What use the study of Indian history?
Dr.Sabyasachi Bhattacharya
Dr.Romila Thapar
Prof.Irfan Habib
Prof.M.G.S.Narayanan
Prof.Suvira Jaiswal

I have just noted down some of the names of the eminent historians now writing in India. This I do for the simple reason that many of the readers of this magazine might not have heard of their names. I have read and still continue to read them whenever I want to seek some clarification of some details on some aspect or some points in Indian history.

Here I like to limit myself to certain few points on which an average Indian reader might seek some clarification or some overview of India’s history.

As far as I am concerned, the important point in Indian history writing or for that matter how reading or writing of Indian history might help us, as individuals or as citizens or as a country as a whole is what is the approach to write or study history.

Even the latest book by Upinder Singh(A History Ancient  and Early Medieval, From Stone Age to the 12th Century), historian and daughter of  the Prime Minister all, as far as I know, don’t ask any of the questions people like me, the very generalists as against the specialists might be asking.

My questions are: what use writing history unless you really don’t have anything new to say on how the present Indian would be impacted by your new specialist knowledge in history?

So, I have come to a stage in life when I like to share what agitates my mind. I was recently in Delhi and had taken some time off to go around and see the old Mughal monuments, Qutb Minar complex, Fatehpur Sikri, of course, Agra and Taj Mahal and the Delhi monuments, from Red Fort to Humayun’s Tomb etc.

As I was moving through the monuments where in their complex lie hundreds of tombs and they all evoked a sense of the past and the lives that had gone by.
Will India ever remain a one country?

There have been repeated attacks and wars and I just now read through the pages of Sir Jadunath Sarkar’s ‘Military History of India”. The 21 chapters made me saddened me greatly and I fell silent at many places when I read through the pages.

Then, I recalled the observations made by Prof.Sabyasachi Bhattacharya’s lecture at the Bombay University Kosambi Birth Centenary Address.

Will India remain a Civilization? Was it always a one Civilization? Was it always one country? One nation?

Such questions were not raised by the learned  professor, except he recalls Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj writing where he, the Mahatma asks: Indian civilization for Gandhi was something he saw as based not on material civilization as in the West and in India it was, as according to Gandhi, based on something like  a spiritual basis. Though it is not made clear in the professor’s lecture.

I am, to say the obvious at the very beginning, a bit tired of this uncritical way of using some expressions and some words.

First, the very word, the very expression and the conception of civilization.
Yes, Arnold Toynbee has asked this question and he himself had given some explanations. The rise and fall of civilizations as cycles of rice and fall.

This view was of course contested by professional historians and they did this kind of thing when I was a student Oxford. The galaxy of historians in my time, A.J.P.Taylor and Hugh Trevor Roper and many others were doing this. Even I suspect Sir Isaiah Berlin and E.H.Carr were subscribing to this scpeticism. They had their own reasons.

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A history of the short twentieth century (1914-1991)

The weekends in my village don’t miss their highlights: I bought this time the volume by Eric Hebswam’s “The Age of Extremes”, the much acclaimed volume in his series of “Ages” of Capital and Revolution and many others. This volume I didn’t have had the time till now to go through. So when the pressure to buy a book on my trip home I just picked up the volume at the Crossword book shop in Bangalore. As soon I had the time I settled down for a non-stop reading and what a trip through the entire world of the twentieth century, covering 1914-1991.
Hebswam by new is a household word everywhere, all over the world, more so in India where he has a large number of friends in the academic as well as in the political sphere. Knowing him as a Marxist historian and more so as a member of the British Communist party I had always read him to have some unique insights into the events of the most important historic phase of the modern world. He is as far as I knew is a master of the modern world of European Enlightenment and the post-Enlightentement era.

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It was a revolt of the masses and the intellectuals!

Has the world become a better and safer place after the fall of Communism? Views could differ. America as the sole Super Power is a good thing? or, what are the alternatives? All big and difficult questions.Politicians are no better judges,as they are transitory persons. Today they would hit the headlines, tomorrow they would be gone!
Yes, the intellectuals could help.But who are intellectuals and how many are really independent? Historians are better guides. They look at the past, the current situation and interpret what they know.Paul Johnson, Eric Hobsbawm I had read just once again. Johnson in his Modern Times and Hobsbawm in his, The Age of Extremes,a history of the world, 1914-1991 have much to say on how the fall of Communism in 1989 came about how it can be understood in the wider context. Johnson, given his broad sweep of historical look,puts the emphasis on religious forces, Catholicism in Poland, the late Pope John Paul’s involvement with the Polish trade union, Solidarity as the real trigger for the subsequent events. Given the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the post -Communist historic phase, may be the religious forces could have played a role. In Eric Hobsbawm’s (he still calls himself a Marxist historian) view the fall of Communism was owing to the internal contradictions in the former Soviet Union.

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Some thoughts on the history of our times. History is a challenging social science!
Reading history is one thing. Writing history is another thing. Should we,Indians, re-write our history? Indias need to re-write and also learn to re-interpret the world events
of the 20th century and also the likely shape of history in the 21st century.
We Indians seem to be blissfully living without a sense of history.We read history in our schools and colleges.But what history we read?Indian history?World history?Indian history is not so easy.Indian past had been a troubled past.There is much that is shameful,we have been repeated invaded and plundered for nearly 1,000 years,arent we?There had been long periods of famine and hunger and thousands,no millions perished.What is so great about our past?
These questions trouble me a lot.As a result of our past history,it is my firm view,that I find the average Indian as a timid,subservient and non-assetive type.Many thinkers have given thought to this side of the Indian character.The latest is Prof.Amartya Sen who had come out with his own peculiar,in my view quite untenable,view of Indian thought having some scpticial streak,as against Sen’s false view of Indian thought to be always submissive to authority.Anyway,this new discovery is no great discovery and doesnt help to understand our past nor helps to know our present standing as a nation,as a distinctive identity.
My point is that Indians certainly need to re-write their history from the point of view of how our present failings as a distinctive nation,as a peace-loving people,is a bit self-deluding.We are in fact yet to come to terms with the everyday reality of the world and how the world events shape and how India as an independent nation fit into the emerging world realities.
So,any study of history,more so Indian history must be written and lots of the present day standard history writing,be it by Leftist historians or the more untenable rightwing Communalists,all must takle note of the need to give Indian people a new sense of purpose and a new set of insights into our past failings and our present day opportunities to shape our nation and our own character in a new sense of national identity.
More also important is the world events,world history and how we Indians have understood the world history. Read the rest of this entry »

History is series of accidents
Big events have no big causes!

Marxists believe history has a pattern or lessons. Non-Marxists like Alan Taylor (who taught me history) thought history is a series of accidents. As Taylor had said many a time the first war was triggered because on the “fateful July 28 1914,all the six assassins at Sarajevo missed their mark; Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot only because his driver had taken a wrong turning and stopped, enabling Princip, the assassin to step on the running side-board and take a second shot” (A.J.P.Taylor, A biography (page 226). So too, in Taylor’s view other great events: Hitler’s “seizure of power “in 1933. Also Lenin’s “seizure of power” in 1917. Here too Taylor gives new insights, other than the brainwashing tomes on the topic! Some of the latest books on such dictators and human monsters like Mao and Hitler show us new insights. One new book on Hitler (The Third Reich in Power, 1933-1939 by Richard Evans) gives us in India new insights how even now fascism, Nazism can turn state power into police states!

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History:a challenging social science!

Reading history is one thing Writing history is another thing Should we,Indians, re-write our history? India’s need to re-write and also learn to re-interpret the world events of the 20th century and the likely shape of history in the 21st century is a challenge for intellectuals and educators.

Eric Hobsbawm
Eric Hobsbawam, the Marxist historian and yet otherwise a fine historically- insightful thinker and writer of some of the widely read volumes spanning almost the modern Europe calls the the 20th century as the “short 20th century”. (A history of the world, 1914 - 1991.) And a”bloody century” with two world wars and too many dictators as human monsters: Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and then Mao, who among themselves helped to butcher a huge humanity of innocent people! May be, because of so much brutalities he traces the birth of the 20th century from the beginning of the first world war, that is from 1914.And the end of it with the fall of Communism in 1989.

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History:a challenging social science!

Some thoughts on the history of our times

Eric Hobsbawm

Eric Hobsbawam, the Marxist historian and yet otherwise a fine historically- insightful thinker and writer of some of the widely read volumes spanning almost the modern Europe  calls the 20th  century as the “short 20th century”. (A history of the world, 1914 - 1991) And a”bloody century” with two world  wars and too many dictators as human monsters: Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and then Mao, who among themselves helped to butcher  a huge humanity of  innocent people! May be, because of so much brutalities he traces the  birth of the 20th century from the beginning of the first world war, that is from 1914. And the end of it with the fall of  Communism in 1989.

Yes, the old world, the old world order of imperial powers, most notably the Austro-Hungarian Empire that lasted for nearly four centuries effectively ended when its heir was assassinated by a Serb nationalist youth in 1914.
The subject of the origins and the consequences of the First World War had been widely written about and debated. Read the rest of this entry »

The Parthenon-the temple of goddess Athena is a masterpiece of architectural beauty. This was a rebuilt version of an earlier one, to celebrate the victory of the Athenians over the Persian conquerors! It proclaimed the greatness of the Athenian Empire. Even today, it remains unsurpassed by its originality. We haven’t exceeded the original design! Imagine! Words like democracy, freedom, philosophy, ethics, Olympic Games, a balanced life, objective, critical truth were all concepts without which we can’t live for a day!

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History is series of accidents

Big events have no big causes!

Marxists believe history has a pattern or lessons. Non-Marxists like Alan Taylor (who taught me history) thought history is a series of accidents. As  Taylor had said many a time the first war was triggered because  on the  “fateful July 28 1914,all the six assassins at Sarajevo missed their  mark; Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot only because his driver had taken a wrong turning and stopped, enabling Principal, the assassin to step on  the running side-board and take a second shot” (A.J.P.Taylor, A biography (page 226).

Read the rest of this entry »