Policing Polonnaruwa Or How History Is Just Another Bedtime Story

We finally travel to the ancient city of Polonnaruwa and discuss the ways in which political interests and nationalist priorities influence and determine historical narratives.

There is an essay related to this video on substack: https://crookedsonglines.substack.com/p/how-to-think-about-history?r=5snant

Books mentioned in the episode:

Cohn, Bernard S. Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India. Princeton University Press, 1985.
Daniel, E Valentine. Charred Lullabies: Chapters in an Anthropography of Violence. Princeton University Press, 1996
Michel-Rolf Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, Beacon Press ,2015

A couple of books on the politics and the state in Rwanda are also discussed.

Anjan Sundaram. Bad News: Last Journalists in a Dictatorship. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2016
Michela Wrong, Do Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad. PublicAffairs, 2023

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