Real histories, please

Guest Columns by Sauvik Chakraverti,

The Newindpress on Sunday, 2007-2008

Real histories, please

The entire fuss over the ‘correct’ History book for schools reveals one wretched truth: that History, as a subject, is dead in India. After all, real History begins with those chronicles – like those by Herodotus or Thyucidedes – which were not written by court-appointed historians. The very idea that there can be one ‘correct’ history is as absurd as a Ministry of Truth. Also, great historians like Gibbon and Macaulay were considered such because their ‘histories’ sold in the market. The same firm that published Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations published Gibbon in the very same year, but Gibbon outsold Smith. Macaulay’s history, similarly, was a bestseller, a bible for liberal Whiggism.

To understand how ‘history’ is arrived at, let us take the example of my wanting to know the ‘history of yesterday’. To know this, I consult two general newspapers and one pink paper. The editors, who are the ‘historians of yesterday’, do not put down ‘all the facts of yesterday’ for me to read. From a ‘universe of facts, they select a handful. The three newspapers, my history books, are not identical: otherwise I wouldn’t need three of them.

But, after scanning through them (I don’t read every printed word) I get some idea as to what happened just yesterday. If I need to know more, I can always switch on the TV or the radio.

Thus, to know just the ‘history of yesterday’ requires more than one source. To inquire into ages long past must require much, much more. The fact is also that to really know the history of civilised Man one has to spend time and money and consult hundreds of sources. Knowledge cannot be obtained for free: even the time spent on it has an ‘opportunity cost’: I could have been earning money instead of studying one ‘history’ or the other. There is no reason to believe that one cannot survive extremely happily while being totally ignorant of History: Henry Ford believed that ‘‘History is bunk!’’ and he survived pretty well.

The very first question, then, is: Why study History at all? Arnold Toynbee’s answer, in the foreword to his mammoth A Study of History (note the word ‘study’): ‘‘When one is studying the present and the past, to turn a blind eye to the future would be impossible, and, if it were possible, it would be perverse.’’ Historians study the present and the past. And they do this with an eye on the future. The single government-approved (Ministry of Truth) history book will never perform these functions for our young. No ‘court historian’ ever spoke the truth. They will kill the subject of History (which should be ‘histories’) and also kill the minds of our young.

Personally, and in opposition to Henry Ford, I really enjoy studying ‘histories’: emphasis on the plural. On Babar & Co, I find Bamber Gascoigne’s The Great Mughals , a fantastic read with lovely colour plates. On the British period, Philip Mason’s The Men Who Ruled India is a book I recommend to all. Mason was ICS: a district officer first and foremost, not a secretariat man. In History, as in Justice, it is important to hear both sides. That is why we have two ears: audi alterem partem. The view of ‘court historians’ we all know. Let us now hear the other side. In Mason, we learn how the Indian National Congress was set up by AO Hume writing personally to some of the brightest students of Calcutta University, and we learn what great promises the INC showed in its early years. We will then be able to see the INC from the other side, as it slid into socialism, nationalism, and revolt. We will also get a robust critique of key British players, from Clive and Hastings to Auckland and Curzon.

Another fascinating book, The Lives of the Indian Princes by Charles Allen and Sharda Dwivedi, offers a panoramic view of the rulers of the 600 plus ‘princely states’ that owed their loyalty to the ‘paramount power’ (the British Crown) and were swallowed up by Patel. And allowed to be swallowed up by Mountbatten, Attley, et al, in violation of signed treaties. These two books will give the reader a sharp image of the kind of men who ruled India not so long ago, while also providing a great contrast to those who rule over us today. Keeping an eye on the future, we will be able to consider how we can get men such as these to govern India tomorrow.

John Keay’s history of the spice trade and that of the East India Company are also excellent reads for those with their ‘eye on the future’: global capitalism. While studying these, I also found it necessary to read into players and events in Victorian England, inquiring as to why the liberal project, which burst on to the world with Cobden, Bright, Peel and Gladstone, and across the Channel with Say and Bastiat, collapsed by the turn of the century. In this context, Murray Rothbard’s history of economic thought was a great help. As was B R Tomlinson’s economic histories of India during the Raj and thereafter.

I stayed a while in Mangalore, and was told of the existence of a history of the city – but couldn’t manage to lay my hands on it. No college library had it. Until I finally found a copy in a bookshop in Goa! I think students of history in Mangalore should first study the history of their trading city before studying any other ‘history’. All this can only happen if teachers, parents and students unitedly campaign for the closure of the HRD ministry and all its bureaus controlling and directing ‘education’. Then, real histories will be studied and taught – to inquiring minds who want to know the past, while studying the present, with an eye on the future: a tall order indeed. Real histories will also be written, and the market (not the ministry) will decide which is the best, and which our children should read.

The writer is the author of Antidote: Essays Against the Socialist Indian State and its sequel, Antidote 2: For Liberal Governance