If it hadn’t been for Ibby, the book may well have taken on a different shape. But Ibby, or Elizabeth, was a good number cruncher. The self-appointed editor of William Dalrymple’s new book kept a strict check on what she thought was the author’s tendency to use “too many words”. And The Last Mughal — dedicated by a grateful Dalyrmple to his daughter, Ibby — was shorter than it would otherwise have been.

It helps to have an eleven-year-old at home when you are writing a book that in some circles would be described as popular history, though Dalrymple himself prefers to call it narrative history. “I would be rather suspicious of the term as it would have a vaguely pejorative overtone that you were writing some Mills & Boony rubbish,” says the author whose book on the 1857 uprising in India and the last days of Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar was launched in Delhi on Tuesday.

Many believe that for long years in India, history — barring a few notable exceptions — was mainly being written by historians for historians. The regional languages have had their rich share of popular history, but history writing in English has mostly been confined to academia’s own charmed circles. “I fear that it is true scholars have been writing for other scholars. At best, they are writing for students,” says historian Mridula Mukherjee, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library director. “And when we refer to popular history, we mean tales of the Maharajas,” she says.

In the West, though, popular history has been thriving for long. Britain has seen a long line of historians — from Edward Gibbon and Eric Hobsbawm down to Christopher Hibbert, Simon Schama and Andrew Roberts, to name just a few writers — who have made history lucid and accessible. Anthony Beevor has written bestsellers on the Spanish Civil War, Stalingrad and Berlin. Some would stretch the parameters to even include a writer like the American Katherine Franks — noted for her 2001 book on Indira Gandhi — in the list of popular history writers.

In India, on the other hand, the genre is almost non-existent. “It is emerging, but very, very slowly. You have the writings of (social scientist) Ramachandra Guha — but, then, there is only one Ram Guha,” says Ravi Singh, editor-in-chief, Penguin, publishers of Dalrymple’s books. “But, at the same time, we have had some great fiction in recent times with very good historical value and narrative.”

Historical research has often been the strength of novelists, including those writing in English. For A Suitable Boy, a 1993 novel set in post-independence India, Vikram Seth spent days sitting at the Nehru Memorial library in Delhi, poring over the pages of the newspapers of the period — and Mukherjee is all praise for the meticulous care with which he describes the abolition of zamindari in his book. Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace, written in 2000, is seen as a chronicle of the history of Burma and India before and during the Second World War. And, like Sunil Ganguly, whose two-volume bestselling Shei Shomoy, has now been translated into English, there are several other novelists effectively using the methods of history writing to strengthen their works.

But that does not explain why popular history — often described as an authentic work of history written in a style that is devoid of scholarly jargon — is yet to find its place in India’s publishing industry, when there is, clearly, enough on history, and of popular, well-written prose. The problem, critics stress, is that historians, weighed down by academic language and concepts, seldom write lucidly, and good writers often don’t exercise the tools of history writing.

There have been some books, though, which have successfully blurred the lines between academic and popular writing. Ravi Singh considers Khushwant Singh’s The History of the Sikhs — reprinted in 1999, while an illustrated volume was issued this year — as a definitive history of the community, written in his inimitable style. Journalist M.J. Akbar deals with the conflict of Islam and Christianity in The Shade of Swords (2002).

Abraham Eraly, a former lecturer and journalist based in Chennai, has authored two eminently readable books for Penguin on Indian history —The Last Spring: The Lives and Times of the Great Mughals (1997) and Gem in the Lotus: The Seeding of Indian Civilization (2000). Earlier this year, Roli Books published historian Mushirul Hasan’s The Nehrus: Personal Histories. And as Roli editor Renuka Chatterjee points out, its 2006 book, India Then and Now by Rudrangshu Mukherjee and Vir Sanghvi, despite being highly priced, has gone for a reprint, along with a German, French and UK edition. “We have also published books such as Shrabani Basu’s The Spy Princess (2006), which is another example of popular history,” says Chatterjee.

'Are you going to write your book in a language that people understand, or are you going to write it in a language that is obscure jargon? I don’t think that there is any need to see history that is written in clear prose as any less than the other' William Dalrymple

But what surprises publishers — and readers — is the fact that there are not enough examples of a book that can be treated as “authentic history”, as Mridula Mukherjee puts it, while being presented in a form that encourages a lay reader to pick it up. And, surprisingly, the dearth exists despite the fact that there is a ready market for it.

In a country where the sale of 5,000 copies of a book makes it a bestseller, Dalrymple’s 2002 book, White Mughals, for instance, sold 25,000 copies. For The Last Mughal, Penguin had a first print order of 25,000 copies, and Singh is confident that it will end up selling 50,000 copies of it.

Yet there is a fair amount of scepticism in academic circles on whether or not books such as The Last Mughal would qualify as history. Some, like Mukherjee of Teen Murti, hesitate to call it history; others embrace it warmly. Historian Basudev Chatterji of the University of Delhi, for instance, stresses that he is going to recommend the book to every student of his.

But the critics of the new genre are scathing about attempts at promoting popular writers’ work as history. “This is not history; it’s a publishing industry gimmick,” says a Delhi-based social scientist. “A historian is one who understands what lies behind events. Which is why Irfan Habib’s People’s History of India (a series brought out in 2001 by publishers Tulika) is history, but Dalrymple’s books are not.”

'History is not brain surgery. It is all about people and their experiences, and historians should bring these alive' Abraham Eraly

For Dalrymple, the issue smacks of academic snobbery. “I would protest any claim by academics that a history that is written in clear prose and deals with a narrative is illegitimate, unscholarly and cheap,” he says. “But are you going to write your book in a language that people understand, or are you going to write it out in a language that is obscure jargon? I don’t think that there is any need to see history that is written in clear prose as any less than the other.”

It is an issue that has been riling publisher Tejeshwar Singh, too. The head of Sage Publications rues the fact that many in academic circles view popular writing as, necessarily, bad writing. “A piece of work is not considered good enough unless accompanied by 56 footnotes in one chapter,” he says.

He recalls that some years ago Sage published a book on the contemporary history of Tamil Nadu, revolving around the state’s popular actor-cum-politician, M.G. Ramachandran. “The book sought to look at the roles that he played in cinema — in which he was the saviour of the poor, the oppressed and of women — and the role that he played as the chief minister of the state — when he was not the saviour of the poor, the oppressed, or of women,” he says.

The subject, Singh holds, was such that it would have appealed to a wider readership. “But the book was written in an academic language, full of post-colonial jargon,” he recalls. “And though we tried our best, the author — an academic, of course — refused to make any changes.”

The publishers — and writers of popular history — hasten to add that not all of history is couched in academic jargon. Tejeshwar Singh cites the example of Partha Chatterjee’s 2002 book, A Princely Impostor?, while Abraham Eraly swears by the writings of D.D. Kosambi and Romila Thapar. Ravi Singh points out that historian Shahid Amin’s books are examples of history presented in vibrant prose, and Bipan Chandra’s India’s Struggle for Independence continues to be a national bestseller.

The debate is an old one — but still continues to rile historians, publishers and readers. In October, the Times Literary Supplement of UK carried a debate on the issue, 40 years after it had devoted three issues to New Ways in History. And Abraham Eraly recalls how, decades ago, economist J.K. Galbraith had said that his main crime, as far as his colleagues were concerned, was the fact that he wrote “what people can understand”.

“History is not brain surgery,” says Eraly. “It is all about people and their experiences, and historians should bring these alive.”

But the task is not an easy one, especially since one of the main tools of history writing is the ability to do extensive research, a discipline that a popular writer may not be familiar with, or have access to. “You also have to look at the economics of it. You may have to take time off for several years just for research, which is often not economically viable in a country like India,” says Ravi Singh.

Dalrymple, for instance, spent four years on his new book, researching in Delhi, Rangoon, Lahore and the National Army Museum in London. He examined 20,000 documents at the National Archives — most of which, he says, had never been accessed before. He went through Delhi’s newspapers of the age, and discovered the complete set of Bahadur Shah Zafar’s prison records in Rangoon.

But, however good the research, there is a flip side to popular history writing — and that’s the threat of historical distortions or misinterpretations creeping into a text. “The problem with popular history,” says the social scientist, “is the danger that folklore — or even what people perceive as the truth — is often portrayed as history. You may write about history, but you can’t always call it history.”

But the votaries of readable history believe that the challenge lies in putting life into the story of human beings and events that surround them. The British academic, Simon Schama, said it once — and, being a good wordsmith, he put it well. “I have,” he said, “tried to bring a world to life rather than entomb it in erudite discourse.”

The discourse, however, continues.