What makes one truly human(e)? I suppose, it is accepting that an alternative reality, which may defy your interpretation(s), exists. If you insist that only your version IS the reality, you are falsifying life itself.
Let me give you an example or two. If you think that only your childhood was THE best one, you have neither seen nor understood the varieties of life which is far more complex. Yet another example could be the so-called obsession with some innocent person, and thereby spreading the vulgarest and the vilest rumours about an absolutely innocent woman out of your brainless vindictiveness. Who gives any creep any right to "finish off" clean lives?
Now yet another interesting example! Who initiated, who is the first person who began women's education in India? J. Sai Deepak provides many gazetted proofs of the South Indian realities. As for the then Bombay province, let me tell you, circa March, 1824, it was Gangabai whose brilliant efforts came to a sudden close due to the outbreak of plague.
The Missionary efforts, that had supported Gangabai, continued. In 1826, two hundred and four girls were studying in Mission school. In 1827, Cynthia Farrar came to India from Boston, and superbly continued the tradition. Later, her 1839 school in Ahmednagar had a student, Savitribai Phule. Jyotiba Phule himself praised Farrar's 'teacher training programme', and admitted Savitribai there before initiating the Pune school. Farrar continued her support later, too.
In the then Calcutta province, the story is richer still. There are women educators such as Hoti Vidyalankar, for instance, who ran a school for women as early as 1811! Not only are there many more Bengali women educators who ran schools, even night schools, for women, but there are also women editors who ran journals/magazines for women. All such details are corroborated by contemporaneous documents, including gazettes.
Why not accept the reality then, instead of insisting on an established narrative, which, moreover, suited the colonisers? While the Dilip Mandal kind of fabrication is absolutely problematic, ignoring an existing genealogy because it is inconvenient to one's own (casteist?) narrative(s) is incomprehensible, too!
Pratima@Historical facts must be accepted as they are. As more and more historical documents emerge, become accessible and available, may be, the existing theories need to be re-written. That honest objectivity has to be the base of scholarship. Otherwise, scholarship would be like the now extinct Phoebus Bulb Company that consciously created bulbs that would not last long so that the company would flourish, though at the expense of the customers!
Quote of the day: "Should we be (re)writing history just to make people feel good? That is not histroy. That is psychiatry," asserts Edward I. Koch.
Word of the day: bigotry. Bigotry refers to an unreasonable and stubborn attachment to one's own beliefs, resulting in intolerance toward those who hold differing views.
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