When asking a question like, “Is history political?” it can be quite easy to simply say: yes. History is political. There’s ample evidence to prove it. Any layperson would know that history comprises of the rulers, governments, and wars of the past. Undoubtedly, the political narrative of the entire human race. Even in the present day, history is often used politically. Whether it be how Europeans claim the history of the Greeks or the Bengali Brahmins claim the history of the Hindu Aryans (Chatterjee 29), the claiming of history, and occasionally the retelling of history is an act of the politics of identity. But when asking a question like, “Is the writing history necessarily political?” there must be more pondering to be done about it. Talking about the writing of history would also automatically disqualify oral histories completely. Firstly, we must look at what is history. How has the writing of history been different from the progression of events? What would be a non-political history? And then we must ask can there ever be a history completely devoid of the political? Only then can we know if the writing of history is necessarily political. This paper will attempt to answer these questions as best as possible looking particularly at the Indian context.
History as the discipline we know today came up in the West during the period of enlightenment. With the advent of scientific inquiry, the writing of the past sought to be more scientific in its approach rather than religious or moralizing. So was born liberal historiography, also called Whig history writing. This 19th-century gentlemanly view of history claims ideological neutrality in the writing of history. A “view from nowhere” implies that it is an unbiased and detached narrator of events. It is debatable how effective this notion of neutrality really is considering when talking about any historical event, there are always multiple perspectives and complex relationships involved. Ideological neutrality could refer to attempting to show every perspective without bias to any one perspective. However, even then, there would be many deterrents against it. The fact that written history is through only what are considered to be “valid sources”, which in itself is a bias to only the perspectives of those who created the sources whether they be inscriptions, biographies, or autobiographies. This, while being biased against any other sources which cannot fit the liberal historiographical label of accuracy or validity like folk songs, ballads, and oral history. If ideological neutrality would be a de-political approach to writing history, it would be inherently contradictory. One cannot talk about political figures and events by being de-political and history is the record of political figures and events. However, these European historiographers still claim ideological neutrality. It is probable that liberal historiography, due to this very claim to neutrality can, in a sense, get away with its biases and over time, be accepted as a “view from nowhere” simply because of the claims.
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The writing of history, studying writing of history, although technically the study of constructs, opinions, and single perspective accounts of a time long gone and people who are dead, is still very important to study because these constructs, views, and accounts have consequences in the present time and society. One look at the colonial rule in India itself can show the effects of history writing on the thoughts and ideologies of its people. It all starts with the fact that, as mentioned earlier in this essay, the discipline of history itself originated in the West. It was the context in which history emerged that shaped how it functioned as a discipline, especially in methodology. This is because history is not simply just the recording of past events. It involves research, primary sources and the writing of history itself is also a part of the discipline of history and of course, the claim to ideological neutrality. If it weren’t for these specifics, there was definitely a recording of the past in India. There were the Ithasas- the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, the 18 puranas, and many Vamsavalis- dynastic trees and charities- biographies. But these were nowhere near the same kinds of writing that the Europeans were by then accustomed to calling historical. The fact that many of the stories were mythical and scarcely made a difference between fact and fiction was all the more reason for the British to immediately dismiss these accounts of the past as ahistorical. The only pre-colonial text that became well-known as it was considered close enough to modern historiography was the Rajatarangini written by Kalhana. This was because Kalhana was quite critical of the dynasty of his patron, the king of Kashmir while other Charitas and Vamsavalis would give their patron rulers a basically divine status. British historians then propagated India’s historicity and stagnation. They used these Indian methods of recording the past as sources for then writing a proper history of India. In a truly “white man’s burden” fashion, they set out to “provide India with a history”. The real consequences of these actions come with the spread of English education in India. When Indians were given English education, they were also given English thoughts and ideology. “Macaulay’s Minute”, English education reform in India, famously sought to make Indians “English in every way but appearance”. Education can be considered one of the most effective ways of spreading ideologies in the guise of it being knowledge. This included the spread of the notion that India was ahistorical and the first history of India was written by James Mill- a Britisher. The views of British history writing on India had many dangerous generalizations to it and also racism. Teaching Indians to see themselves as nothing but the natural subordinate of the British was meant to be a hegemonic method of dominating the entire subcontinent but ended up just educating an emerging English-educated middle class about the concepts of rights, liberty, and justice from which the nationalists and freedom movement arose. Tapan Raychoudhuri talks about the effects of British history writing in more detail. We shall look at what he says later in the essay but we must first clarify more about the nature of history writing itself in India.
To talk about the kinds of content found in historical writing and how they relate to the past, we must talk about the different kinds of historical writing. There are considered to be 5 main schools of historiography in India. They are The Mill-Dodwell tradition of the writing of India which is the imperialist historiography and was written during colonial rule. Then is the Nationalist tradition of writing which comprised of history written by Nationalists and the history of the nationalist movement. The 1970s Cambridge school of writing is the writing by the imperialists about the nationalist movement. Although here, it is important to note not all Cambridge writers were imperialists but most did tend to hold a dismissive or negative view of the nationalist movement. Then we have Marxist historiography which was based on Karl Marx’s notion of 5 epochs of history. It was most notably the historian Kosambi who in the 1980s interpreted Marxist historiography to fit the Indian context without simply just superimposing it onto the Indian context. Finally, we have Subaltern studies. Subaltern studies would be the most recent school of historiography which is the historiography of minority groups of any kind, including the intersectionality between multiple minority groups. When looking at these schools of writing, and more specifically on whether these schools of writing are “necessarily political”, we can say a few things off the bat. The imperialist and nationalist schools were both political in what they wrote and political in the impact of their writings. The Cambridge school was political in what they wrote but when compared to the imperialist and nationalist schools whose political after-effects quite literally formed and broke nations, the Cambridge school did not have the same impact. The Marxist school can be seen as the first time that the writing of history deviated from exclusively political as it is more about socio-economic structures with a special interest in the working class. It was through the Marxist school that the Subaltern studies emerged as a historiographical method as it too looks at the cultural, social, and economic aspects of the past. However, these are not set lines. The demarcation between what is political, cultural, economic, and social and not compartmentalized in our society, and we need not see it that way. So, just because different schools can be seen as focusing on different aspects of history does not mean that they exclusively write about only that.
The discussion about the politics of history writing, the political-ness of it or the lack thereof is one that happens frequently among historians. This essay will now look at some of the writings of Ranajit Guha and his take on the writing of history and its politics of it. First, let us look at a chapter from his book “The small voice of history”. In this chapter, he starts by talking about the elitism of historiography. He talks about how the historiography that arose from colonial times, that is, the liberal historiography of the western discipline of history was elitist in nature because of its methodology and more importantly, the way it was used in India. He says that the historical writing of that time could not explain the Indian Nationalist movement to us (Guha 189). This is mainly because although schools like the Cambridge school of history writing would try to argue that the Indian nationalist movement was only a movement by the elite English-educated Indians for their own benefit, one cannot deny the many peasant rebellions and mass movements that the common people of India too were a huge part of the movement. Guha does not, however, dismiss historiography as a whole for it. In fact, he says
Elitist historiography is of course not without its uses. It helps us know more about the colonial state, the operation of its various organs in certain historical circumstances, the nature of the alignment of classes that sustained it… (Guha 188)
He even talks about the reason for this separation between the elite and the commoners, even after independence. Guha believes that the reason for this dichotomy was the failure of the Indian bourgeoisie to speak for the nation (Guha 192). There were people who were part of the hegemony and then there were people who were never even integrated into the hegemony because of it. However, he clarifies that this does not mean that these two domains are hermetically sealed off from each other and had no contact between them. In fact, he says the contrary that there was a great deal of overlap between them. This arose from the effort made from time to time by the more advanced elements among the indigenous elite, especially the bourgeoisie, to integrate them (Guha 192). From this, we can gather that political and non-political histories are not separate, and trying to make such a distinction between them might be an actual problem. Guha also talks about some alternate histories that are not political or elitist. In his book “The authority of vernacular past”, Guha talks about vernacular history. Vernacular history is that of any minority which also goes not follow hegemonic historiography. However, Guha also ends up illustrating the deep-reaching effects of colonialism and colonial historiography as he says
For in India ‘vernacular’ established itself as a distancing and supremacist sign which marked out its referents, the indigenous languages, and cultures, as categorically inferior to those of the West and of England in particular. (Guha 475)
History of the pre-colonial past was represented as preparatory to an eventual and almost providential outcome in the form of British paramountcy in the subcontinent. The narrative of the history of the Indian people was written as the story of “England’s Work in India” (Guha 475). This all-pervasive narrative led to the “Indian slave”, being born a slave to believe that they had no past of their own other than the one given to them by their colonial master. So, if the Indians were to write history, it would be nothing more than a repetition of what the colonial master had told them. However, Guha clarifies
Yet this retelling made a difference. For the story could no longer be told exactly as the master had set it up. Because it was told not in the master s language but the slave’s… (Guha 476)
It was these kinds of differences that led to the Nationalists completely rejecting any form of colonial history to write their own history and provide a truly Indian history. Nationalist history, however, was not vernacular. Despite attempting to pose itself as diametrically opposite to colonial historiography, it used the same methodology and even the same line of essentialization in its writings. It still excludes many groups and was still hegemonic in its own way. Guha remarks, “No wonder that vernacular, an autochthon of the depths of civil society, was unimpressed. It was obviously in no great hurry to dissolve itself in a totalizing nationalism” (Guha 477). Guha in fact states that vernacular history performed a role of informing the relationship of rulers and the ruled within the colonial state as well as the structures of dominance and subordination within the indigenous society which it continued to perform despite nationalist historiography.
Tapan Raychoudhuri in his book “Perceptions, Emotions, Sensibilities” talks about how the writings of the British made it seem like the Raj was doing only good things for India and the poverty of the nation was from the past before the British and how widespread those notions were (Raychoudhuri 156). There is even a popular notion that the British conquered India in a “fit of absent-mindedness” and hence had no reason to wish ill of a nation they never had malicious intent of conquering. Tapan Raychoudhuri however, disagreed with this claim. He said outright, “The Indian empire was acquired, not in a fit of absent-mindedness but, in the words of a British historian, in pursuit of the public and private greed of the Company’s servants.” (Raychoudhuri 161). Raychoudhuri has a point as before the East India Company, India was the richest nation in the world and it is well-known historically that the reason most Europeans even came to India was for its wealth. Conquering that wealth would make them the richest nation and people. Which was exactly what happened. He goes on to talk about how the new Indian government too inherited the administrative organization of the Raj and the traditions which went with it. However, these were not best suited to the tasks of social and economic development attempted after independence. The inordinately expensive judicial system and proverbially corrupt police which was often a law unto itself remain heavy burdens for the underprivileged in India (Raychourdhuri 160). Even social identities acquired new political importance as new patterns of consciousness emerged through interaction with western thought and the British presence. We do not encounter in the pre-British past either the idea of an Indian nation or any consciousness of a Hindu community spread across the subcontinent (Raychoudhuri 164).
In conclusion, after looking at the discipline of history itself, and its claim to ideological neutrality, one look at colonial history in India shows us that the claim to ideological neutrality does not cause neutrality in fact, it can end up causing more bias than neutrality simply because when it is accepted that a view is “a view from nowhere” without any questioning then this claim to neutrality itself can cause ideological hegemony and exclusion of minorities. Neutrality in history is not possible for every individual in our society always comes from a certain perspective. The claim to ideological neutrality is, therefore, a means of hegemonic manipulation. When looking at Indian history and historiography in particular, one can see clearly that there is an implicit connection between the writing of history, the playing out of politics, and the society itself. The writing of history is on the politics and the way the society of the past functioned; the playing out of politics affects the way a society functions and the playing out of politics is influenced by and uses the writing of history. When talking about the schools of Indian historiography, there are a lot of schools that talk almost exclusively about politics. Although the nationalist school talks more broadly about history it is still seen as a political school of historiography because their writings themselves were used for the success of the very political and very widespread nationalist movement. However, the later schools of historiography provide some much-needed context and nuance to an otherwise elitist and academic discipline and it is these nuances that we must not overlook. One cannot, as mentioned by Guha earlier in this essay “hermetically seal” these varying parts of the human experience away from each other. So, when finally answering the question “Is the writing of history necessarily political?”, the answer would be that the world is political, social, economic, religious, and cultural all at the same time. They all influence each other and are connected to each other deeply. So if the question implies that history must necessarily be only political, then the answer is no. However, otherwise, history is necessarily political in the same way that history is also necessarily social, economic, cultural, and religious. History should necessarily represent all facets of the human experience because history represents a varied human past for an even more varied human future.
References:
- Guha, Ranajit. The Authority of Vernacular Pasts [online]. Meanjin, Vol. 51, No. 2, Winter 1992: 299-302. Availability: ISSN: 0025-6293. [cited 21 Nov 19].
- Chatterjee, Partha, et al. “Claims on the Past.” Subaltern Studies VIII: Essays in Honour of Ranajit Guha, Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 1–50.
- Raychoudhuri, Tapan. Perceptions, Emotions, Sensibilities: Essays on India's Colonial and Post-colonial Experiences. Oxford University Press, 2000.
- Guha, Ranajit, and Partha Chatterjee. The Small Voice of History: Collected Essays. Permanent Black, 2010.
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