Did you ever notice that the ten rupee note has three animals on it: rhino, elephant and tiger? Or that new species of flora and fauna continue to be discovered in India? Did you think about existence of varied ecosystems in India when you think about ‘unity in diversity’? How does one go about doing wildlife history? These are some of the questions and themes brought into focus during our book discussion on 7 August. Organised by the Delhi Heritage Walks’ Book Club, the work under consideration was India's Wildlife History: An Introduction written by Mahesh Rangarajan. This book captures the relationship between humans and nature over a vast time span and landscape of India's history. It discusses the understanding of wildlife in ancient, medieval and colonial times; questions of exploitation and conservation by drawing upon numerous sources such as official records, memoirs and mythology. Prof. Rangarajan who teaches History and Environmental Studies at Ashoka University, was the discussant.

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Delhi Heritage Walks’ Book Club held its second session at Lodi Garden on 6 December. The book chosen for the discussion was Romila Thapar’s Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History and Tanuja Kothiyal, a historian of medieval India at Ambedkar University Delhi, and currently Fellow at Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, was the discussant. The choice of the book seemed apt for the day: 6 December is the date of destruction of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya which is believed to have been built on the birthplace of Lord Ram. The act of pulling down the mosque was to avenge the oppression faced by the Hindu community under Muslim rule. Mahmud Ghazni’s raids into India and particularly his raid on temple of Somanatha in the year 1026 is considered the beginning of foreign invasions led by fanatical Muslims who were here to attack the Hindu religion. The Rath Yatra led by BJP leader L.K. Advani which culminated in Babri Masjid demolition, started in 1990, at Somanatha. Romila Thapar’s book notes that the event has been projected as central to relations between Hindus and Muslims in South Asia and explores the interpretations of this event in the last two centuries. The author draws upon a number of sources including local Sanskrit inscriptions, Jain narratives, biographies of kings & merchants of the period, court epics & popular narratives and Persian chronicles to study the different versions of Mahmud’s raids on India.

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Lodi Garden never fails to amaze you with its exuberant greenery in the heart of Delhi; a more scenic and striking place couldn't have been better for our first book discussion on Nehru and Bose: Parallel Lives by Rudrangshu Mukherjee. Salil Misra, Professor of History at Ambedkar University Delhi graciously agreed to be our discussant. He started with giving a brief synopsis of the book and tracking the parallel lives of these two dauntless nationalists from the point of their return home, through their unfruitful struggles to radicalise the Congress, to their final parting of ways in the late 1930s on the issue of Bose's offset victory as president of that umbrella nationalist body. In between these two personalities, fell the shadow of Gandhi in India, and of Mussolini and Hitler in Europe, and a militarised Japan to our east. The Mahatma played an important role in both of their lives and he's considered the reason behind their decision to go their separate ways.

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