How to view the past, especially of an entire society as in the past is rooted the future! Indeed it becomes a major issue. Let us, for example, look at the current typical insistent warcry that a certain community ill-treated the downtrodden for five thousand years.
How far is this ideological stance/construct historically factual? Or is it downright rooted in spurious scholarship/arguments? To begin with, in those long lost days, birth never decided anything, neither a profession nor any generational continuity of any profession. Caste allotment as a rigidity is more a colonial construct.
The certain caste blamed for possibly everything being/becoming wrong, okay, let us use the much bandied b-word (oh, no, not 'baddie' nor 'bollywood'), that is, the Brahmins, it is conveniently forgotten, never had any political clout or economic power.
Why, most of the Hindu deities, too, do NOT belong to this so-called privileged caste. Check for yourself the caste of each/any deity if you want, if you do not believe me. Yet, all, including Brahmins, adore, worship, venerate them!
The medieval power structure and its excesses come more from usury, more from the finance related might. Actually, the moneyed 'seth' (they, irrespective of the so-called caste associations, were shrewd n smart enough to latch on to the emergent mercantile capitalism or its versions in its varied avataars) provided loans even to very many kings and princelings, and against each other. Later, these moneybags, cum king making power brokers, even played the colonising English and the local kings against each other.
The entire medieval dynamics, popularised by the colonial mindset as casteist, is rooted in the dirty m-word, that is, monetary transactions. Who wants to actually read up though? Easy instead it is to perpetuate certain prototypes and false consciousnesses!
Be it the Maucaulay debate or the premises behind plays, that is, dramatic pieces that play up the bad practices such as tonsuring the child widows' heads, the actual realities, it is forgotten, are much much more nuanced, layered and complex.
Who wants such niceties honestly? Or any intellectual integrity? Easier it is instead to sensationalise, and win applause by/of the non-thinking audiences out there for "entertainment, entertainment, entertainment" anyways!
Does that mean that past cannot be critically analysed? Surely, not! Absolutely, yes, the past must be opened up, but in a layered, nuanced way that respects the complexities then, and surely not to suit one's own favourite hobby horses, nor to air/further one's own given (at times, not even hidden) agenda!
Otherwise, the eternal Holocausts under different titles and varied guises will forever continue to haunt, harass, harm! Blood is more precious than convenient prejudices!
Pratima@ The barbers (as they were called circa 1855, now would be known as hair stylists!) went on a strike against widows' tonsure in 1855. Since then, sea changes have taken place (even in the lot of women professionally and in the private sphere). Why then glamour-ise such cruelties, such crudities, such vulgarities? Money, fame, cultural power thus gotten is blood money as at stake is the conscious handling, actually ill-treating, of millions of fates!
Quote of the day: "History is not was, it is," wrote William Faulkner, one of greatest authors ever.
Word of the day: Authenticity Authenticity refers to being genuine, real, and true to oneself, one's values, and personality, rather than pretending or being influenced by external pressures. It is about honesty with one's own self, and by extension, with others. It involves the taking responsibility, and aligning actions to the core value systems.
Let us learn grammar: This week onwards, we are going to look at one of the weakest points as far as usage in English goes; namely, articles. In English, as in all European languages, articles are COMPULSORY. They are, moreover, manifest at the surface level, unlike our Indian languages.
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