Butshikan: Tears of Somanatha — A Reckoning Disguised as Historical Fiction

In an age when historical fiction often amounts to glorified costume dramas confused about whether they are history lessons or romantic novellas, Butshikan enters the literary space like a war conch. Ancient, resonant, and utterly uninterested in playing to gallery tastes, it does not pander. It provokes. This is not history retold. It is history reimagined through a civilisational gaze that neither flatters nor forgives.

A Story That Refuses to Apologise for Its Intelligence

How refreshing, in a world saturated with historical novels that treat the reader as a well-meaning but dim cousin, to find a work that assumes its audience might actually know the difference between the Cholas and the Chauhans. Butshikan presumes awareness. It presumes memory. Where others offer timelines and trite epilogues, this novel offers fire.

Where most historical novels open in well-trodden Mughal gardens or colonial drawing rooms, Butshikan roots itself in a confrontation that is both forgotten and unfinished: the clash between Mahmud of Ghazni’s iconoclasm and Rajendra Chola’s imperial vision. The novel makes clear that this is not merely about a temple razed, but about the civilisation that weeps, survives, and responds. It is as if the book is speaking not just of a moment in history, but of every moment we failed to respond to history.

The counterfactual is not a parlour game here. What if Rajendra Chola had marched north rather than sail east? What if Somnath had not been abandoned to fate but defended with fury? This is not fan fiction. This is what historical fiction ought to be — a moral interrogation dressed in armour.

Characters That Do Not Perform, but Emerge

Rajendra Chola is not a plaster cast hero recycled from Amar Chitra Katha panels. He is a sovereign in moral distress, torn between the ocean’s deference and the ash of temples he never saw but could no longer ignore. This is not patriotic sloganeering. This is epic sensibility steeped in tragic grandeur.

Mahmud is not a grotesque villain twirling his moustache in slow motion. He is ideology incarnate. His actions do not stem from hatred or fear, but from certainty. Chilling, because it does not seek to shock. It seeks to state the obvious.

And then, there are the lesser characters — those who, in most novels, serve tea or get killed in the second act. Here, they carry entire philosophies. A mysterious female warrior haunts the narrative with the clarity of a primal scream. Not a gender checklist ticked, but a myth resurrected.

The son, burning with generational grief, is written with startling restraint. He does not seek war, but a world where ancestral grief need not repeat itself. The sentiment, rare and moving, elevates the novel from ideological drama to civilisational mourning.

The Philosophical Foundation Is Not Decorative

Modern historical fiction often dabs a little spiritual colour on its surface, usually in the form of a sage saying something profound before being conveniently killed. Butshikan treats philosophy not as an accessory, but as the furnace.

Concepts like Swayambodha (self-realisation) and Shatrubodha (enemy-awareness) are not thematic garnishes. They are the very bones of the story. The enemy, the novel insists, is not only the one who desecrates temples but the silence that lets him return. There is no pretence here. Just unapologetic confrontation.

This is not a battle of kings and coins. It is a battle between memory and forgetfulness, between Dharma and the corrosive vacuum left by its absence. And unlike the usual fare where such themes are briefly mentioned before returning to plot mechanics, Butshikan carries them as its bloodline.

Prose That Does Not Entertain, but Envelops

Most writers these days, obsessed with readability metrics and OTT adaptation rights, have forgotten that prose can be sacred. The writing in Butshikan is not cinematic. It is liturgical. It demands reverence.

One does not merely read this novel. One inhales it. One is anointed by it. The temple’s fall is not presented as a single moment but as the accumulation of a thousand forgotten prayers, indifferent rulers, and the belief that the sacred could be postponed indefinitely. That image alone does not seek applause. It demands accountability.

And for those looking for helpful footnotes explaining Sanskrit terms, keep looking. This book respects you too much to spoon-feed you. It assumes you are literate not just in language, but in loss.

Not a Book, but a Litmus Test

Butshikan is not here to keep you company on a flight. It is here to unsettle your convictions, challenge your amnesia, and whisper to you truths your textbooks politely skipped.

It is not meant to be easy. It is meant to be endured. It is not meant to be consumed. It is meant to be confronted.

In a literary culture where historical fiction is too often the opiate of nostalgia, Butshikan is a blow to the chest. It does not mourn what was lost. It mourns that we stopped caring it was lost.

If you want literary comfort food, look elsewhere. But if you are ready to be reminded of who you were, who you might have been, and who you failed to become, then open this book. And brace yourself.

Watch the discussion with the authors below: