Is history actually written by victors ?
- Thread starter Avi
- Start date
Let us just say it will take a while for said country to dominate the world given its state of education.
- A fittingly humble opinion: it was Truman, not Roosevelt, who was responsible for the nuclear bombing of Japanese cities.
- Finding out that Churchill wasn't the God he was made out to be is no incredible act of personal historical discovery, sadly; contemporary historical research, including contemporary historical research conducted by those precise Indian historians who have been damned to hell and back by another illustrious historical critic, has brought out the unflattering aspects of Churchill's war policy.
- A 'minority' STUMBLED upon certain compelling evidences? Oh, but they worked hard on that stumbling. One of the best known books on this subject is Churchill's Secret War, by Madhusree Mukerjee (as a Bong, presumably damned ab initio by her ethnicity). I doubt that she would take well to being told that she worked hard and stumbled upon these facts, considering that she worked on the case of the Bengal Famine of 1943. Admittedly, her ethnicity might have sensitised her to this man-made disaster; it was, after all, the Bengal Famine. Maybe history is written by the vanquished, from this example of the kind of evidence that has been produced, not by the victors.
- The populist view of history, delineated in red above, may not be the approach used by professional historians.
True. Nehru wanted Indians to Stop Freedom Moment and Support Britishers as they were Loosing World War 2. It's no wear mentioned in History Books. Most students using Indian textbooks don’t know that India fought in World War 2 and the extent to which we participated in it. We cover a lot on the World Wars in class 9 and 10 but hardly do we see how much Indian soldiers and the Navy, in particular, did towards fighting in world war 2, leading up to India’s Independence in 1947. Heck, we had over 2.5 million soldiers in the then British-Indian Army who participated in WW2, which was the largest all-volunteer force in history.
At Present, we have Western Historians who hails Aurangzeb as the True Secular Ruler. Per them. he killed Sikh Guru's as they were creating some Problems for him. However, they cannot tell the Problems - Fighting against Past ISIS!
One can find Umpteenth example of Distortion of History in India by Leftists and INC.
It is a good thing to keep learning. I now know that the Royal Indian Navy did much to win the war. How lucky to have stayed alive long enough for some earnest researcher to have worked hard and stumbled upon this important fact.
It is also a good thing to have survived long enough to find that Western historians equate to Leftists and the INC, in the breathless words used.
One lives and learns.
Having to read that is painful.
So much for the Indian Constitution; for the IPC; for the CrPC. Goodbye, laws; hello, mass opinion deciding who should hang and who should not.
And I hope all these constitutions, IPC or CrPC books were not God provided but a work of collective conscience of society only.
I hope it will ease out your pain a bit.
@Hellfire
It was not nice to tag me on this without some prior warning. I walked into this blank mass of prejudice and wholly uninformed opinionating unprepared in any way. May I, in spite of the dismay that grips me after this not very pleasant experience, venture to put out some attempts at vindicating Clio?
Oops! Sorry, @VCheng, forgot your posts as exceptions.
It was not nice to tag me on this without some prior warning. I walked into this blank mass of prejudice and wholly uninformed opinionating unprepared in any way. May I, in spite of the dismay that grips me after this not very pleasant experience, venture to put out some attempts at vindicating Clio?
- History is written by consulting 'sources'. In most matters, these are written sources: original sources, including scraps of paper (the Jews had a practice of preserving everything that might contain one of the books of the Pentateuch, so all that was written down has been preserved, and there have been magnificent works composed by analysis of these scraps of writing), letters, invoices, wills, military orders, diaries preserved, and, of course, actual 'histories' form these sources;
- Contemporary historians use a variety of other sources as well; in Indian history, epigraphy is almost critical, given the complete absence of historical awareness or consciousness (this thread being a dark confirmation of that deficiency) in Indian culture. Our word for history is 'itihas'. This term spans a very broad range, from history through into story. As a result, we have always had difficulties in figuring out what is history and what is story. An example is the discussion on the Mahabharata and on the Bhagavad Gita that intruded briefly in the discussion.
- Historians are aware that they are themselves subject to cultural, ethnic, religious, political, theological, ideological and other biases. They therefore make an extra effort at identifying such bias and isolating it, for those professional historians who read it to make allowances for such bias;
- Most of what has been written about 'history' is relevant to the school text books produced in earlier times, that are firstly of dubious historical value, and secondly, are sought to be replaced by text books of suitably opposed dubious historical value. A brilliant example of two wrongs making one right.
- More of what is written here relate to what is known as 'trade books'. This is best looked up by members to satisfy themselves. Abraham Eraly is a good example, although some trade books achieve near-professional accuracy and authenticity.
Oops! Sorry, @VCheng, forgot your posts as exceptions.
No, Sir, these have nothing to do with the 'collective conscience of society', whatever that claptrap is supposed to convey. My pain has increased and travelled elsewhere.
Understanding history free from one's own biases is perhaps the hardest of all.
Where do you find anyone qualifying Mahabharata or Gita as history? They were bought in context, just as a story, a well known one, to study how well history can be reproduced differently by victors. The anecdotes were quoted to support the theory.
Ahh so these laws are not reflective of social conscience? Then they must be whims of someone troubled with pains.
I forget the name of that European historian (of European history) who wrote that history was simply one event following another. Dismal.
On the other hand, the Marxians and their cousins the Marxists have a completely different view of history. It is widely discredited today, but there have been some excellent works from them; Marc Bloch, on Feudal Society, is a brilliant example. I am deeply suspicious of Thompson and Hobsbawm, but have no problems with Christopher Hill or the eminently readable George Rude.
Only those who have read the Berlin School at their most Teutonic can have any idea about the pains to which they could go. Mommsen's History of Rome is dated, but is a romantic treat. As, of course, is Gibbon himself.
Possibly.
As already pointed out, it is an Indian idiocy to conflate history and story ; to put an historical twist to things, cf. #66, point 2.
Or perhaps laws were unearthed from some holy site excavation. Nothing to do with what a society believes they should abide to. After all society represents constitution and laws and not vice versa....lol
After Nirbhaya, juvenile laws get automatically changed and it was not reflective of what society ask for.
I really have no time for conversations with the jejune. I am sorry, please don't feel too hurt.
Hey, it was you who engaged me by by responding with utter nonsensical post of yours. Secondly you have not answered the very basic question - Constitution/Laws represent society or its vice versa? What are the basic tenets of constitution? Does that reflect how a nation want to pursue its course or not? If not we the people, who constitute a nation?
You are just coming as a grumpy and impolite dude.
An old voodoo ritual Sir, nothing else.
(Or may be acupuncture for an aging back? Who knows?)
Incidentally, I wanted to compliment you and Azlan Haider Sahib for your masterly marshalling of arguments about Twin Surrenders. Jahangir Qazi's article was particularly terse and effective, and your joint defence was a treat to read. Is Haider Sahib a member here, would you know?
Thank you, but I had to hold myself back in that particular thread. The environment there is rather dangerous for a free thinker like me.
It was a random analogy pertinent to today's times.
Another view comes up, that of relative yardsticks.
If one subscribes to law of nature, one can rationalize Opium Consumption fanned by the trade to exploitation of weakness inherent in nature to man.
And the law of nature (natural selection) is dependant on the principle of survival of the fittest.
I can appreciate that, but it is the selective application of such yardsticks that irks me more than their relative nature. Speaking of nature in this context, you may find this interesting:
Animal minds