The Many Pasts of Panipat, 1761

A great “what if?” moment in Indian history, the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761 has produced martyrs, ballads, and endless partisan debate. This lecture examines how its retelling, across school textbooks, Hindu nationalist historiography, and cinema, has flattened a complex event into a tale of heroes and villains. It raises the question, whose Panipat are we really remembering?

The vernacular primary sources tell a different story: where popular memory insists on certainty, they equivocate, contradict, and complicate. A micro history of the battle reveals multiple pasts, remembered and…