History Is Not a Therapy: The Problems of Selectivity

Guest Post by Kartikey Misra

In an interview, conducted by the Indian express in 2017, Historian Audrey Truschke sparked a debate about the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, which recently got attention again on social media. Audrey Truschke in her interview extends the arguments from her book, where she has tried to display a ‘side’ of Aurangzeb ‘unknown to Indians’.  This assumption of “Indian ignorance” and denial of a certain collective memory about Aurangzeb might give a patronizing impression. 

A lot of ink has already been spilled over the incidents of persecution, destruction of temples, etc., and since a short article cannot cover the details of every assault, I would like to concentrate on some fundamental questions that are beyond the trial of one late medieval emperor. 

Why are Indians still defending or attacking a 17^thcentury Emperor? Why is it so that criticism of Aurangzeb or any other Muslim ruler in India is considered as an attack on the Muslim community? What makes Aurangzeb relevant today; and finally, why are Hindus critical of Aurangzeb and his likes? 

Rajas and Sultans

A look into the pre and post Independence history writing might answer the questions posed above. Before Independence, the British were successful in popularising their version of history, which involved classifying Indian history into a Hindu, Muslim, and British period (thanks to James Mill!). This approach fragmented the notion of a common Indian history into Hindu, Islamic, and British eras. Although in academia, this periodization is heavily criticized; unfortunately, such a framework of imagining the past is still dominant in the popular understanding of the past. This notion, in my opinion, has paved the way for periods and historical characters being identified on communal lines and therefore any attack on them seems mighty personal. 

On the eve of our independence, the Indian national leaders had a challenging responsibility: to transform an enormous and diverse country like India into a modern nation-state. The wounds and horrors of partition were still fresh, and the mutilation of India posed a serious threat to the integrity of this civilization. British army officers, such as General Auchinleck, were of the view that “No one can make a nation out of a continent (India)”, suggesting that break-up of India was a certainty! 

With more Muslims staying in India rather than choosing Pakistan, and the threat posed by Islamic separatism and Hindu backlash, there was a need for a ‘noble lie’ to counter the threat posed by communalism. The Indian state, post-independence, nurtured sets of historians, who were responsible to cement a new cleansed idea of India, where they conveniently accused the British Raj— an easy target, for our communal conflicts. The prime goal then was to sanitize the animosity that existed in the medieval age between the vanquished Hindu majority and the victorious Muslim minority. After all, the creation of imagined identity involves setting a narrative. In this case, the imagined identity was that of a modern secular nation-state of India, which was a successor of the Indic civilization. 

Selection Bias

Therefore, the wounds of the past and a recent mutilation of a civilization were concealed with the promotion of the narratives of a supposed ‘Ganga Jamuni Tehzeeb’ and the ‘syncretic idea’ of India. This selectivity omitted the centuries of assault at a time when the wounds of the partition were still new. The bandages of syncretism allowed the wounds to fester, and never really allowed the communities for a chance to negotiate. This negotiation would have been the access to knowledge and information, which would have been independent of politically motivated distortions. The absence of impartial information and the continuous academic denial of oral histories and collective memories never gave a closure to the concerns of some communities. 

The erasure of this experience from academic writing intends to avoid rifts among communities, however this has proven unhelpful. Such an erasure is primarily the reason why Aurangzeb and other rulers of the Islamic age are still relevant in our present-day discussion. Sheer disregard to believe in people’s ability to negotiate with their own past in the creation of a “great secular nation”, is perhaps the reason why we see the demand for extreme revivalism in India. 

India’s secular and diverse culture does not solely owe its success to the constitution. The multicultural idea of India owes its credit to the Indian culture, which is pluralistic and accepting. The idea of Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb was not the only ‘side’ of history; of course, there were conflicts and bloodshed, but despite the animosity, the communities came together to forge a common culture! This culture did not develop due to the ‘tolerance’ of a ruler, as it is claimed by some, but due to the people. The modern proponents of this syncretism never actually acknowledged the role of the host culture, which was inclusive and open to facilitate such amalgamation. 

History writing cannot and should not be selective, and we must not expect history to act as a therapeutic agent; rather it should be a well-represented and acknowledged story of society’s struggles, and negotiations.   

Kartikey Misra is a lawyer and he tweets at @dyeus_pater

---

The more you know about the past, the better you are prepared for the future.

Theodore Roosevelt