Conversations about history

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Eminent historian Romila Thapar, professor emeritus at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and winner of the prestigious Kluge Prize in 2008, spoke to Kalpana Sharma of The Hindu about the importance of history teaching, the need for autonomous institutes to govern textbooks and historical research and the media's interpretation of contemporary developments.

Though she spoke about India her comments are relevant to Sri Lanka too. Hence we produce below a few excerpts of the interview.

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As a historian I am and have been deeply disturbed - and I'm not alone in this - by the reaction to such incidents. Indian identity at the popular level is increasingly being narrowed to the perceptions of what is called the majority community.

This is ironic because among historians the perspective has widened out. This is in part due to the expansion of sources for constructing history. In archeology for instance, various sciences are giving us dimensions of knowledge that are new, such as data on environmental factors affecting history.

CHANGED ATTITUDES

Our attitudes to texts have changed. We now ask incisive questions about the author, and why the text is written the way it is and what is the intention of the patron? One looks beyond the statements for deeper historical understanding. This has led to new perspectives on the past in terms of both evidence and the manner in which it is analyzed.

So while the historian is opening up the past, its popular representation is narrowing it down.

The kinds of linkages that are made with the past in popular outlets tend to marginalize many communities and cultures that make up Indian society. These linkages frequently draw from political agendas.

Inevitably one begins to ask whether or to what degree that which we've been writing, and speaking about in the past 30 to 40 years, have at all affected people's perceptions - perceptions of our past, our identities, and the values that we hold as important in our lives?

Possibly we have been too passive in our response to aggressive political actions. And we have failed to be sufficiently critical of the way the media plays with political agendas in representing what it calls 'culture and history'. These are themes that need much more open discussion.

We have not internalized our history in the sense that for most people seeing the historical aspect of the world around us is still an experience of the extraneous. Historical analysis is really about an entire society with an accounting of different levels and the way in which they are inter-related, the way in which they disintegrate or integrate and how these relationships have changed over time. We assume a kind of static past, which is of course the behest of colonial scholarship.

DIFFERENT PERIODS

This is being questioned by historians who are trying to understand the dynamics of different periods and communities but somehow this questioning doesn't seem to seep into popular agencies like the media.

One of the biggest problems with the way in which popular representations of the past are accepted without questioning has to do precisely with the way history is taught.

DATED KNOWLEDGE

Not just history. Our attitude to knowledge is generally still dated. A student is told: "Here is a body of knowledge, learn it and memorize it." The notion that a body of knowledge implicitly means that the person who is approaching it has to question it and understand it and perhaps develop it further - that is not something implicit in our educational methods.

The purpose of education is increasingly, with rare exceptions, a competition involving numbers in an exam which determine the next step. This is not what education should be about.

If inquiry can be built into a subject it ceases to be just having to learn the same old dreary information and it takes on the challenge of finding out about other aspects - about objects, events, people, behaviour patterns, personalities, policies - a whole gamut of perspectives on what makes a society, who makes it and who governs it.

A body, which is producing what are called model textbooks, should be made autonomous from government because there was a danger that each time the government changes, it will be required to rewrite the textbooks - and not just in history but in politics, human geography, sociology and science as well.

There should be independent bodies of specialists in each subject that vet all prescribed textbooks so that there is always a sieve through which any textbook has to pass and that it conforms to at least a minimum standard. This doesn't exist at the moment.

Perhaps there is a hesitation to take away government patronage. Patronage today has become sacrosanct. At another level privately published textbooks are often money-spinners and would not like to be vetted.

ESTABLISHED EDUCATION

The notion of quality in education is directed to post-graduate and technical education and such like. But many of us feel that the foundation of primary and secondary schools has still to be established and nurtured.

I suspect that nothing is done about the foundation because political parties fear an educated electorate that can ask questions. It would then not be swayed by mass meetings and would make vote-banks irrelevant.

The moment people ask questions and relate the present to the past and have a project for the future, it becomes a different electorate. I don't think it is just an oversight that governments and politicians pay so little attention to education.

There is a need to put much more into training teachers. In today's world, a teacher has to be technically proficient in the subject. Gone are the days when a broad-based liberal education sufficed.

specialized Subjects

Subjects have become specialized. Teachers have to know how to handle this new knowledge. This means a larger outlay on training teachers and on their salaries and in return taking them seriously and demanding that they be responsible. What worries me much is the way in which the ideology of Hindutva has inveigled much of the middle class into accepting the idea that we should be only a Hindu country.

This is essentially an unthinking acceptance of an ideology that claims to provide an easy answer to a complex problem, namely the modernization of a society that has always had multiple communities, and it is based on questionable and erroneous premises rather than what one expects in this day and age, namely at least a minimum of logical and rational thinking about the problem.

The attitude of treating members of other religious communities as the 'Other', as the ones who are alien, and who will never be part of 'us', that is something that I find unacceptable as it goes against the grain of the concept of being Indian.

It is also unacceptable because it is historically untenable. Where education has not succeeded perhaps civil society will be the agency to oppose this attitude.

But if it isn't opposed it will encourage the kind of politics that can take us to the edge of fascism.