Skip to main content

Can History be Civilised?


English philosopher, C E M Joad, defined civilisation as thinking new thoughts, making new things, and obeying the rules for the smooth functioning of the society.  Yet we don’t find such people in our history books.  Our history books are filled with people who killed others, conquered their lands, and imposed themselves on other people. 

How many Indians have heard of Satyendranath Bose though there is a subatomic particle (Boson) named after him?  How many Indians are ready to recognise the name Ali Akbar Khan though he is known to the world as the Indian Johann Sebastian Bach?  Why does the genius of a Shakespeare get eclipsed by a Queen Elizabeth in history books though Shakespeare’s contribution to civilisation far outweighs that of the Queen? 

These are some of the many thoughts that crossed my mind as I read the very long article by A. G. Noorani, ‘India’s Sawdust Caesar,’ in the latest issue of Frontline.  “A year and a half after he became Prime Minister of India on May 26, 2014, the people of India have begun to discover that Narendra Damodardas Modi is a flawed character who has proved himself unfit to sit on the chair on which Jawaharlal Nehru once sat.”  That’s how the article begins. 

Nehru made significant contributions to civilisation.  Even if we ignore his contributions as a statesman, his writings will be enough to ensure a prominent place for Nehru in the history of India if history stops giving undue importance to killers and conquerors.  How will history remember Mr Modi?

Noorani quotes a cable sent by Michael S. Owen, the U.S. Consul General in Mumbai, in 2006 to his bosses in America: “In public appearances, Modi can be charming and likeable. By all accounts, however, he is an insular, distrustful person who rules with a small group of advisers. This inner circle acts as a buffer between the Chief Minister and his Cabinet and party. He reigns more by fear and intimidation than by inclusiveness and consensus, and is rude, condescending and often derogatory to even high-level party officials. He hoards power and often leaves his Ministers in the cold when making decisions that affect their portfolios.”

Source: Frontline
How will history books celebrate Modi?  It will depend on who writes the history, of course. 

Noorani cites instances that prove the little-mindedness of the Prime Minister.  For example, gifting a copy of the Gita to the Japanese Emperor, Modi said, “I do not know what will happen in India after this. There may be a TV debate on this. Our secular friends will create toofan [storm] that [sic] what does Modi think of himself. He has taken a Gita with him. That means he has made this one also communal.”  Modi was ridiculing his own country in another country. 

Another example: On September 23 in Dublin, Modi praised Indo-Irish students for reciting Sanskrit mantras, but in a manner that he can never shed: “It is a matter of happiness that they can do it in Ireland, but had this been done in India, it would have raised questions on secularism.” 

Which Prime Minister of a country, especially if he claims to be in love with the country and its culture as Modi does, will belittle his own country in a foreign country like this?

Yet how will this man go down in history books?  How much of his personality and its dark truths be buried, how much of the other side exaggerated? 

Why is history like this?

These are just some of the thoughts that crossed my mind.  I suppose there are no answers except that that is how history is.  If you want Bose and his boson, you should study science.  If you want Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, you should have music in your veins.  And if you want Shakespeare, be literate enough.   

But if history is what interests you, you will get marauders and conquerors.  History cannot be civilised, it seems.


PS.  Mr Modi is taken as an example here merely because it is an article about him that triggered these thoughts in me.  There are many, too many, leaders in the world today who can trigger the very same thoughts.  That’s precisely the question: why are leaders like this?

Comments

  1. Something on my mind as well, had written a post this week on how history books present history with an example of Mughal history! The realm of the textbook is place of drama and war with every changing government, how modi gets written depends on as you say, who writes that portion.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Suppose we change our approach to history and present scientists, philosophers, and so on to students in such a way that they learn to question, investigate and discover. Instead of mugging up boring facts about who killed whom!

      Delete
  2. Well written and thought provoking..

    ReplyDelete
  3. I am genuinely thankful to the holder of this web page who has shared this fantastic paragraph at here.

    custom essay writing service

    ReplyDelete
  4. Interesting article. History has been a complex subject that gives rise to debates because what one writes comes from his/her own 'situatedness' as well as 'affiliations. I think Gadamer had talked about 'understanding' it 'differently', and bringing one's own understanding to the historical text. I think history itself is a series of 'texts' that have been subjectively (masked objective) written.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. History can never be objective, in short :)

      The article I have cited above illustrates it eloquently. America had refused to grant visiting visa to Mr Modi in the aftermath of the 2002 riots. However, later it revoked the decision because the same Consul General mentioned in the article suggested it. And the reason? Modi's meteoric popularity! The Consul General was sure Mr Modi would rise to national politics and in all probability become the PM. Then, if America changed the decision after that, it would be accused of opportunism. Hence he advised the diplomatic action of revoking the decision earlier. A few years from now, most people will forget these details and historians will make a new history: that even America realised its error with respect to Modi and the riots. That's how history works. It is manufactured. Heroes do not make history, history makes heroes, as a historian said.

      Delete
  5. Incidentally I knew all three, interestingly enough, I was always intrigued by history, but that did not yield any info. History as it goes is penned on corpses and other things that are not "civilized" why? because history was always written by the victors, who won a war and massacred. It is a great flaw in us to understate the good and magnify shady incidents as history

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. History inevitably belongs to the victor. See how the Indian history is being rewritten or attempted to be by the present BJP regime. A lot of RSS people have been appointed to relevant positions so that the process will be subtle but effective.

      Delete
  6. Leaders in the current world are hardly those who have been given that place by society,leaders are generally those narrow-minded people who are in that place today because 20,000 different methods were calculated before inculcating them in the "necessary" propaganda to earn the required profit.All of fundamentalism,hypocrisy,communal-ism are just the components of the entire process.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's interesting, Titas. 20,000 calculated strategies!

      Delete
  7. Well written article. Enjoyed reading it. Very thought provoking.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Final Farewell

Book Review “ Death ends life, not a relationship ,” as Mitch Albom put it. That is why, we have so many rituals associated with death. Minakshi Dewan’s book, The Final Farewell [HarperCollins, 2023], is a well-researched book about those rituals. The book starts with an elaborate description of the Sikh rituals associated with death and cremation, before moving on to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and finally Hinduism. After that, it’s all about the various traditions and related details of Hindu final rites. A few chapters are dedicated to the problems of widows in India, gender discrimination in the last rites, and the problem of unclaimed dead bodies. There is a chapter titled ‘Grieving Widows in Hindi Cinema’ too. Death and its rituals form an unusual theme for a book. Frankly, I don’t find the topic stimulating in any way. Obviously, I didn’t buy this book. It came to me as quite many other books do – for reasons of their own. I read the book finally, having shelv

Vultures and Religion

When vultures become extinct, why should a religion face a threat? “When the vultures died off, they stopped eating the bodies of Zoroastrians…” I was amused as I went on reading the book The Final Farewell by Minakshi Dewan. The book is about how the dead are dealt with by people of different religious persuasions. Dead people are quite useless, unless you love euphemism. Or, as they say, dead people tell no tales. In the end, we are all just stories made by people like the religious woman who wrote the epitaph for her atheist husband: “Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.” Zoroastrianism is a religion which converts death into a sordid tale by throwing the corpses of its believers to vultures. Death makes one impure, according to that religion. Well, I always thought, and still do, that life makes one impure. I have the support of Lord Buddha on that. Life is dukkha , said the Enlightened. That is, suffering, dissatisfaction and unease. Death is liberation

Hate Politics

Illustration by Copilot Hatred is what dominates the social media in India. It has been going on for many years now. A lot of violence is perpetrated by the ruling party’s own men. One of the most recent instances of venom spewed out by none other than Mithun Chakraborty would shake any sensible person. But the right wing of India is celebrating it. Seventy-four-year-old Chakraborty threatened to chop the people of a particular minority community into pieces. The Home Minister Amit Shah was sitting on the stage with a smile when the threat was issued openly. A few days back, a video clip showing a right-winger denying food to a Muslim woman because she refused to chant ‘Jai Sri Ram’ dominated the social media. What kind of charity is it that is founded on hatred? If you go through the social media for a while, you will be astounded by the surfeit of hatred there. Why do a people who form the vast majority of a country hate a small minority so much? Hatred usually comes from some

Cats and Love

No less a psychologist than Freud said that the “time spent with cats is never wasted.” I find time to spend with cats precisely for that reason. They are not easy to love, particularly if they are the country variety which are not quite tameable, and mine are those. What makes my love affair with my cats special is precisely their unwillingness to befriend me. They’d rather be in their own company. “In ancient time, cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this,” Terry Pratchett says. My cats haven’t, I’m sure. Pratchett knew what he was speaking about because he loved cats which appear frequently in his works. Pratchett’s cats love independence, very unlike dogs. Dogs come when you call them; cats take a message and get back to you as and when they please. I don’t have dogs. But my brother’s dogs visit us – Maggie and me – every evening. We give them something to eat and they love that. They spend time with us after eating. My cats just go away without even a look af