UNIVERSITY OF DELHI (NORTH CAMPUS)
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY
written by SANJAY KR. NAMDEV
Parameters and Challenges to the History Writing
The term ‘history’ has become an ubiquitous word conceptualized differently by
various scholars. For instance the traditional conception of history epitomized by
Historians like Herodotus, his great successors Thucydides, Livy, Tacitus - viewed
history as any written narrative of events. This definition is however inadequate and
unacceptable in view of contemporary realities. The conception of history as mere
narration of events is now archaic because history has metamorphosed from mere
description of events into critical and analytical interpretation of events . Hyden
White Said Historians do not have to report their truths about the real world in
narrative from , they may choose other, non-narrative, even anti-narrative modes of
representation Such as the meditation, the anatomy the epitome.For E.H Carr
“ history is a continuous process of interaction between present and
the past” affirming that interpretation is the lifeblood of history. Each genre of
Historical narrative construct its own heroes and villain. So, It is important to
seriously analyse the objective and parameters of professional academic history writing
and its distinction from politically motivated popular histories of the public
domain and also examine controversial historical questions in a dispassionate and
non-partisan manner.
In this paper we will examine the parameters and challenges to the writing of
history in modern era.
Let us try to tackle this challenge of history writing in Laymen term – History is
about the thing which has happened in the past but then not all the things that has
happened in the past comprises history. Only the relevant portion of our past
comes under history. There is no defined criterion for this relevance and thus it
changes from person to person, power to power, institution to institution and so on
and so forth. We can divide the problems with history writing in two parts – first,
can consider the issues internal to the craft related to methodology such as
problems of sources, knowledge, explanation And Second, concern itself with
external problems like the relationship between History and Nations, History and
Politics, History and Gender, Race, Question of Identity, Objectivity of History etc.
Taking up to the internal issues; first important issues are facts, sources explanation,
historical knowledge. E.H Carr said “the facts, speak only when historian calls on
them, it is he who decides to which facts to give the door and in what order or
context.
The problem of sources is a serious challenges to the historians in the task of
reconstructing the past. The absence of written sources ; upon which conventional
history rests presents its own problems and challenges. The deficiencies of the
written, contemporary sources have made historians of traditional societies to seek
data from alternative sources, particularly Oral tradition mainly in the form of myth
legends, song and popular history , and thus problem of chronology arise. Distortion
is yet another limitations of oral tradition.
The problem of historical knowledge is one of the core issue which arise in the
writing of history. The knowledge of what happened in the past must be certain and
unambiguous – that is, the standard yardstick for measuring knowledge is that it
must be demonstrable and scientific; But how does the historian go about obtaining
his knowledge of the events that happened in the deep past, especially when he has
no direct access to the past, surely the past has vanished and what is only left
are Fragmentary evidence which are in written or unwritten form.
Parth Chatterjee in his introduction in History and the present have talked about the
attempts to qualify history as a scientific discipline based on the ideas of sociology of
knowledge, historicity of all types of knowledge and rational methodology.
Historians and his evidence forms a central issue in history writing. Evidence plays a
crucial role for both judge and historians and for this task of both has been compared
sometimes. When the scholars has observed and explained his task is finished. It yet
remains for the judge to pass sentence. he pronounced it according to the law, he will be
deemed impartial, and he will be impartial in a judicial sense but not in scientific sense
According to Carlo Ginzburg the judicial model has a double impact on historiography
i) It urge historians to focus on events (political, military, diplomatic) that could be
easily ascribed to specific actions performed by one or more individuals
ii) It disregards these phenomena that resist an approach based on this explanatory
framework like social life, mentalities etc.
Arnaldo Momigliano expressed fundamental points for historians:-
i) The Historian work on evidence, ii) Rhetoric is not his business,
ii) The historian has to assume ordinary commen sense criteria for judging his
own evidence,
iv) He must not have Prejudice
Various rapacious opportunities and compelling forces that historians faced while
writing history; As Ranke said ‘the way things really were was the way men of
power and influence judged them to be’.
The dominant power be it political, social, ethnic, cultural etc; tries to paint history
in their own colour and employs various research grants ,honours, and position etc.
Those historians who do not conform to prevailing ideological dogmas often find it
hard to live through. This is from where stems of the second set of issues in History
writing relative to our discussion here.
To understand how they affected the historians and in turn the history writing itself.
We have to give closer look to a few of the basic dynamics here like those in
between Nation and history , communalism and history, etc.
Dr. Raziuddin Aquil said that History is often used as a weapon in ideological
struggles and identity contestation. This is especially true in critical issues involving
politics of religion. In agenda-driven histories deployed in public debates, the
question of truth is set aside in favour of requirements of the time. In such debates,
history is not so much about the evidence regarding what exactly happened in the
past, but a matter of opinion or perspective. This is the case both in vernaculars
histories circulated in the public domain and in the assumptions of professional
academic history.
Romla Thapar said “Historians are not infallible they are also influenced by some
emotion as the rest of mankind”. Due to the growing unpopularity of communally
biased works in the second half of the last century a large number of scholars.
preferred doing secular histories which have their own limitations and problems.
Akeel Bilgrami argued that secularism is not uniform and depends on the context
in which it is practiced.
Akeel asserted that in a religiously plural society secularism is premised on
overlapping consensus, which implies that different groups have their own
reason to subscribe to secularism. Akeel said that secularism is justified only by
internal reasons, people subscribe to it because of their own reason, values, etc.
Akeel argues that secularism can exist irrespective of the nature of polity be it
authoritarian or liberal. There may be variations in secularism on the basis of
ideals; it prioritise like liberal secularism, communal secularism , etc. So the basic
things about secularism that we have to address here is that being secular does
not mean to shy away from the topics of communal or sectarian strife but to
address them with maintaining an unprejudiced, unbiased attitudes attempting
to be as objective as possible as put by Sahid Amin – The task is to write non
sectarian histories of sectarian conflicts.
There is another problem that arise with our excessive focus on secular history.
secular historians, rejection of religious belief as an important set of issue are
either not seriously thrashed or at time just mocked.In cases of utter neglect of
myth and legend as those relating to ancient and medieval India, the space
vacated by professional historians is enthusiastically occupied by Non
-historians and other Purveyors of popular beliefs as well as political propagandists.
Dr. Aquil conclude that The resultant situation can be utterly ludicrous.
In this work he also gave a lasting cry to unshackle the academia from Crutches of old,
rotten dogmas and methodologies political influences, lack of professionalism, no
appreciation of new researches.
Dr. Aquil point out two main limitations in the writing of history. first arises due to
the relation between ideology and history as various ideologies influence the context,
reading of sources, conclusions, focus on certain aspects, in lieu of others etc. In the
writing of history the politically neutral kind also faces suppressions as it serves no
overload. The second problem arise due to the role of history in identity and the way
it is misused for the same. In this conflicts huge amount of bogus data, fact, and
stories were propagated as historical facts to serve the above mentioned interests.
Thus, the study of history is among other things, also about struggle over competing
claims on what the interested parties like to believe about the past. Such activities
destroyed the autonomy within the discipline of History.
Dr.Raziuddin Aquil points out that there is a tendency among serious historians
to avoid communally sensitive topics like the conversion and Islamization in
medieval India or if they do they remain biased, unrelenting to reach a
conclusion that may stand opposite to their preferred political stand.
Historian has to take it upon themselves as in also their duty, to explain such
controversial topics to public sphere rather that use such scenarios to satisfy
their political agendas.
Dr Aquil points out the issues related to movie Padmavat. Issues like Padmavati
and the conflict and contestation around these escalate quickly due to a
number of reasons like involvement in politics of Identity, ideological
contestation, lack of historical evidence and research around the particular topic
which creates a vacuum in term of historical knowledge. which is readily filled
by popular notions and myths that buttress various prejudices lie high stature of
Rajput honours, medieval time as dark age, Muslim Sultan as barbaric and so on.
These notions have become the part of popular historic memory like traditional
and customary practices of Rajput even though academic discipline points in
other way.
Another challenge which is quite evident in modern day scenario is the
under development of Indian political and social discourse, the lack of
critical analyses of them, the reluctance of historians to write a non -
reductive history of concepts. There can be many reasons for this like the
lack of self confidence and self esteem,(Ashis nandy) underprofessionalization
of certain fields of inquiry, over idealization of academia ,over influence of
cosmologies in public sphere, domination of Western political theories etc.
In now a days our professional history marginalized due to set up of Local History
which is based on local social memory and local traditions.For instance The
Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institue of Pune was set on
fire by general public as the sources of this institution questioned the
identity of Chhatrapati Shivaji – this is the reflection of public domain history.
CONCLUSION : -
Now, finally we are in the position to say that there are many internal and external
challenges to the writing of history such as challenges of sources, knowledge,
explanation, but more serious challenge to the history writing are historical identity
contestation, political agenda based history etc;So amid in all this, Historians job is
to analyse and interpret the historical facts without any prejudice and biased.
Historian should have clear distinction between literature and history, as both telling
the past story but historian’s story should not have based on fictions or any kind of
myths unlike the Novelist and Literary scholars, after all telling mythical story is not
their job, historian’s job is to serve knowledge production of the past. They should
have to avoid sectorian conflicts, and political propaganda in their historical
interpretations and its historians duty to modified their interpretation whenever
they get new evidences. These are the some basic parameters that should be
followed the historians to produced a rational and scientific history. These are the
only ways history can enhance and sustain its relevance.
References:-
1. E.H Carr, what is history? (Ch.1&4)
2. Parth Chatterjee , History and the present pp.3, 14, 20
3. Akeel Bilgrami ,(2014) secularism identity and enchantment
4. Raziuddin Aquil, lovers of God
5. Marc block, Historian's craft.(ch. 4 & 5)
6. Raziuddin Aquil , Itihasnama (blogpost), history writing must be dispassionate.
7. Carlo Ginzburg, Checking the Evidence : the judge and the historian. ,pp. 79- 92
8.International journal of educational research and technology, Lagos State University ( LASU)
9. Michel de Certeau , The Writing of History( chapter on histographical operation)
10.Hyden white, The Content of Form ( ch. 1 & 2).
THANKYOU
Sanjay kr. Namdev
M.A (History)
DU, Dept. Of History.
