Building Histories offers innovative accounts of five medieval monuments in Delhi--the Red Fort, Rasul Numa Dargah, Jama Masjid, Purana Qila, and the Qutb complex--tracing their modern lives from the nineteenth century into the twentieth.

Mrinalini Rajagopalan argues that the modern construction of the history of these monuments entailed the careful selection, manipulation, and regulation of the past by both the colonial and later postcolonial states. Although framed as objective "archival" truths, these histories were meant to erase or marginalize the powerful and persistent...