Skip to main content

Palimpsest


A palimpsest is a manuscript or piece of writing material on which later writing has been superimposed on erased earlier writing. In the olden days, when parchments were used for writing, palimpsests were quite common. The motive for reusing parchments must have been pragmatic and economic. Maybe, political too, as when Christianity replaced original pagan writings with its own texts.

Jawaharlal Nehru described India as a palimpsest, “an ancient palimpsest on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie had been inscribed, and yet no succeeding layer had completely hidden or erased what had been written previously.” India witnessed many conquests. As a result, quite a variety of cultures and civilisations entered the country and intermingled. Hinduism, Islam and the Western civilisation, all have left their imprints on the palimpsest that India is today.

The present government in Delhi is going out of its way to erase a lot of the country’s past and write an entirely new history on the palimpsest. I am not going to discuss how some historians are working tirelessly on that process. I would like to bring a simple but striking example here. From no less a personage than our prime minister himself.

In 2013, Narendra Modi promised the nation a humongous memorial for Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. It was Modi’s characteristic way of snatching history from the Congress. Gradually he would snatch almost everything from that Party – the last being the parliamentary membership of Rahul Gandhi.

Sardar Patel got his due anyway. No less than the world’s tallest statue which was completed in 2018. By 2018, however, Modi had built up his own image which was perhaps even more humongous than the world’s tallest statue. So he did not need Sardar Patel anymore. In 2021, he erased the name of Patel from the world’s largest stadium in Ahmedabad and renamed it Narendra Modi Stadium. The tradition of palimpsests did not end in the era of parchments.

When Modi came to watch the India-Australia cricket match in the Narendra Modi Stadium on 9 March 2023, he was accompanied by the Australian Prime Minister too. The hoardings all around showed Modi’s various faces. It was Modi everywhere. Even in the gift presented by BCCI to Modi: a portrait of Modi himself. It was all so ridiculously narcissistic that someone tweeted: “Narendra Modi’s friend’s son [Jay Shah] presenting Narendra Modi’s photo to Narendra Modi at the Narendra Modi Stadium.”

We learnt later from some of the media, that have not surrendered their courage yet, that the Stadium was filled with Modi bhakts on that day so that there would only be cheers for Modi and no voices or signs of dissent anywhere around. All the tickets were given to BJP members and Modi bhakts. Even Australian tourists in India did not get tickets. When Australia complained, a few tickets were made available for the tourists.

This is just the beginning. I am sure we will witness a lot more of the tallest Indian’s narcissism after the 2024 general elections.

Modi is not the only leader who named a stadium after himself. Mussolini did it in Italy though the Italians later renamed it and today it is called the Stadium of the Marbles.

Stalin, the dictator of Russia, too named a stadium after himself. And the Russians too erased his name later. Today that stadium is known as the Tofiq Bahramov Republican Stadium.

Hitler too did it. But the World War prevented its completion.

In short, our Prime Minister has illustrious company in the art and craft of Palimpsests. 

PS. This post is part of #BlogchatterA2Z 2023

Previous Post: Octlantis

Coming up tomorrow: Quintin Matsys

Comments

  1. Never knew any of this.
    Coffee is on, and stay safe.

    ReplyDelete
  2. “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
    “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
    Both quotes from 1984 by George Orwell. The book is almost like a prophecy. Are we any better than the citizens of Oceania?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I presented 1984 a couple of days back with the same comparison...

      https://matheikal.blogspot.com/2023/04/nineteen-eighty-four.html?m=1

      Delete
  3. The truth of Palimpsests! Erased but not forggtten and how we wish some things had not been written at all.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Writing is inevitable. But we could be honest about it. After all, the posterity will get to the truth one way or another.

      Delete
  4. I think i should get started on increasing my patience. Because the wait for his comeuppance looks long at this point. Loved this post so much!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Nehru's description of India was quite apt. Not surprising given the intellectual wealth he was bestowed with.
    What happened in the past might be to our liking or not. But no way we can erase that. What has happened has happened. We just need to accept and move on.
    I don't agree with this tendency to alter history to different people's likeness. This happens not just in India. Even in developed nations like the US and the UK. It shouldn't be done.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There is a clear motive behind all the alterations and modifications. That motive is more alarming.

      Delete
  6. As much as I despise some of the political stances of Modi, I am.not an anti Modi person per se. But yes he is more of a crude businessman than a politician. But who is brave and capable enough to oppose him? Noone. That is the sad truth. And if we go deeper I feel Modi is just a presentable face. The reigns are with Amit Shah and Ajit Doval

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. He won't allow anyone to emerge. See what's done to Kejriwal, Sisodia, and others. When we all begin to feel the dictatorship closer home, we will long for better days.

      Delete
  7. Hari OM
    Yes, all such people tupple - eventually. Meanwhile, the mess and trauma left in their trail must be endured... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That mess and trauma have long lasting impacts. I'm astounded by the views of the young students on certain vital matters. Attitudes have been vitiated.

      Delete
  8. "In short, our Prime Minister has illustrious company in the art and craft of Palimpsests. "- Lovely post!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Rewriting history or trying to erase or change it, is all wrong. The pomp and show, well all political parties do that. I remember a time when everything was either indira gandhi or rajiv gandhi. Modi shows no remorse in doing so and that is what irks most people

    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

Two Nuns and two questions

The nuns kept in custody  Two Catholic nuns were arrested on 25 July 2025 at Durg railway station for allegedly trafficking tribal women from Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh to Agra in UP. Today’s newspapers in Kerala have expressed their contempt of the act more vehemently than I had expected. It seems secularism has hope yet in this country. For those who are not aware of the incident, two nuns were arrested because some criminals of a depraved organisation called Bajrang Dal in Chhattisgarh chose to conclude that the nuns were committing the crime of human-trafficking. Since that charge wouldn’t stick, because the women confessed that they were going voluntarily to take up jobs with the help of the nuns in order to raise their families from miserable poverty in a country that claims to be a $5-tillion-economy, another charge was fabricated that the nuns had indulged in religious conversion. Now let us look at certain facts. Though I keep questioning the Christian churches for...

Missing Women of Dharmasthala

The entrance to the temple Dharmasthala:  The Shadows Behind the Sanctum Ananya Bhatt, a young medical student from Manipal, visited the Dharmasthala Temple and she never returned to her hostel. She vanished without a trace. That was in 2003. Her mother, Sujata Bhatt, a stenographer working with the CBI, rushed to the temple town in search of her daughter. Some residents told her that they had seen Ananya walking with the temple officials. The local police refused to help in any way. Soon Sujata was abducted by three men, assaulted, and rendered unconscious. She woke up months later in a hospital in Bangalore (Bengaluru). Now more than two decades later, she is back in the temple premises to find her daughter’s remains and perform her last rites. Because a former sanitation worker of the temple came to the local court a few days back with a human skeleton and the confession that he had buried countless schoolgirls in uniform and other young women in the temple premises. This ma...

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

The Chhattisgarh Story

Deforestation in Chhattisgarh Kerala’s Catholic Church is teeming with rage these days because of the arrest of two nuns in Chhattisgarh on false charges. No one seems to understand the real politics behind the Modi government’s enmity towards Christian missionaries in Chhattisgarh as well as other backward states in its neighbourhood. Modi is selling the tribal areas and forestlands to the corporate sector part by part, his friend Adani being the chief benefactor. The Christian missionaries are a severe hindrance in that commerce. Let us get some facts right, at least. The Adivasi villagers allege that Gram Sabhas (local governing bodies) were forged or manipulated under pressure from Adani and the BJP government officials in order to take away their lands. In Hasdeo Aranya, minutes of the local body meetings were altered to show the villagers’ consent for land transfers. Also, the Chhattisgarh Scheduled Tribes Commission found that Panchayat secretaries were detained and coerc...