Neha
@nehavermani
Historian of early modern South Asia, food practices,material culture, plant-animal encounters, science, & senses.
Frustrated & annoyed that my stolen iPhone, as many had predicted, is now in Shenzhen, China. They tried resetting my phone, which triggered the activation lock and email from apple. @metpoliceuk knows that all phones snatched in London end up at this very location, yet nothing!
Richard Eaton, doyen of early modern South Asian history, writes “The profound legacies of the Mughal Empire, forged through a remarkable fusion of Persian and Sanskrit worlds, are now under siege from a mythical vision of India’s past”. engelsbergideas.com/essays/indias-…
We do have Arthur Dudney's "India in the Persian World of Letters" and @yakabikaj's "The Making of Persianate Modernity" to undo this "native" Iranian disdain towards Persian written and recited in late Mughal and later colonial India.
Persian as the written language makes people often forget that it was not native language (like English is not native to most Indians). In fact Persians made fun of Indian Persian for using native phonology. Aurangzeb's toddler for eg spoke in what we would now call "Hindi"