I don't know. There must be several better writers than these two driven by Marxist agenda.
If the objective history doesn't exist today, the historians need to be found and commissioned for this rather than letting the Marxists run the show.
<sigh>
If you only knew what you are saying!
History is one of the most difficult disciplines, and not, as unwary people seem to think, one of the easiest. People read it like a story, not knowing, perhaps not caring what an elaborate process of acquiring, sifting and weighing evidence is involved before a theory is accepted by the academic community.
Apart from the process, the biggest difficulty is that the discipline is very subjective. Everything depends on the historian's judgement and evaluation of a situation, because the evidence, not being immediate, is subject to many different interpretations. Subjects like the history of the French Revolution, for instance, have huge amounts written about it. Opinions and interpretations have been put forward, had their day, and been joined by other, sometimes radically different interpretations.
This has led to the development and growth of a highly specialized subject called historiography. This subject deals with the development and evolution of 'views' of history. It is important because to understand an historian's biases, one needs to be familiar with the beliefs and values that he sought to express. Marxist history is one such history,but much modern work in a similar vein is being done by members of the Subaltern School. There are numerous others, many - most - being conservative or liberal in approach, and including some schools of thought that have been legally banned in some countries.
The situation in India is that the Marxists had a dominant position in writing history and teaching it, and this continued for decades after independence. Before independence, there was the inevitable struggle between the original British imperialist schools, reform minded British historians and Indian historians of both a pro-independence and a neutral point of view.
Now for some two decades, there has been a severe reaction against the monopoly of the Marxists, and their stranglehold has been broken. Unfortunately, there is no replacement, none as yet, as no non-Marxist historian of any quality has emerged. I suppose we have to wait for some more time, for some of those teaching abroad to return.
There is no question of commissioning somebody to write histories, as only those already in the subject can take up such work at all. People like Ramachandra Guha, Abraham Eraly and Dalrymple are popularizers, not academic historians, although Eraly taught history very well in Madras for years. This is not journalism or public relations, for people to write over a few weekends and produce a meaningful work which adds value. An exception to this is Jaswant Singh, who has written an admirable book, the best I have read by an amateur.
Last point: it is a sad sight to see you joining in the chorus calling Romila Thapar a Marxist. Why she is accused of this is beyond me. It is a canard spread by those who hate her analysis of Muslim raids into India, but why that hatred translates into that particular accusation is beyond me. Perhaps because only a Marxist could be evil enough to be a Hindu and defend Muslims, or refrain from criticizing Muslims.
