Learning History and its Lessons

The job of a historian is to record events, analyse them and produce an objective version of what happened, how and why. Some also offer versions different from recorded and accepted history while others probe the 'what if' angle and how things would have turned out so different, so well and so pleasant if it hadn't been for a minor mistake, grudge or oversight. But these offer us academic closure and explain things neatly to be stored and retreived to analyse the present through the past or in my case currently, to answer questions for an exam. The reasons can be numbered, the events dated and the aftermath judged through influence of these events on the future.

Of late I have read books dealing with historical events, but viewed through the life of people. The fact that the movie 'Titanic' became a super-hit and won 11 academy awards proves the impact of telling a story through the lives of people which makes it different from a historical documentary. 'Saving Private Ryan', 'Schindler's List', 'Mother India' are among the long list of movies that recount real history through the life of people. Sometimes they are fictional characters, like in 'Titanic' and 'Saving Private Ryan', made to give order, structure and the human element to complex events which when viewed only objectively will mean something to us who are far away from them. Sometimes they are real, like in 'Schindler's List' or 'Gandhi'.

The fact remains, history through the life of people allows for better understanding and emotions than any objective work. It allows us to relive the pain, agony, joys, relief and hopes of the characters thus leaving a deeper and clearer impact on us than pure academic history. Whether books or movies, stories of people allow us to relate to events and emotions and get a clearer understanding. My sojourn through 'Unheard Voices' by Harsh Mander, 'Poor Little Rich Slum' by Rashmi Bansal and Deepak Gandhi (both non-fiction), 'Long Walk Home' by Manreet Sodhi Someshwar and 'Winter Nights' by Navtej Sarna (fiction) told me about incidents and realities in India- omnipresent injustice perpetuated on lower castes, tribals, women, farmers and apathy of state to their plight, communal riots, our prejudice and ignorance on issues of poverty, our snobbery and indifference towards urban poverty, our obsession towards a glitzy, glamorous model of development, partition and its violence, the loss of sons and daughters to wanton violence- all these were presented through the lives of people.

This is why artists, writers and performers require the freedom to express their views- to bring out the real human stories behind events and not be circumscribed by the need to present everything in a neatly written plot having a clear beginning and end with lot of song and dance and cliches thrown in. They need to write these so that those far away in time and space understand these events. We need to understand them because we have to learn to overcome our differences, live in peace and harmony with ourselves and the world and realise that to forget is to repeat. Human emotions and feelings are the same everywhere and although we cannot experience the same events, learning about the lives of others we relive it and it teaches us a lot more than objective history. There is no better way to learn the lessons of history than the words of those who lived it. This is why 'Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl' is read across the world in dozens of languages even 70 years after the author's death and remains a defiance and defence against despotism, hate and violence.

Delving into History

I did not start this to practice essays or answers for exams, it was merely an attempt to put out to the world some parts of the regular rants that I come up with. Less than 5 percent of what I write are posted here and the remaining 95% are in the form of deleted or lost notepad files or just random scribblings in the back of my notebooks or any blank page I can access that time and some even on my mobile phone in the form of SMS drafts and notes.

I do not dare to read what I have written before, but I am sure and I have also been told that it is of quite poor standards. I am sure they did not want to hurt my feelings, I know the standards were just pathetic. But then, there was another purpose behind my doings- that of continuous self-improvement. I have tried different genres and different styles- sports, politics, movies, my personal life and presented them through the angle of current issues, history, my experiences and observations.


It has definitely been an experiment and it has been fun to look back and watch as the topics I have mentioned have become more prominent over the years. The most recent one being the case of rural health degree about which I posted a few days before Economic and Political Weekly came up with http://www.epw.in/editorials/doctors-rural-areas.html-0 .I had also posted on FDI in retail, Nuclear Energy and many of the articles I read later have covered the same points I mentioned and in some cases, what I posted were enough to disprove or counter the published articles (http://www.epw.in/commentary/nuclear-power-what-cost.html and http://craziestme.blogspot.in/2012/04/powerful-matters.html ). But there have been quiet a few silly ones in the beginning, posts with little credibility and substance and a poor style. This was part of the process of learning by doing and I think the current standards justify the earlier mistakes since they were all part of the process of self-improvement.

I would also like to add that some of the views expressed were stupid, unreasonable and unfeasible. But I still hold many of the opinions I have expressed and my views have not changed on these issues with the passage of time or in the light of new information since they have not been disproved or rendered obsolete or irrelevant.

There were periods of long absence, periods of high activity- they reflect my life during those days. For now, it is getting back to work, reading up new books with interesting insights and I realised that it can be interesting to learn history- not the facts and dates and names but why and how. I realised why Gandhiji took up the cause of the suppressed classes, the ideas behind the origins of the Muslim League and how some of our reformers came to support the causes they are known for. For the first time in my life, I like history and frankly, it is surprising how many of the issues like caste discrimination, unequal status of women, focus on higher education to the neglect of primary education and communalism have still not been fully addressed in spite of over a century of effort.

Gandhiji wrote that "But to remove legal inequalities will be a mere palliative" on the position of women in India (Young India, 17 October 1929, as reproduced in Makers of Modern India by Ramachandra Guha) and the state still resorts to more and stricter laws to address the issue of women rather than strengthen implementation of existing laws. We, who call Gandhiji the father of our nation have also failed to take his message to heart and change our society and family by respecting women. History holds lessons for us, not just data, and those lessons are what we should be taught rather than the mundane dates and events. We should also refrain from saying that since they are part of records, why should we know them when we can just check them up (a usual refrain in the time of internet). We can check up dates, events and pure data but the lessons can be learned only if we read history carefully and analyse it.

Myth of the Infallible Great

While reading history, one of my simmering questions was what exactly happened during some events in our history (especially our struggle for independence) and also I couldn't fully accept that events were always planned out and happened accordingly and discerned with absolute clarity, but this was the view one got from reading most textbooks I was familiar with in school. The uncertainty and suspense that was the order of the day is painted over with glorious achievements and simplification of events with mere irrefutable facts, dates, distances covered on foot and number of protestors arrested.

The torment and questions that individuals faced, the uncertainty that gripped the nation, games of intrigue that were played and influences that some characters had in the course of events due to obsessions and idiosyncrasies and personal motives are all hidden when we read history in the larger context of mere happenings. There are records of how many soldiers were killed and by how many in each war, but we should be more interested in knowing why, which is rarely answered in our books except in bullet points, with an easily explained set of reasons, as if the actions of men can be explained ever in such simple terms. One glance back at our day will prove that we have taken numerous decisions without reason, many of them against reason and logic and many of them defying our own understanding of self. It is this inconsistency that history covers up with an objective rendering of events.

When I read "The Great Indian Novel", although a work of fiction, I was introduced to such an aspect of story-telling. Rather than just the 'hows', it also dwelt on the 'whys' in a subtle and funny way. I accept that it is a work of fiction because not even the movers of events of the time knew fully why they did it and what its outcomes would be, but the fact that they didn't always (perhaps only very rarely) comprehend events completely itself is never realised by us while studying history. Individuals portrayed as larger than life figures with honorific titles mean that their human aspect is not an angle explored by many, which in itself is not an issue because we do not concern ourselves with the lives of individuals but with events.

But this simplification of actions and subsequent beatification of individuals due to the result of actions and events they were part of has lead to the infallibility of the individual. We see personality cults regularly and politicians exploit it to perpetuate their hold on the people, for some of them cannot accept these leaders as humans who will be affected by old age and disease and vicissitudes of fate and temptation like every human being. Perhaps we would like to believe there are certain individuals who know things for certain, we would like to believe that there is someone in charge who is absolutely sure of what he is doing and what its effects will be, whereas the truth is, no one in this world is sure of anything except the breath we are taking at this moment, right now.

Perhaps our history books should be rewritten to present our great leaders and thinkers and scientists as humans, it might shatter a few idols, but it would also allow us to understand them better and we could use that to be better individuals ourselves. Perhaps we need to see them as ourselves and our fellow beings, understand that they had flaws and faced doubts and uncertainties like us, but also realise they are remembered for contributing to humanity with a life circumscribed by human-hood. It is possible for us to be the next Steve Jobs or Vishwanathan Anand or Dennis Ritchie or Vivekananda, we just need to understand that our limitations in one aspect does not have to stand in the hundreds of ways in which we can achieve success and happiness and contribute to humanity.