History is always incomplete and biased

History is important. It is important to know about past mistakes and learn from them to avoid repeating them. However, history is rarely used for this purpose. Mostly, history is used to boast about the past, instill feelings of unreasonable pride, fuel perpetual hate among communities by using some tragic and unpleasant incidents from the past, or glorify certain characters to create a cult. There are several examples to demonstrate that we refuse to learn lessons from history and purposely repeat the same mistakes to inflict the same wounds. For example, communities who suffered genocide or societal hate don't hesitate to do the same to other communities when they get power; communities whose religious structure was demolished to build another religious structure don't hesitate to do the same when they get power in their hands. History as well as our present is full of examples like this. 

The reason why I am saying history is incomplete and biased is because not even a tiny fraction of what actually happened is recorded in written history. What we read is only recorded and preserved by winners and subsequent rulers. Also, what was recorded were the views and perspectives of people who could be interviewed, were willing to talk, and by people who had the privilege to speak and write. This all made history an important but very biased and incomplete account. Basing our present views and opinions only based on historical accounts completely ignoring the present situation is what makes us repeat that history again and again. The danger of seeking revenge for historical conflicts only results in creating more conflicts for future revenge, this cycle is endless unless one of the sides decides to take a higher moral stand and settle the issue amicably through peaceful negotiations. Most historical accounts don't say anything about the masses, they completely ignore nuances of human suffering and resilience.  

Does this mean we should not study history? No, we should study history. We must critically study history and interpret it with context. History without context is just a list of events and dates, nothing more. The context needs to be broad enough to make historical events relevant for everyone affected by those events in the past as well as the present. If we do this, even incomplete and biased historical accounts may help us to resolve complicated conflicts that have been going on for decades or centuries. Without such reasonable use of history, it will remain another tool that had the potential to benefit humanity but like nuclear power, we converted it into a deadly weapon and are only using as a deadly weapon against each other. We are not perfect, and neither is history, we can make use of imperfect history to make our present and future perfect. If not, we will be busy creating more imperfect and divisive history, the same way as our ancestors did. The choice is ours. 

Thank you for reading and please share your views on this topic. 

© Vinay Thakur, All rights reserved, Vinay can be reached at thevinay2022@gmail.com 

History - be careful while reading it

History was not one of my favorite subjects in school. I didn't like the way it was taught and tested in schools. It did put too much emphasis on remembering the names, dates, and other insignificant details of the incidents rather than understanding the analyzing the significance of those events. Eventually, I met people in my life who reintroduced this subject to me in a much more interesting way and then I started reading books to understand more about some past events,. Now I love to read history and like to read accounts from different sides. One can find many historical accounts, either written by experts (after thorough research) or by witnesses (who were involved in some way in those incidents). Many of these reports are sometimes contradictory to each other, some glorifying the incident while others criticizing it. If we see such contradictory accounts, which one to believe? Which one is true? This is a very important question and there is no easy answer to this. My approach is to read as much as you can from all sides and then decide for yourself. 

The major problem that I face while reading most of these books or articles is that many times they are very biased, the views and opinions clearly take sides. There are neutral accounts also but very often they are not popular because people like to see clear heroes and villains in every story and often neutral accounts don't project clear heroes and villains so they fail to impress most readers. I see this contrast when I review what I learned in school about the Indian freedom struggle. All those lessons glorified all actions of Indians, the armed struggle of 1857 was presented in such a way that as a kid I was under the impression that all autocracies were only committed by British troops and all rebels were very honest and fair in dealing with their enemies. But when I read some books (for example a recent book which I read, Gandhi Churchill by Arthur Herman) that talk about the same mutiny but from a totally different perspective. I learned about each and every massacre committed by British troops but I never knew about the Bibighar massacre. I was surprised when I read about it. I am sure it was omitted purposely from our textbooks. I am sure one can find totally different views about the Pearl Harbor attack, or the atomic bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki if we read Japanese and American opinions. When there are totally different views about the same incident, it is not easy to decide who is right and who is wrong.  

I think rulers (kings in the past and governments now) always feel the need to present history in a biased way to infuse patriotism in people. They want more heroes from our past and from our lineage so that we feel proud about our history and buy the argument that the past was more glorious than the present. But I always wanted to know both sides. Mahabharat taught me that there is no absolute right or wrong in this world, everything is relative, and it depends on which side you are standing. I have no shame or hesitation in accepting some dark spots in Indian history. They are also part of our history. They belong to us as much as many other glorious things that we mention proudly. I am not selective in my acceptance or denial. This helps me to learn and grow intellectually. I always tell my kids that before forming any opinion about anything try to know all sides, and be prepared to change that opinion if any contradictory information is received as nothing is permanent.

Reading is good, it improves our knowledge and sharpens our minds. I always try to read diverse opinions and try to get neutral opinions or at least views from both sides. It helps to balance my own views. If we look at history only through the eyes of winners, losers will be always villains, if we read only from the loser's perspective we will always feel winners didn't play a fair game. Our vision will be clouded depending on which side we are looking at, our job is to make it as much less clouded as possible. 

History is a very engaging and mesmerizing subject, and it has the potential to teach us a lot, at the same time if we are not careful then it can also fill us with a lot of negative emotions and hatred against each other. We need to be very careful about how we interpret the historical events. We need to make sure that we have all the required information before forming any opinion about any country or community. There are already enough conflicts around us we definitely don't need any more of them. Always remember, history is past so don't allow it to ruin our present and destroy our future. If we are careful about all these things then history is an amazing subject.

Thanks for reading and please share your opinion on this subject.

(Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing)