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Knowledge in world history in english
Abhiyan Civil Services
Is the writing of history necessarily political?
In the words of Sir John Seeley, a 19th century British historian: 'History is past politics; and politics, present history'. History, at its barest essential, is a compilation of facts – a record of important people, decisions, wars and events which have moulded and influenced society over time. Any historian worth his salt cannot just enumerate such facts blandly. As E.H. Carr says -“History means interpretation”. A historian looks back in time and examines past events in light of his knowledge of the present. He shifts through archaeological evidence, written and oral records and then selects material he considers relevant and weaves them into a narrative that his readers can appreciate. During this process, he cannot but be influenced by the present environment and the social milieu he is a part of. Again, in the words of Carr, “we can view the past, and achieve our understanding of the past, only through the eyes of the present…..the very words he uses – words like democracy, empire, war, revolution – have current connotations…..” (Carr 1961, p.13). Politics is one factor that is an intrinsic part of every social environment. The influence of politics is prevalent throughout different time periods and nations. The views of the leaders of the State, the policies they formulate, the agitations they initiate, the institutions they create for governance – all shape and influence the character and course of a nation. However much a historian may try, he cannot but be a conduit through which these major influences of the past are conveyed to the present reader. It is not possible for a historian to write about past events in a vacuum; he must necessarily build the backdrop against which such events occur, as well as provide a character study of the chief players of the plot. Unless this is done, he will lose grip on the narrative flow of his tale as well as the attention of his reader. Since political leaders and their influence dominate the making of historically relevant events, historical writing per force has to give due importance to politics in its narrative. At the most, different historians from different schools of historiography may present a particular point of view but their narrative has to have its basis in the political events of the period they are writing about. For instance, different historians have diametrically differing views while writing on India’s history, especially the National Movement for Freedom. While the major milestones of the freedom struggle as they unfolded are common knowledge, but they have been given dramatically different interpretations depending on the political affiliations of the historians concerned. When we look at older historical writing in India, treatises like Rajtarangani and Akbarnama, for instance, extolled the virtues and magnanimity of the emperors concerned, primarily because their writers enjoyed royal patronage and were obligated to present a positive and laudatory picture of the time. During modern times as well, we have historians with loyalties towards the British, justifying colonialism and the British rule in India. MrityunjayaVidyalankar, a Brahman scholar in the employment of the East India Company in Calcutta in the early 19th century, wrote of history as that of gods and kings where dynasties were founded by divine grace and kingdoms retained so long as the ruler was true to dharma. His position was that of the 'praja', the ordinary subject. His 'Rajabali' was written in 1808 in Bengali for the instruction of company officials in the history of India. Utilitarians like James Mill believed in enlightened despotism to uplift backward Indian society. His 'History of British India' published in 1828 divided ancient and medieval periods of Indian history into Hindu and Muslim and modern as British. The same periodization was followed by other British historians as well. The idea of centuries of despotic rule of maharajas and sultans with absolute power and an autocratic bureaucracy ruling over ignorant and stagnant masses was propagated. Historians of the Imperialistic school of historiography justified colonialism. "The outline of the present situation in India is that we have been disseminating ideas of abstract political right, and the germs of representative institutions, among a people that had for centuries been governed autocratically, and in a country where local liberties and habits of self-government had been long obliterated or had never existed"(Chirol 1910, p.viii). Cambridge historians like Anil Seal, John Broomfield and Gordon Johnson gave new interpretations to colonial rule. According to them, political organisation was based along caste and religious lines. The national movement was an elitist movement where one group fought against another to find favour with the British. They felt the national leaders were power hungry and motivated by their own selfish interests. Like the Imperialists, they tried to justify colonial rule. There were also 'administrative historians' like V.A. Smith and Macaulay who based their writing mainly on official reports and documents and so presented a one-sided view of history. "Nationalist sentiments grew easily among the people because India was unified and welded into a nation during the 19th and 20th centuries. "(Bipan Chandra, 'History of Modern India', p. 202). Nationalist writing in India started as a reaction to the above grossly distorted depiction by British historians. "It is, needless to say, a primary sign of the nationalist consciousness that it will not find its own voice in histories written by foreign rulers and that it will set out to write for itself the account of its own past."(Partha Chatterjee, page 77). Only after Western education during British rule, did such historical writing start when newly educated Indians studied colonial writings and countered with their own version of events. "It was, in fact, in the course of writing the history of British rule in India that English educated Bengalis abandoned the criteria of divine intervention, religious value, and the norms of right conduct in judging the rise and fall of kingdoms."( Partha Chatterjee, page 90). Recent history of Bengal, especially after the revolt of 1857 and the atrocities committed, demonstrated that acts of immorality could also win kingdoms. "History was no longer the play of divine will or the fight of right against wrong; it had become merely the struggle for power."(Partha Chatterjee, page 96 ) Many text book authors in Bengal, like Mrityunjay earlier mentioned, considered themselves as ordinary subjects. But later educated middle class Bengali writers learnt to play the role of mediator between the elite rulers and their subjects. As Partha Chatterjee puts it, they "had acquired a consciousness in which they were already exercising the art of politics and stagecraft."(Partha Chatterjee, page 92) Nationalist writers like J.N.Sarkar, Lala Lajpath Rai, C.F.Andrews and H.C. Roychoudhary tried to promote political integration and arouse patriotism. This kind of writing inspired national pride and became part of and strengthened the national movement. During the Swadeshi movement, patriotic journalism, prose and poetry reached a high. Patriotic songs written by Rabindra Nath Tagore and Rajani Kant Sen have become historical icons and are sung even today. These writings have also influenced historians while writing about that period. Bipan Chandra points out that on the one hand, "British officials and writers of the time constantly advanced the thesis that Indians had never been able to rule themselves in the past, that Hindus and Muslims had always fought one another, that Indians were destined to be ruled by foreigners, that their religion and social life were degraded and uncivilised making them unfit for democracy or even self-government. Many of the nationalist leaders tried to arouse the self-confidence and self-respect of the people by countering this propaganda" ( Bipan Chandra, page 204-205) Thus they pointed to the cultural heritage of India with pride and referred to the political achievements of rulers like Ashoka, Chandragupta Vikramaditya and Akbar. Some, on the other hand, went the other extreme and by glorifying ancient India and ignoring the achievements of the medieval period, encouraged communal disharmony between Hindus and Muslims- "The struggle between Pratap and Akbar, or Shivaji and Aurangzeb had to be viewed as a political struggle in its particular historical setting. To declare Akbar or Aurangzeb a 'foreigner' and Pratap or Shivaji a 'national' hero was to project into past history the communal outlook of 20th century India. This was not only bad history; it was also a blow to national unity."(Bipan Chandra, page 265) It is also important to note that historians made use of press publications, records of meetings of provincial and local associations, Indian National Congress conferences and nationalist newspapers as source material. One such example would be of ‘Kesari' newspaper which Tilak started to edit from 1839 and preached nationalism in its columns. Use of all this source material also caused a political slant to enter the historians' writing. Marxist writers like M.N.Roy in 'India in Transition'(published 1922) and R. Palme Dutt in 'India Today' (published 1940) focused more on the economic exploitation by the British and put more emphasis on social and economic organisations and their effect on historical events. Some like Jyotibhai Phule postulated that Sanskrit speaking Brahmans descended from the alien Aryans while the indigenous people were considered lower caste. He demarcated between the dominant upper caste and oppressed lower caste and used caste confrontation to justify political movements. In the 1960s, historians like Sumit Sarkar, E.P.Thompson and Partha Chatterjee wrote history from the point of view of the subjugated, the poor, workers and women. Ranajit Guha, in 'Subaltern Studies 1' states, "The historiography of Indian nationalism has for a long time been dominated by elitism-colonial elitism and bourgeois-nationalist elitism."(Guha, page 1)"What is clearly left out of this unhistorical (elitist) historiography is the politics of the people."(Guha, page 4) Even though these historians focussed their attention on the problems of the masses, the downtrodden and on class inequalities, they could not separate this from the politics of the day as it is that which determines all other aspects of society. Even today, the major political parties of the country use the press and social media for tom-toming their achievements and denigrating the opposition. Whether Gandhi or Sardar Patel, all past political luminaries are fair game in this race. The public records of these bombastic claims and counterclaims are going to be the source material for future historians when they research and write about this period of Indian history- "every journalist knows today that the most effective way to influence opinion is by the selection and arrangement of the appropriate facts...The facts speak only when the historian calls on them, it is he who decides to which facts to give the door, and in what order or context."( Carr 1961, p.5) Depending on which ideology the historian favours, whether Hindutva or Communist or Dalit etc, his writing is bound to be biased. Politics is so firmly entrenched in our society that it is impossible to be totally objective. No matter which branch of history he may be a scholar of- social, economic, anthropological or cultural- no historian can avoid the overreaching dominance of politics from influencing his work. Lastly, another important point to be considered is the financial aspect of being a historian. A historian needs financial support for carrying out his research and study. He depends on scholarship grants, stipends and royalties from published works, and unpalatable it may be, but the truth is that politics sells. The twists and turns of political battles, the rise and fall from power of political parties, the rise in favour or fall from grace of party leaders. All these are of immense interest for the common man as they affect his life in myriad ways. Such dramatic political ups and downs also dominate media headlines and television debates. All this provides plenty of grist for the historian's mill. He knows that an informed account and in-depth analysis of all such developments will be of value for present and future students of history and politics. So, it makes sound economic sense to focus on such political matters in his historical writings. Thus, after considering the points discussed in this paper, I think it is right to say that the writing of history is necessarily political. BIBLIOGRAPHY- Chirol, Valentine. 1910. Indian Unrest. London: Macmillan and co., Limited. Carr, E.H. 1961. What is History? Cambridge University Press Bipan Chandra. 2001. History of Modern India. ( Chapter 10 and 11) Chaterjee, Partha. 1993. “ The Nation and Its Fragments”. USA: Princeton University Press Guha, Ranajit.2009. The Small Voice of History. India: Permanent Black
Kartik Mathur
Do ideas inaugurate world history
When exploring the question, ‘if ideas inaugurate world history’, we have to assume that this certain ‘idea’ belongs to a larger congregation of people with the same ideology. If there is a large assemblage of people who share the same motive to bring change to a particular systemin an attempt to overthrow it, we can say that this could be regarded as a revolution. Although this does not answer the aforementioned question, we can say that the emergence of ideas from revolutions inaugurate world history. In this essay, we will attempt to examine the above statement while taking examples of the Industrial Revolution and the French revolution. A revolution can be regarded as a mass social or political movement with the intention to overthrow or modify a previous regime with a new one. In the case of both the French and the Industrial Revolution, the common masses were actively involved. The mass struggle of the common people and the peasants against the aristocratic and elite classes in a revolution can be associated as a classic eschatological struggle between right and wrong, or good and evil. A revolution is mostly limited in a particular geographical location. What set the French and the industrial revolution apart was that the outcome of these revolutions brought upon a new world order. If we take the instance of the French revolution, the ideas and the politics that arose out of that period have been incorporated by the majority of the world. One of the ideas that emerged out of this revolution was that of liberty. During the latter years of the 18th century, there was material discontent and impoverishment in France. The worst affected were the common people. The result of this socio-economic crisis, in ordinary circumstances, would have been rioting but only for a short period of time. But, due to a large-scale convulsion that took place during France at that time, combined with propaganda and elections, a new political dimension was added to the people’s voices. On a political stage, with the backing of the masses, the idea of liberty became an expectation. The thought of liberty from hierarchal despotism was unheard of anywhere in the world at that time. Eric Hobsbawm puts it best when he says “They introduced a tremendous and earth-shaking idea of liberation from gentry and oppression“(Hobsbawm 1996, p. 61). Thus, we can say that the common people were drowned in the revolutionary rhetoric of liberty. It should also be noted that when we mean the notion of liberty was never unheard of before, it was meant in terms of slavery. Up until then, liberty was only used to describe in contradiction to slavery. Thus the common people gained a more legal interpretation of the term liberty during the revolution. Another political decree that has been adopted by many governments around the worldis that of popularsovereignty. As the common people have elected representatives to run their government, they are answerable to the people and that the government is sustained by the people. This decree was a major paradigm- shift in the political sphere. This is because,before the revolution, many kings claimed to have been chosen by God itself to rule, thus giving them a sense of divine power that cannot be challenged by anyone. This shift from ruling due to the backing of God to ruling due to the backing of the people was first seen during the French revolution. Hobsbawm informs us that “A constitutional monarchy based on a propertied oligarchy expressing itself through a representative assembly was more congenial to most bourgeois liberals than the democratic republic which might have seemed a more logical expression of their theoretical aspirations; though there were some who did not hesitate to advocate this also.( Hobsbawm , 1996, p.59) He also says that- No doubt the French nation, and its subsequent imitators, did not initially conceive of its interests clashing with those of other peoples, but on the contrary, saw itself as inaugurating, or taking part in, a movement of the general liberation of peoples from tyranny.( Hobsbawm 1996, p. 59) The prospect of overthrowing the king and establishing a constitutional monarchy was seen by many as the first step to establish a democratic or even an egalitarian society. The rise and fall of Maximilien Robespierreand the Jacobin club are examples of political sovereignty as the government was overthrown even after it was elected by the people. There are many other ways in which france influenced the world. Oen such instance is that of anti-clericalism. The separation of the state from the church was previously never experinecd before and thus due to this, many lands and holding that were in the power of the church were given back to the people. The church were also excempted from paying the tax when they occupied the lands, so this in fact made some more cash inflow for the common people. Another major area where the French influenced the world was through their indirect influence on various world political system. As previously mentioned, the ideaas of the French revolution were ecumenical. And such is the case that many of these ideas were later adopted into many of the political systems in the contemporary world. One such instance is that of communism. According to its theoretical doctrine, communism mans that the entire society should be owned by the community and the all the resources should eballocated according to the abilities of an individual, and not their status in the society. We can identify such a pettern emerging in the French revolution. Communsin calls for the overthrowing of capitalism, the same way the common people called for the eradication of the rigid and the old fashioned feudal laws. The emergence of the middle class also helped them allocate resources accordingly. The relevance of communism in the modern world is truly extraordinary. The main aim of the Bolshevik revolution was to overthrow the tzar authority and thus they implemented a communist society. The cold war, which was a war between communism and capitalism, which influenced the world politics of the eastern world, can also be noted to be one of the major indirect outcomes of the French revolution. China, which is a communist party, is a perfect example of the influence of communism in today’s world. If France influenced the rest of the world with its ideas and politics, then Britain influenced the world with its new economic structure and social framework. The industrial revolution was seen as a major breakthrough, both in the social and economic spheres. According to Hobsbawm- For the first time in human history, the shackles were taken off the productive power of human societies, which henceforth became capable of the constant, rapid and up to the present limitless multiplication of men, goods,and services. This is now technically known to the economists as the 'take-off into self-sustained growth'. No previous society had been able to break through the ceiling which a pre-industrial social structure, defective science and technology, and consequently periodic breakdown, famine,and death, imposed on production.( Hobsbawm 1996, p. 28) The industrial revolution brought upon a shift from the existent agrarian and feudal society to an industrial society. .As industries would require a lot of investment, in terms of both time and material, only the very rich were able to maintain industries. This new economic method, which involved private ownership of land and of the production with the sole motive of making a profit, would be known as capitalism. This method would go on to be adopted by much of Europe during the 20th century. The profit gained from a rapidly expanding economy would only increase through the process of mercantilism. The prospect of connecting Britain with the world market led to one of the most important inventions to come out of the revolution, which was the introduction of railways. This new railway system transformed the entire capital goods industries. Its ability to transport tons of goods and materials over a relatively short period of time was nothing short of remarkable. In fact- “No innovation of the Industrial Revolution has fired the imagination as much as the railway, as witness the fact that it is the only product of nineteenth-century industrialization which has been fully absorbed into the imagery of popular and literate poetry. Hardly had they been proved technically feasible and profitable in England (c. 1825-30), before plans to build them were made over most of the Western world, though their execution was generally delayed.”( Hogsbawm 1996, p. 44) “The reason was doubtless that no other invention revealed the power and speed of the new age to the layman as dramatically; a revelation made all the more striking by the remarkable technical maturity of even the very earliest railways.”( Hogsbawm 1996, p. 44) Not only did transportation become much more efficient, but the railways also opened Britain to foreign trade and investment. Although the expansion of the railway system to the rest of Europe happened much later on, it unquestionably opened the world to a new era of globalization. As we can see from this essay, the revolutions that occurred in France and Britain in the latter stages of the 18th century and the 19th century respectively played a key role in developing ideas that have made the modern world as it is now. We can also see how the enlightenment period that happened in Europe during that time helped to develop new political ideas. Thus, we can conclude by stating that even though a revolution might be restricted to a particular geographical location, the logic that was involved and the ideas that developed out of it do not fall under the same restriction. REFFERENCES- Hogsbawm, Eric. 1996. The Age of Revolution. Vintage Books: New York
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