Third

Title: Solstice at Panipat; Author: Uday S. Kulkarni; Publisher: Mula Mutha Publishers; Pages: 319; Price: Rs 450 In contemporary times, most nations have elections which govern their future. But scarcely a century or so back, the course of nations was decided by contests of arms -- between adherents of different religions, between invaders and natives, or between rivals to a throne -- and this binary construct of "good" and "bad" forces influences how we see history. Be it the clash at Hydespes (or Jhelum) between Alexander's Greeks and Porus' army, the Kalinga war, the series of conflicts at Tarain or…