House of Representatives seat representing his state's 2nd district; Republican Ezekiel Enriquez, who is seeking his party's nomination for the U.S. House seat representing the 21st district in Texas; and Mark Moran, an independent running for U.S. Senate in Virginia."
Basically it's a return to the pre-1990s model of defense iteration - dual use components constantly iterated on by newer challengers in direct competition or partnership with larger players.
This is a model most countries are working on now - from China to France to Russia to Ukraine to India to South Korea to ...
Also, for all of HN's moaning, this has bipartisan support in both parties. Based on my network, NatSec and Defense Policy roles haven't seen significant turnover irrespective of admin and those of us in the space are aligned with America irrespective of who's in the White House.
It's the same way how at SF Climate Week right now where plenty of founders in the space are taking conversations with VCs irrespective of political opinions. Climate and GreenTech is dual use, and even a couple European trade commissions have been working on introducing their startups here and helping them expand IP and R&D headcount IN the US. Clearly the overlap between pissy HNer and people doing s#it doesn't overlap as much anymore.
It's used to threaten opponents that we can efficiently kill them while minizming our casualties. That's the point. And has always been the primary driver for most tech development.
You may hate it but you don't matter. We all do it no matter what.
A large portion of the commenters here only heard of Thiel because of Trump, and think the industry begins and ends with him. It does not.
> You may hate it but you don't matter. We all do it no matter what.
I've seen you say "you don't matter" in many of your comments. Why do you think like this? Sure, we don't matter much most of the time, but this kind of elitist thinking and decision-making is clearly leading to growing discontent, which can then be used against "people who matter". Perhaps the tools for controlling the masses are now powerful enough to make what you say true, but there's a chance your "let them eat cake" attitude will lead to the downfall of the people who currently matter.
If you check their profile you will see they are a VC. I’m sure they believe they are one of the masters of the universe, and by “you don’t matter” they mean other people, not themselves. They have money and power, so they get to matter.
> What was really exciting for me, before, was the challenge. To fight with it! To search the solution, the sleepless nights, trying to figure out the case. And the big relieve and excitement of the success! To be proud of the results of your hard work
If you define your value as a SWE based on what is functionally code golf, it sucks.
Some people view code as an art form. Others view code as a tool to solve a specific problem statement.
This has been a perpetual struggle in software for decades.
I remember similar purists scoffing at APIs and CRUD 15-16 years ago, and IDEs, Linux, and Git before that.
Yep. It is what it is. If you find problems that actually interest you, then how it is implemented matters less.
Also, Product Hunt, Meetup, and other early 2010s products (even HN) are functionally dead. The people having the kinda of conversations you would find value in do it in person now at Luma or Partiful events in SF, NYC, and a couple other hubs.
Heck, most HN traffic now aligns with European instead of American hours [0]
Product Hunt, Beta List, Alternatives To, they are like polluted. And really valuable and meaningful products just can't excel, because people just can't see them. And this is pity. :(
Most HN users aren't even posting during Anglophone hours though [0]. Based on the style of English as well as the type of post content, HN engagement seems to be increasingly filled with DACH and CEE residents during American mornings (which is ironic as YC doesn't follow GDPR and retains full rights to use HN comments as they so wish in perpetuity).
Maybe, but most HNers didn't work in high finance which messes with your sleep cycle :').
I'm still processing the dataset but there is a significant shift in HN usage from aligning with average American hours to non-American hours over the past few years.
Japan continues to have an HDI comparable to similarly sized France [0] despite having almost double it's GDP and a median age comparable to both Germany and Italy, and a TFR comparable to other European states [1].
It is also able to field a navy and armed forces that is independently able to hold off against China. Meanwhile, look at Europe and how it's managed the Ukraine Crisis.
And this is OP's point.
Most "India History" in the West has an extremely colonial British bias which only concentrated on Delhi and unpartitioned Punjab.
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