Don’t romanticise Vijayanagara as the ‘last Hindu empire’-it has a side you don’t know about

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In her chapter Instability, Opportunity and Innovation, part of the edited volume Abhyudaya, American historian Leslie Orr recently challenged the conventional division of South India’s history into “Hindu” and “Muslim”. Instead, she pointed out, the inscriptional picture of Tamil Nadu reveals that the situation in the 13th century—on the eve of the Delhi Sultanate’s invasions—was quite similar to that of the 14th, when both Delhi and Vijayanagara campaigned in the region. This period of churn continued until a new social formation emerged in the 16 th century—nearly 200 years after Vijayanagara rule had established itself in the region. Over this...