HISTORY FACTORY​
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Why should we be critical of history, as we know it?
‘Islamic atrocities’ during the medieval age resulted in the emergence of untouchables, Dalits and Indian Muslims.' 1
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You probably didn’t know this, or if you did, you might have considered “new facts” emerging from creative minds who work laboriously to type out lengthy Whatsapp messages everyday to keep you from, even for a second, doubting that India is not the BEST.
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Do you (or Don’t you, in a rhetorical sense) -
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Think India invented plastic surgery and the first surgeon was … and his patient was the Hindu GOD Ganpati?
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Think India gave the world the Pythagorean Theorem (named after the Greek Pythagoras)
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Think we made the first air-borne vehicle? 7000 years before it was actually built? Wright Brothers, step aside. We got Maharishi Bharadwaj in the house. 2
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We think we’ve read history, but most of us know one particular HiStory. Yes the textbook that we read was, in fact, a storybook. Or so is the general notion that the India’s Hindu nationalists seem to be riding on.
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When they decided to rename Aurangzeb Road in Delhi to A P J Abdul Kalam Road, it ruffled the feathers of many historians who see this an explicit politicization of history that caters to the Hindutva ideology of the government in power. Recently, Rajeev Gupta, a RSS activist (ironically associated with the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti) met the Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju to appeal for amendment of the 1975 guideline that barres the government from rechristening roads. 3
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But why are they bothering to change the name of a road? How does it matter to me if my road is named after an iconic figure (mostly dead) who never even so much as walked on the same street I live on? But you see that it riles people up for all the wrong reasons. They have the potential to completely obliterate mental and physical landscapes. History has become a political project.
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In an article titled ‘Making and Remaking India – The Creation of Indian Identity’ Jaideep Prabhu cites an instance of the typecasting of Muslim rulers are outsiders and a negative influence, so much so, that in contemporary television ‘dramas’ of historical figures, they often play villains!
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‘In defence of Hinduism, Indian scholars cited works quoted in Orientalist treatises and theories of the Aryan race that they appropriated—since the Aryans were the origin of every field of knowledge from science to philosophy and the authors of the Vedas and Upanishads, Hinduism was imbued with greatness from antiquity. Ancient India became for the nationalist the classical age, and the contemporary period was the modern renaissance, while the period between the ancient and the contemporary was a dark age. This inevitably labelled the Muslim period as a dark age for India, and the classical heritage of Islam remained external to Indian history.’ 4
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Our cultural minister, Mr. Mahesh Sharma, who quite literally appeared out of thin air like a certain mythical character from his beloved Mahabharata, in a recent series of sweeping statements, said:
’I respect Bible and Quran but they are not central to the soul of India in same the way as Gita and Ramayana are.’ 5
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What does that even mean? Layers of (recent) history pulverized to dust in favour of a piece of ancient Hindu literature? To say that the gall of this government (he is a Union Minister, after all) to suggest that the Hindu scriptures be made a part of the school history curriculum is appalling is an understatement. It reiterates the fact that we are being governed by a bunch of unapologetic, chauvinistic fascists. And all this coming from a person, who on a jingoistic note said that India needs to be cleansed of Western influences, consisting of and not limited to drugs. For a man, who believes in mythical history, he should’ve known that the origin of cannabis is in India, and even finds mention in the vedas. But this discussion is for later.
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There is a sense of intolerance in narratives that do no fit. They make a history that is central to certain belief systems, impure. So, a particular religion couldn’t have been an ally or can’t compliment ideologies of another one. Entire empires can be written off. Myths often get commingled with facts. And what are these facts based on? Texts that are so ancient that they can’t be validated anymore. So when someone opens up the debate to question and reinterpret these ideas of purely mythical origin, fatwas and bans have become the norm. Artists, writers, filmmakers, like MF Hussain, Rohinton Mistry, Salman Rushdie, A R Rahman, are just a few that come to light, who have borne the brunt of such intolerance. MF Hussain had a fatwa issued against him for the depiction of India in his painting, once said about Indian culture, as it were:
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‘It was a unique composite culture. But there are forces within every culture that want to turn away from that. To purify things. I’ve wanted to celebrate this composite culture. I once did a series called painting from the nine religions: Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and everything else ism. Those paintings were exhibited in the United Nations building. But a few for political reasons of their own started to raise a hue and cry, saying I was corrupting Indian culture, by which they mean Hindu culture. They are just political people. It is the painting I care about.’ 6
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It seems reasonable. Even if it is not, the right to dissent is a fundamental right. The dominant powers influence the popular media, censor and ban films, books, textbooks, too, artwork, cartoons, which have the ability to widen our perspective of the past. What doesn’t seem reasonable is the desire to write a history that unifies all into one universal fabric. What doesn’t make sense is the drive to use history as a political tool. Take the case of the Saraswati River Project, undertaken by the government to “revive” the holy river in the region of Rajasthan. Now, one might be tempted to ask what they based it on. In all probability they might say that it is based on an ancient Hindu text, written in the 2nd century, whose author remains unknown, without batting an eyelid. And now that the Indus Valley Civilization doesn’t lie in the geographical limits of India, it becomes even more significant for a country that wants to create an identity as the oldest civilization in the world.
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There is a sense of desperation to fuel the cultural ego of a country that probably wouldn’t have existed as one if it wasn’t for the colonial rule. India is not a civilization. The nation was never supposed to have one history. Each set of rulers that invaded India, from the Greeks, Portuguese, Persians to the British, had to first create an India in order to rule it. The British did so by means of the Great Indian Survey that undertook scientific mapping of land, resources and cultures. In the early nineteenth and twentieth century, in order to overthrow the British Raj, Indian political leaders had to first unify the diverse geographies and culture as a whole to make an India to defend it. It was a secular experiment to commit to a set of values, as described in the constitution, to create a better place to live in. India’s rewriting of its own history to see whose version is right is problematic.
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‘We can now see these identity constructions for what they were, and continue to be; semiotic packages reflecting aspirations to find continuity with an idealized past and a bridge to an idealized future.’ 7
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Some fragments of history have been preserved and museified to play to the Orientalist gaze of the Western World. AGK Menon in an essay titled, Interrogating Modern Architecture, writes about how in a bid to sweep ‘Indian architecture’ in one umbrella for Festival of India, in 1986, the exhibition analysed (for foreign audiences) the devices and elements that define the ‘essence of Indian architecture’. Notwithstanding the issues of defining Indian architecture as one whole, it ended up documenting architecture belonging to the ‘hot-and-dry’ climate (North India) and left out ideas of building from other geographically diverse regions of the country.
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These lead to certain ideas of tradition and Indianness, which apart from giving a biased view and being unfair to other equally compelling cultures, plays to the Western gallery. The tourism industry relies heavily on this idea of an ‘authentic India’ and history becomes a product of consumption. It would probably explain why a lot of Hollywood movies ended up shooting in the rustic locales of Rajasthan, which lends a sense of ‘Indianness’ propelled by media.
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This points to perspective we have about history. Our brush with it is through the media and our textbooks. And we weren’t taught to question history in our schools. At least, I wasn’t. History was really his(meaning the author/historian’s) story. One linear story replete with heroes and villains.
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In his book The Use and Abuse of Hisory, or, How the Past is Taught to Children’, in an essay titled ‘India: History without identity’ Marc Ferro writes about ‘Things they don’t tell young Indians’:
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From the beginning, two themes appear in history as taught to Indian children:that before borrowing, India gave to, and taught, others..the wisdom of the Indians comes from ‘their knowledge of the vedas…In this way, beliefs of the Hindu faith slip into history, which does not distinguish value-judgements and factual statements.’ 8
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Did you know that we were constantly attacked by the Arabs, Turks, Persians and Afghans?
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Did you know about the ethnic conflict between the Aryan invaders of the north and the Indians of the south?
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Did you know that the principles of the Mauryan empire instituted spying as an important function of the government. The Artha-Shastra mentions it.
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History, or histories rather are meant to widen our perception of the world. There is no singular history. So, when our Prime Minsiter urges Indian scientists to “discover the mysteries” of Indian science and technology, I really hope they find the teleportation device, which has been definitely lurking around somewhere in some ancient text, so that we can go back in history and see things for as they were. And maybe, even settle there, in the marvelous land, that it once was.
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Sources:
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http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/to-woo-dalits-rss-rewrites-history/article1-1266920.aspx
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The Use and Abuse of History, or, How the Past is Taught to Children, Marc Ferro
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Interrogating Modern Architecture, AGK Menon
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APPENDIX (coz the rage against the Hindutva project should be limited to one page)
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Where does culture take place?
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It takes place in the exchange of an idea, manifested in the many forms we view as art (barring tweets and concoctions from IT cells and so-called “nationalist” news media). The citizen makes the culture. Only, the basis of patronage of a culture is – culture makes the citizen. So, for the powers that be, culture is the image – and as a discerning citizen would have noticed, the ideal of “nationalism”, as one perpetrated by the government, is the subject of the image that is being projected to the country and the world. And much to the gratification of the orientalist that saw this country as an exotic, mythical land in the past, it’s the realm of historical myth that is being re-purposed to make claims of grandeur and excellence. So, in a way culture is the continuum that flows from the past into the present and will eventually move us into the future.
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What is this Indian culture?
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Today, it has become a top-down imagination. I mean, why is there a ministry of culture? Does culture need to be produced? Does it need re-branding and a sarkari stamp of “nationalist”? When I think of the Indian culture, a stream of media-purported images comes into my head: the kind of things that are shamelessly paraded around the world, as representative of the whole country. We don’t see it in a flea bazaar of Indian art and expression, we see it in a socio-political sphere – something that has a moralistic sense of righteousness as something that sells, something that can be used and reused and still not lose its power to extoll virtues of “our values”. Something that can be called ‘our’ without having a majority of the country up in arms to contest the collective conscious. Perhaps, something that the majority likes. Something like a Hindu epic brought onto fore by the I&B ministry days into the most stringent lockdown in one of the poverty-stricken countries? The manufacture of a collective cultural identity is superseded by the encouragement of a collective religious supremism.
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Control over the narrative is an expensive affair.
The Central Vista project has been given sanctions at the same time that the country stopped moving to help the health ministry to finds its feet months after major countries were in free-fall due to a pandemic. Many have regarded it as blatant vulgarity in times of economic trouble. To demolish a most-important Grade I heritage precinct, and with it Grade I heritage buildings, which signifies places and buildings of national and historic importance, needs a largely democratic process to make sure everyone, especially the experts in the field, are on board, let alone a public competition to allow a variety of interpretations to discussion. Apart from the stupendous cost that went into building a palatial PM’s residence 30 years ago – which will be redundant since the new residence shall be on the Central Vista (yes, you read this correctly!) - and the whopping numbers projected for the new project, one wonders what is the issue with the current buildings that can’t be resolved with adaptive reuse? The buildings represent Herbert Baker and Edward Lutyen’s much admired blended style that we call Indo-Sarcenic, a blend of Hindu-Islamic architecture. The character of buildings around, too, uses a range of architectural references of different regions (and religiosities, if you like) of India. There are large swathes of the Indian landscape that might be underrepresented in the architecture, but in a way, it describes the pluralism in its semantics that few modern buildings in India have shown. How does the new development stand in the face of this superlative design and still make a point of complete demolition and rebuilding? We will never find the answer to this because discussions have largely happened only after the approval of the design and have selectively identified the participants that won’t counter-question the government.
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Who is at the reigns of the affairs of our built environment?
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To exercise a little cynicism in saying that heritage and history will be played with loosely in the Central Vista project isn’t without precedent. Bimal Patel, Modi’s trusted architect, who heads the firm chosen for the Central Vista, had previously executed The Kashi-Vishwanath temple corridor project and Sabarmati waterfront redevelopment. Sniggering the layered morphology of the area near the temple at Varanasi, which was cleared to create a linear vista to the Ganga river, as squalor and filth, he displays a total disregard for environmental and social assessments on projects of such a scale. The Sabarmati was concretised and water is flown in from a dam (into a river!) daily because it was in essence a large beautification project with obvious environmental costs. He said of the temple project – ‘heritage impact assessments attempt to measure highly subjective ‘costs to heritage’ that a project is likely to cause. They neither assess the benefits of a project nor the cost to future generations of not undertaking a project.’ This disregard for scientific rigour and environmental and cultural sensitivity isn’t what you would expect from someone who will shape the image of a democratic India for years to come. More than anything, this project has the power to set the benchmark for conservation practices and ideologies.
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‘Who watches the watchmen?’
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The bastion of heritage is protected by the collective conscious and regulatory norms. But who makes the norms? The DC rules were gloriously twisted to accommodate a new Garvi Gujarat building, on almost priceless public land in the heritage precinct by changing land use and relaxing heritage and environmental guidelines for the same. It doesn’t seem fitting for a leader of all states of the country, who makes no bones about congratulating himself for his Gujarat model at any given time. Maybe the country deserves an Indian Model: devoid of state impunity to rewrite norms that the design industry adheres to; with sensitivity to all cultures and the environment (context – remember school, architects?); doesn’t liken Indian architecture to a particular “style”; built only when necessary.
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It has lead to certain ideas of tradition and Indian-ness, which apart from giving a biased view and being unfair to other equally compelling cultures, plays to the Western gallery. The tourism industry relies heavily on this idea of an “authentic” India and history becomes a product of consumption. It would probably explain why a lot of Hollywood movies ended up shooting in the rustic locales of Rajasthan, which lends a sense of ‘Indian-ness’ propelled by media.
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Whose heritage is it, anyway?
‘It seems God has chosen me for this sacred work on earth,’ said Narendra Modi on the Varanasi project. In an ironical circle of life, the white-man’s burden is now the saffron-worshipper’s to take. It is biblical to see the head of a democracy making allusions to playing God in a land already fractured to its bedrock on religious disparities and hate-mongering.
How fatuous is it to create a hierarchy of a historical palimpsest that is India? Leave alone the idea of plurality, does an objective conservative or historical view demand such an absolute perspective of built heritage? Are we to embark on a never-ending quest to the origins of our entire built heritage into the vague realms of myths and declare all of us as squatters or, I daresay, enemies of the primitive life forms? Let’s make a Museum of Anthropology at the Ayodhya site, in that case. Culture has become the means to inflate the egos of those who are made to believe that they were always on the right side of history. Culture asserts dominance of a particular group of people, in this case.
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The way the establishment has validated their ideas and myths in the court of law, as if to ascertain that one culture is better than the other, tears the fabric that many artists, designers and thinkers draw upon to create unique works of art. How does one straddle the landscape of our cultural identity if it is partitioned into “good” and “bad”? If the government is willing to construct the literal corridor of power in Delhi without a transparent process and more than enough dialogue, or bulldoze over layers of history to create a hero-villain-ised versions of past events, or if returns to a religious calling to create culture hierarchies, then it signifies the death of a democratic culture. What is the point of design without democracy?
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History, or histories rather are meant to widen our perception of the world. There is no singular history. And if our heritage is a rich tapestry of the rise and fall of - scientifically verifiable - kingdoms and regimes, until unified under an Indian umbrella, it is the responsibility of the highest power (that of a democracy) that took it upon itself to unify them all to celebrate the diversity.
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Sources:
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