Friday, February 2, 2024

History as Hysteria

In India, one always seems to be living in very many historical eras simultaneously, all at the same time, so to say. Here, in Pune, for example, post January 26, there were at least three students' fests (by the BMCC, by the BHAU, and at the SPPU) that encouraged the start-up's by the young brigade. 

On the contrary, on very many wapp groups (with urgent urging to spread the 'news', the good word, further far and wide), since January 26, a video is doing rounds wherein  a lady teacher in a very small village refuses to put up the image of Devi Saraswati during the Republic Day Ceremony of the school, and in a truly heated fashion, she counters the villagers insisting that traditions be followed with "What did Saraswati do for education?"

Honestly, if we keep our eyes and ears open, currently, there are huge, concentrated and concerted efforts to re-write very many historical facts. In the narrative about the Freedom Struggle, for example, Lokmanaya Tilak, who questioned the British, and was well-known in his times by his contemporaries to be making the common man aware of the colonial ills, has disappeared! If he is allowed/accorded any space at all, it is as a "sanatani"! Come again!!??!!

Hey,  wassup on the WhatsApp indeed! The social media is being used for releasing all sorts of alternative genealogies. Sure hisory can be and should be viewed from multiple perspectives. But any and every perspective MUST be supported by actual data, right? 

History cannot be loose opinions, wild suppositions based on the surmises of an individual or a group that has numbers on its side. Democracy is NOT number game! Such attempts would be demogaugery! History writing is serious business. It cannot be a hysterical wish-fulfilment, warping realities and facts, right?

Pratima@ Academic debates or intellectual assertions, given their trickle down effect on the society as such, cannot be and must not be narrowly casteist. Why is there then so much Bramhin bashing? Oh, yes, by the way, very few amongst them are. "bhat"! Historical facts are indeed not governed by hysterical 're-actions'!!!


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