In his essay “On History,” Bertrand Russell wrote, “Wherever, out of the facts, a simple deductive argument from indubitable premises can be elicited, history may yield useful precepts.” At first glance, it reads like a call for the historian’s cool logic. But it also hints at the fact that the raw material of history does not speak on its own. Someone must arrange it, infer patterns, draw connections, and bring it to life.
This raises a question. How much can the tools of a novelist help the historian? Narayani Basu’s work argues that they matter a great deal. In VP Menon: The Unsung Architect of Modern India (2020) and A Man For All Seasons: The Life Of KM Panikkar (2025), she turns to figures long present in the historical record, but seldom approached as subjects in their own right. By focusing on their personalities and the contingencies of their lives, she shows that history comes alive when treated with a novelist’s sensibility.
In a conversation at the 2025 Shillong Literature Festival, Basu spoke to Scroll about her choice of KM Panikkar as a biographical subject, the tensions and contradictions in his political and intellectual life, and what his career discloses about public history, the making of postcolonial India, and the public...
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