It is beyond my understanding, commented Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, how history can be changed. He was responding to the instructions given by the Union home minister – that perceived imbalances in India’s written history should be rectified.
The Government spends some money on this worthless discipline. It gets to decide how that money will be spent. It can also set the syllabus for certain Exam Boards and for the Civil Service and thus force kids to regurgitate one type of garbage rather than another.
“History is what it is. History is history,” stated Kumar, when he was asked to respond to Amit Shah’s suggestion that historians have given more importance to the Mughals at the cost of underplaying empires like the Pandyas, Cholas, and the Ahoms. “Writing and language,” he said “is a different issue, but you can’t change history.”
But you can 'rectify' written history by including more subaltern shite or regional shite or whatever.
Beyond the two comments made by politicians – no doubt for their own purposes – lies a contentious debate on historiography, on epistemology, on theory, and on the art of writing.
Debates on historiography are as stupid as shit because the subject is worthless.
It is true that we cannot change history. If Dilip Kumar played Devdas in Bimal Roy’s famous film, well then, Dilip Kumar played Devdas. There can be no argument on this, no one can say that the ‘king of tears’, Rajendra Kumar, played Devdas in Roy’s movie, though he did play a weeping spurned lover in many other films.
I can say it. It is clear to me that Rajendra Kumar played Dilip Kumar playing Devdas though, no doubt, Dilip was playing Deepak playing Raj Kapoor playing Rajendra.
Anybody can say any shit about history. That doesn't change anything because history is a worthless subject.
Yet film critics can disagree on the merits of the film: whether Dilip Kumar played the role well, or indifferently, or competently, or casually. They can agree or disagree whether Bimal Roy was faithful to the novel by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay. And they can read into the film the social context of the times.
Or they can just have a wank.
I recollect teaching my students that Devdas was a metaphor for a decaying feudal order that had been constructed by the British in Bengal through the Permanent Settlement.
In which case, it wasn't 'feudal'. It was a decaying tax-farming order. Zamindars weren't mansabdars. They didn't discharge a feudal function.
The falling apart of a man, who drew upon the family estate to drown himself in wine, women, and song, was an allegory for a crumbling feudal class which lived off rentals and had forgotten how to work for a living.
No. It was an allegory of a crumbling tax farming class. Tax farmers aren't feudatories. Why was this stupid woman lying to her students? Was she simply ignorant? Or was she trying to change history?
The theme of a degenerating feudal class was reiterated in one of Guru Dutt’s best films,
They were wealthy, not feudal. Being Bengali, it is unlikely they had any warrior blood in their veins. They may have cheated or swindled their way to a fortune. But they were not feudatories. They were mere tax-farmers.
The other side of the Permanent Settlement was, of course, Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin with the central character played marvellously by Balraj Sahni.
Nonsense! That is a story of a guy who mortgages his land to a swindling usurer who wants the land to to build a mill- or some other symbol of Satanic Capitalism- on it. Can the hero earn enough pulling a rickshaw to redeem it? Who will try to rape his wife? Obviously, she isn't going to rape herself. That's not how Capitalism works my dear sonny! Capitalist must rape virtuous Indian women due to under-consumption crisis. Kindly read Kali Marx.
Of course my students were much more conversant with Bhansali’s depiction of Devdas overplayed by Shahrukh Khan amidst unnecessary, opulent settings.
Very true. Should have all been in black and white due to India is very poor due to Capitalist bastards stole all the colors. Also, why was Khan not pulling rickshaw due to cheating Capitalist bastards? How come Capitalist bastards were not continually raping everybody's wife? Chee Chee, Bhansali's film is totes bourgeois.
But that is not the point I wish to make. The point is that a historical event happened, and historians will interpret this event in different ways.
No. They will tell stupid lies because they have shit for brains.
Reams, for example, have been written on the 1857 revolt.
But only the reams written by the English are worth reading.
A historian who is faithful to her craft will hardly disagree that the mover of the revolt was the feudal nobility whose privileges were appropriated by the colonial government.
Mangal Pandey wasn't a nobleman. There was a Mutiny and there were some Maratha and Wahabbi and other rebels.
At some point she has to accept this aspect of history. Taking that as her anchor, our historian can interpret the revolt in her own way providing she is faithful to the staples of the historian’s craft – meticulous attention to detail, acknowledgement of other work on the same theme, sound theoretical understanding, and appreciation of the context.
And then not bothering to write anything. This is stuff the Brits do well enough. There is little point in Indians rehashing that moment of national humiliation.
Every book that is written on the past by an aspiring historian is not history.
Books are not history though some books are acceptable historical sources.
History is a specialised discipline
only in the sense that those who specialize in it are shitheads
that wends a careful and delicate way through the maze of what happened, and how we justify our interpretation of what happened.
Fuck off! Careful and delicate ways through mazes can only be mapped by smart people. But smart people don't waste their time on shite subjects.
The problem is not that we reconstruct an event that happened in the past. The problem is that we can never resurrect the past simply because we approach the past from our vantage point in the present. There can be no objective recounting of the past. In that way history is a ‘presentist’ discipline. When we reconstruct the past through the mode of a narrative we are condemned to selectivity.
No. We can have a Structural Causal Model and verify it and then use it for some useful purpose. This does not involve teaching that shite.
Take the British historian George Grote (1794-1871), whose notion of constitutional morality Dr B.R. Ambedkar introduced members of the Constituent Assembly to. Grote had authored 12 volumes on the history of Greece (1846-1856).
Grote was considered an atheist and his pals blamed his wife for the fact that he was given a Christian burial befitting an eminent banker who had turned down a peerage. Thus, Ambedkar knew, or ought to have known, that Greece itself decided that constitutional morality was silly. Christian morality was sensible. The former means shite like Antigone's tragic fate will constantly recur. The latter means you can have 'economia' - discretionary and reasonable adjustment.
Intent on defending Athenian democracy against its critics,
which was foolish because what it succumbed to was conquest
Grote suggested that Athens had given to the world a notion of democracy that rested on the twin planks of freedom and self-restraint, generating what he called constitutional morality.
But both were useless. The Greeks had to fight the Muslims to regain their independence when Grote was a young man. But they weren't stupid enough to re-establish democracy. They got in a King from out of the Almanach de Gotha
Grote’s critics allege that his ‘apologia’ for Athens was not about Athenians but about his own generation. It was about Victorians who respected character born out of thrift, industry and prudishness.
It was about his being an atheist.
In his famous lectures on What is History, E.H. Carr wrote that Grote, an enlightened radical banker writing in the 1840s, embodied the aspirations of the rising and politically progressive British middle class in an idealised picture of Athenian democracy.
Without Christ or Allah or whatever.
In Grotes’s story of Athens, Pericles figured as a Benthamite reformer, and Athens acquired an empire in a fit of absence of mind.
So the guy was basically a big fat liar.
“It may not be fanciful to suggest that Grote’s neglect of the problem of slavery in Athens reflected the failure of the group to which he belonged to face the problem of the new English factory working class,” says Carr.
Very true. Grote should have helped ancient Athenian slaves to escape to Canada. All he needed to do was buy a Time Machine on Ebay- right?
The criticism is well taken. How can a historian depict Athens without recording that ancient Greek civilisation was based on slavery?
Easily. The thing is assumed. The historian does not have to depict Demosthenes taking a shit. We know the guy pooped.
The narrative, we see, imposes order on a society marked by hierarchies and exclusions.
But if it has hierarchies then there is no need to impose order on it.
This is precisely the problem with Hindutva versions of history that posit the idea of a “civilizational state” as the foundation of India’s democratic structure, and which downgrade the constitution as the founding moment of our democratic community.
No. Hindus get that they have lots of different cultures but that there is a unifying Civilization. They needed to hang together otherwise, as happened in the past, the Muslims and the Commies would use salami tactics to take over the country and reduce Hindus to a servile class. Gandhi said as much in 1939. Then the Commies and the League joined forces to clamor for Pakistan. Either the Hindus would come together to fight any renewed Islamic aggression or Commie insurrection or else, as Gandhi predicted in 1939, the High Caste Hindus would be reduced to servile status.
Their objective is painfully evident: justification of majoritarianism without subtlety, without nuances, and shorn of historical detail.
The lady thinks we should continue to push down the Muslim but do so with subtlety and nuance. Why not let Muslims rise up? What's so terrible about Aziz Premji or Yusuf Hamied being billionaires? They pay a lot of tax, provide a lot of jobs, and do a lot of charity. Why keep lying to straightforward, honest, people? It is obvious that the majority will decide matters as they please but the majority isn't stupid enough to want to harm an honest, sober, industrious and intelligent community. Do Muslims really feel great joy if some greasy politician turns up in a skull cap at their Iftar reception? They would rather such hypocrites and scoundrels leave them alone rather than bother them with their stupid lies.
The ancient past of a Vedic Hindu India is connected to the present in a seamless manner,
only if Muslims haven't killed or ethnically cleansed the Hindus
as if transformations in the political economy of society, or indeed the massive migrations in history do not merit a comment even in passing.
The poet Firaq Gorakhpuri had famously written:
“Sar Zamine-e-Hind par aqwame-e-alam ke Firaq/
Kafile baste gaye/ Hindostan banta gaya”.
Very true. Why we are not welcoming nice Chinese caravan into Ladakh, Arunachal and any other spot they might fancy?
India was created as a plural society, wrote the poet, by successive waves of migration.
Some of which killed the indigenous people and chased them away. Why are Indians not keen to embrace the fate of the Native American or Australian aborigine?
People came in caravans and settled here.
Also people ran across the border because Muslims were killing them
In 1947, a society that had been fashioned by a groundswell of travellers deciding to settle in its territory, witnessed processions of bedraggled, dispossessed people travelling from the East to the West, and from Western to Eastern Punjab. How was civilisation not impacted by this rupture in our collective life?
Pakistan and Bangladesh aren't exactly begging for their Hindus to come back. Would life for Hindus really be so awful if we didn't have to put out a welcome mat for invaders or migrants of all descriptions?
The purveyors of the Hindutva point of view invoke a Hindu past – hierarchical, Brahmanical, metaphysical and abstract.
And this purveyor of a Nehruvian past invokes stupid lies.
They marginalise or demonise the Mughal period,
Try explaining to a Sikh that he should honor Aurangazeb. The fellow will kiss and cuddle you with such great affection that every single bone in your body will be broken.
and deliberately ignore the fact that unlike earlier invaders,
all earlier invaders settled in India- if they were successful. There were Greek colonies in India and, of course, a Sultanate before Babur came. It was later invaders- Brits in particular- who didn't want to settle here. But then, after Independence, a lot of of Indians as well as Anglo-Indians decided that India sucked ass big time. The grass was always Green Card holder.
Professor Gopi Chand Narang, who died earlier this week, suggests in his 2020 work, The Urdu Ghazal: The Gift of India’s Composite Culture, that the fount of Sufism was the Hindu tradition, not found anywhere else.
He was wrong. Prof. Naim- having previously accused Narang of plagiarism- must have had a field day rebutting this nonsense.
Hindus and Muslims celebrated festivals, from Holi, Diwali and Basant to Muharram and Shab-e-Baraat together.
Though the Muslims still killed them or chased them away if they could do so.
The emperors Humayun and Akbar gave up their traditional head gear in favour of the Rajasthani turban.
Their descendant was Aurangazeb. Perhaps India could have had an Indonesian style Islam. But the plain fact is, it does not.
Singing of qawwalis at the dargahs of Muslim peers brought a new element into Islam and broke the taboo on music before the mosque.
Dargahs are not mosques. Musical instruments are not permitted in or near mosques.
The guru-shishya parampara, meditation, zikr or the remembrance of God, tauba or repentance, unconditional self-abnegation, and love for the guru generated a form of fusion that enriched both cultures.
Or caused them to stagnate. This is the heart of the problem. If the Mughal Empire had repelled invaders and maintained territorial integrity and even very modest prosperity, we'd be all for it. But that option is off the table. We now know that even if we all do lots of zikr and tauba and commit suttee every other day, still we'd be invaded or ethnically cleansed one way or another.
Hindus continue to worship at the graves of Sufi saints till today.
But, in Pakistan, such sites have been attacked. The Salafis consider this practice idolatrous.
Musical instruments like sitar, sarod, table, and sarangi, an invention of Muslim musicians, became a part of the tradition of Indian music.
But parts of India became Pakistan.
Bhajan kirtan that resulted in the popularity of khayal-gayiki was invented by Muslim musicians.
They proved a great way to defend the nation.
And the Hindu musical tradition of dhrupad along with khayal became part of the same tradition. The Mughal court was a major patron of art, music and musicians – remember Tansen in Akbar’s palace in Fatehpur Sikri.
But that shit is boring and horrible to listen to unless, like me, you like musical wallpaper or know the underlying esoteric aesthetic theory and find it hilarious. Z.A Bukhari promoted Ghazal and Qawalli on Pakistani Radio and TV and soon the Indians were imitating people like Mehdi Hassan. Meanwhile, B.V Keskar banned film music from AIR. What was the result? Radio Ceylon made lots of money. True, I liked the AIR type of music but even my granny hated that shite. We like religious music with a bit of oomph. Guys making horrible wailing noises kill our will to live.
“In this and many other fields of art, poetry, and painting the fusion is so complete and the flowering is so thorough and so creative that
it bores us to death. Why not simply chop your bollocks off and crawl into a corner to starve to death while muttering 'Ahimsa! Ahimsa!' ?
a whole new rainbow-like artistic range came into being, which is now a permanent part of the cultural tradition,” writes Narang. This exists till today despite the manufacture of religious differences.
Prostitution also exists despite religious differences.
On the other hand, the epistemological dominance of British colonialism was not so much a fusion as a one-way traffic.
Because it was so much better. Gandhi did suggest to the Brits that they should invite Herr Hitler to take over their beautiful island. They didn't listen to that crack-pot. After independence, India used its British style Army, not Gandhian satyagraha, to defend itself. No doubt, this lady would prefer we promoted an indigenous epistemology based on cow urine.
The philosopher Kalidas Bhattacharya
whose family had to run away from its ancestral home in East Bengal probably because they were not singing enough khayal or kirtan or some such shite
in his editorial note to Recent Indian Philosophy, a collection of a number of papers from the proceedings of the first decade of the Indian Philosophical Congress (1925-1934), writes:
Wrote. The guy died long ago.
“It is unfortunate that though the thinkers whose papers are published in this volume are all Indian and though for that reason we ought to have called their thinking Indian Philosophy we cannot do that…because…the living continuity of their philosophical thinking with the old philosophical traditions was snapped…and it has not been completely restored even today.”
But there were plenty of Sadhus and Sadhvis and Acharyas and so forth who were keeping those philosophical traditions alive. There was nothing to stop Indian philosophers from learning from them. Jadunath Sinha is a case in point. However, it must be said, philosophy is shit.
Indian philosophers took on board and absorbed the European philosophical tradition. They also reinterpreted indigenous concepts in light of what was absorbed. Consequently, we simply do not know what our past was independently of colonial structures of interpretation.
Yes we do provided we are either Brahmin, Shraman, or follow Bhakti, Tantra or Agama. Of course, one can always use some new technique to increase our knowledge of Indian and Greek and Hebrew and Chinese philosophy. Aumann finds game theory in the Old Testament and we are welcome to do the same in our scripture.
The German Romantics interpreted a glorious Indian past and consequent decline. This was accepted uncritically by most nationalist thinkers, and till today the medieval period is completely eliminated from all stories of our great civilisation. This was the impact of the Western understanding of India – an understanding which continues to fascinate our current ruling class.
Nonsense. Nobody gives a shit about that rubbish. The fact is Vivekananda and Ramakrishna influenced people like Tolstoy. That tradition does feature in Modi's thinking. But Amit is Jain. Yogi is following the Nath tradition. These may illumine each other. But we just want them to do the job they are paid to do.
But British colonialism also gave to us new fields of literature and poetry, from Socrates to Shakespeare, from Houseman to T.S Eliot. How closed, how claustrophobic the Indian mind would have been without exposure to Ghalib and to Byron, to Shakespeare and to Hollywood movies, to Bach and to Urdu poetry.
But how closed it would remain if you teach a worthless subject and write bollocks for the Wire.
Why should I as an Indian not draw my identity from Firaq Gorakhpuri and Shakespeare, from Plato and Rawls,
Why should she not have a penis like them guys? Could somebody please supply penis to Mem Sahib?
from Buddhism, from the equality of the Islamic faith, from Mother Teresa, and from Sahir Ludhianvi as much as from the Bhagvadgita and the caves of Ajanta and Ellora?
Why not also learn from ISIS?
All these strands constitute our civilisation.
No. They may feature in a sub-culture. They do not constitute a civilization. If I am hired to teach 'Chinese Civilization' and give lectures on Shakespeare and Spiderman, I will be sacked. I have to talk about Confucius and Moh Tzu and Shang Yang and so forth.
They have expanded our minds, and they have widened our horizons.
This lady's waist may have expanded. Her mind has not. At least that is what has happened to me. Doing STEM subjects widens horizons. Talking bollocks does not.
These cultures are as much a part of our civilisation as the epics. This is what the great Indian civilisation is about – a number of tributaries flowing into the same river, the mighty Ganges.
Water flowing into the Ganges is welcome. Industrial waste is not.
The invocation of history is important because we must know where we came from.
Very true. Amartya Sen should remember he comes from Dacca. Why did his people have to run away from there? If they forget that, they may have to run away again. Those who do not learn from History are condemned to teach it at JNU.
At the same time, we must learn from history and not repeat its mistakes ad infinitum.
So stand up to Commie or Islamic aggression. If you won't go and fight at the border, the border will come to your door and nobody will fight for you.
A number of Indians who subscribe to Hindutva argued proudly that they are trying to date the Mahabharata. We do not know whether anybody will benefit from dating the great war. We only recollect the lessons of the fratricidal conflict.
The lesson was that God has a plan for the world. We live in an occassionalist universe.
The poet Amreeta Syam
The shitty poet Amreeta Syam
scripts an imaginary conversation between Subhadra, married to the hero of the epic, Arjun, and Lord Krishna in the poem ‘Kurukshetra’. The Great War of the Mahabharata has generally been understood as a war of the just against the unjust, a war of the righteous against the unrighteous. The human costs of the war were nevertheless beyond compare. It is precisely these costs that Subhadhra asks the God to account for. In despair, because her young son Abhimanyu was brutally killed in the Great War, she introduces a subversive note into the dialogue:
“This is a fight for a kingdom/ Of what use is a crown/ all your heirs are dead/ When all the young men have gone/ …And who will rule this kingdom/ So dearly won with blood/ A handful of old men/ A cluster of torn hopes and thrown away dreams.”
Apparently this silly moo hadn't noticed that everybody who was killed gained Heaven or Hell or whatever. Why didn't she say 'Of what use is living? Everybody dies'. The answer, according to Hinduism, is that if you live virtuously, then you gain a big reward in the after-life.
So true. When goons kill young men who were going to inherit India, who will replace them? A handful of grey beards?
No darling. The young people who are better at killing or locking up goons will inherit India. Old people die. Even you. Why not write a poem complaining about this to Amreetaji?
There is a second lesson we learn from the Mahabharata.
This lady can't learn shit from shit. She is too stupid.
In section LIX of the Santi Parva, Yudhistira asks Bhishma about the origins of kingship and of the symbol of power the danda, or the sceptre. The gods, says Bhishma to Yudhistira in his discourse on righteous rule, created the institution of kingship for one main objective: the protection of the people. ‘If there were no king on earth for wielding the rod of chastisement, the strong would then have preyed on the weak after the manner of fishes in the water.’ The king has to protect all creatures, even if he is personally inclined to dislike them. He protects them from external impediments such as threats of violence, but he also provides the preconditions of material flourishing. ‘As the mother, disregarding those objects that are most cherished by her, seeks the good of her child alone, even so, without doubt, should kings conduct themselves (towards their subjects). The king that is righteous…should always behave in such a manner as to avoid what is dear to him, for the sake of doing that which would benefit his people.’
So, there isn't really any lesson here. God does everything. If you happen to be a king, don't keep raping your bodyguard. They may kill you.
The king who follows the path of dharma is the creator; a sinful king is the destroyer. The ruler should beware of exploiting the weak, for the eyes of the latter can scorch the earth.
Also they can stick a knife in your back. Three people with the surname Gandhi have been assassinated since Independence. Don't do stupid shit. Somebody may kill you.
‘In a race scorched by the eyes of the weak, no children take birth. Such eyes burn the race to its very roots…Weakness is more powerful than even the greatest Power, for that Power which is scorched by Weakness becomes totally exterminated. If a person, who has been humiliated or struck, fails, while shrieking for assistance, to obtain a protector, divine chastisement overtakes the king and brings about his destruction.’
Because God wills it- unless he doesn't in which case maybe the weak get a better deal in the afterlife. What comes around goes around.
The divine rod of chastisement falls upon the king. If it practices injustice, a great destruction comes upon the state. This is Raj Dharma, the dharma that our ruling class claims to rule by. It has, however, failed to implement Raj Dharma. We bear witness to the terrible way in which minorities are being harassed.
In Pakistan- sure. India, more sensibly, prefers to let minorities contribute to national prosperity. So does the UK and the US. But this does mean killing or incarcerating terrorists or other such nutters.
The justification of Hindutva has not withstood the test of time.
This lady hasn't noticed that Modi is a two time Prime Minister. Ecumenical Hinduism is prevailing. Casteism is going down. My campaign of hate against Iyengars has not gained traction. Sad.
The narrative of Hindutva seeks to exclude an entire period which contributed to the making of our civilization from cuisine to miniature painting to architecture.
No. Hindutva has plenty of heroes who fought the Muslims or the Portuguese or whatever from that period. Indeed, Hindutva's genealogy features those heroes and their preceptors.
History is time and time unlike space is plural.
No. Time is one dimensional. Space is three dimensional.
A number of things happen at a point in time.
They happen in different parts of space. However there is only one 'world-line'. Teaching shite rots the brain.
That is why historians craft narratives to recount history.
What else could they craft? Their own feces? Fuck. I've just put ideas into this lady's head. Even at her advanced age, she may rise and rise just by shitting into her own hands and flinging her feces about at academic seminars. 'Public intellectuals' like her must maximize the public nuisance they cause. Otherwise, Rahul Baba may have to face yet more grilling by the ED in the National Herald case.
Narratives are, however, exclusionary – they leave out much more than they include.
Why can't historians just build bigger and better datasets? Oh. Right. They are as stupid as shit.
The literary form imposes order on the chaos that marks every moment in history.
This lady's literary form shits on every moment in history. History gives you data-sets which help you get better Structural Causal Models which in turn enable people to bring about better outcomes by focusing on specific parameters.
If we have to impose a narrative to make sense of history, why not choose to learn from history instead of using it to legitimise injustice and attacks on our plural culture?
This lady does not get that there is a genuine terrorist threat. It is not History or 'narratives' which cause sensible people to act against that threat. Doing sensible things to curb existential threats or public nuisances is a purely economic matter.
Finally, though narrative is a perfectly legitimate form of history writing, a handful of loose assertions do not make for either a coherent or a persuasive story.
So, the lady admits she has been writing incoherent, unpersuasive, shite.
Those putting forth an ill thought idea of a Hindu civilisational state betray their own inadequacies, ignorance and lack of responsibility.
In the opinion of a cretin.
A responsible historian does not widen the schisms of a society, she builds bridges to show commonalities and solidarities.
That's cool. Show that if a minority acts up it gets stomped regardless of what religion or ethnicity it represents. Solidarity can arise from acknowledging that you will get killed if you try to grab everything for yourself.
Unless these conventions are followed scrupulously, we will only have court histories, not histories that capture the overlaps as well as the contradictions of history
So, what we had previously was state subsidized 'darbari' intellectuals producing stupid shite. Now we will have a different type of shite. So what? What everybody now understands is that 'Indian historian' or 'Indian political scientist' or 'Indian literary theorist' means 'anti-national nutjob with shit for brains'.
There was a time when Manmohan thought you could bluff financial markets that you were improving the quality of your workforce by having lots more shitheads with PhDs in shite subjects. That time has long gone.
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