Jul 26, 2005 04:24 PM
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(Updated Jul 26, 2005 08:02 PM)
“What is history, but a fable agreed upon…”
And indeed, because history is written by people who have won the war, it contains just one side of the story and that too overly glorified. There are umpteen examples of this phenomenon, but we as Indians will mostly relate to the recent (relatively) history of Indian Independence and partition.
My generation, i.e. the children of people who were born after the partition, does not have any idea of the real happenings of the legendary era. The history text books that I have studied have just glossed over the details and sung songs of grandiose for all the politicians of the Indian National Congress.
A similar one sided account can be found in the history text books of our fateful neighbor. If one sits down and matches the records, I think we will wonder if this is the same event we are talking about.
The truth however is just very different from these tales. The uncomfortable facts that have been conveniently wiped out still happened. And in the British bureaucracy system, records were kept of almost everything. Similarly all the documents of that period (correspondences, agreements, memos, memoirs, journals etc.) were kept with British government. These papers however were kept under the 50 years secrecy law. (This is to prevent the leaders from getting hurt, due to the information). But because all the relevant people had already been dead by 1977, the British government decided to reveal the documents.
HM Seervai, (henceforth HMS) a noted political and constitutional expert, who passed away in the late nineties, extended his already considerable knowledge on the events of the period with these documents. The biggest difference was that earlier his knowledge was not concrete, but now there was concrete document evidence available.
What HMS did was to bring out the relevant pieces from the vast amounts of data. And then gives a suitable background of the events leading to the particular letter or memo. He has not passed judgment, (at least most of the times) and has left the interpretation to us.
The book contains information from that last 10 years of the British Raj. The various events that led to the partition are looked upon from different point of views. How the Hindu Muslim deadlock came into being. How the various proposals were made (and their contents), the reason for the rejection and the reaction afterwards. The strengthening of the Muslim League after their disastrous 1937 election, and the attitude of the congress.
This book contains a minefield of historical information. And it has been presented in a very lovely manner. I had no trouble at all understanding the book and the context of the numerous snippets.
The conclusion that I have reached after reading the book is that the revered ‘great people’ of the era were in fact humans, and more so politicians. And not much different from our present day leaders. They took their decisions on the basis of political judgment, which as we know is often worst decision in any other context but politics. And the great villains of the era were also just humans (actually political adversaries). Also as they did not get to write the history books here, they have been demonized.
This book has led me to believe all history skeptically. Take everything with a pinch of salt. This is not only about Indian history, but also applicable to any other part of the world.
I think all Indians (and Pakistanis for that matter), should read the book. This will clarify a lot of misinformation that we have been harboring in our brains. Also please beware that this book was very difficult to locate and I found it with great difficulty.
I will end in a lighter note..
A quote from a policeman…
“ …. After hearing two accounts of the same accident from 2 different people, one wonders about history…”
