Dr zareer masani biography

On August 9, Dr. Zareer Masani passed away.

An eminent historian, he dedicated much of his later life to providing a holistic view of the British Empire in India, countering many of the post-colonial culture-war perceptions of British imperialism. Moving to the United Kingdom in the s, Zareer achieved a doctorate in Modern History from the University of Oxford and spent several decades working as a current affairs producer for the BBC.

His seminal work, a biography of Lord Thomas Macaulay , was published the following year. The British Empire was, as Zareer saw it, a mixed bag: full of good as well as bad. As he told the prestigious Cambridge Union during a debate :. Looking back over the last several millennia, Empire has been the default mode of governance for all aspiring peoples, tribes, nations—and some empires have been more benevolent; more inclusive than others…the British Empire has been probably the most benign and most inclusive.

Masani fundamentally pushed back against much of the modern, skewed, and one-sided historiography of the British Empire.

Dr Zareer Masani has an Oxford in Modern History (with a thesis on Indian nationalism) and is the author of three very successful books on India: Indira Gandhi: A Biography; Indian .

As the title suggests, it paints the British as singular and unspeakable villains on the Indian subcontinent. Zareer, in fact, deconstructed its highly selective and misread sources during a talk with Shashi Tharoor at the Times Literary Festival in Mumbai. Additionally, Dr. Masani—having come to the same conclusion as myself and many eminent academics like Lord Roberts and Dr.

Tirthankar Roy contributed to exonerating Sir Winston Churchill from the ahistorical accusation that the great British statesman had engineered or worsened the Bengal Famine of Nonetheless, Zareer never wavered from highlighting the evils of British rule in India as well.