Some tourists at the Natural History Museum were marveling at the Dinosaur bones. One of them asks the guard — “can you tell me how old these bones are?”
The guard replies, “These are three million, four years, and six months old.”
“That is an awfully exact number,” says the tourist. “How do you know their age so precisely?”
The guard answers, “Well, the dinosaur bones were three million years old when I started working here, and that was four and a half years ago.”
Using the joke for countless religious relics or ruins, reportedly a few millennia old, can detract from what I wanted to talk about — The Reliability of History, as told.
Most people have a hazy sense of the past, gleaned from half-forgotten school books, a few Discovery Channel programs, Amar Chitra Katha as kids, Amish Tripathy offerings as grownups, and more recently, the WhatsApp University.
Even professional historians admit the enormity of the challenge. It is a complex puzzle, a palimpsest upon which thousands have written–scratched — and then over-written. It is a giant tangle of thousands of interwoven stories involving millions of characters, countless chapters, and many, many narrators.
To truly, wholly grasp a time, an event, a movement, or an important historical figure, we would have to be present there, like a fly on the wall. To know their innermost thoughts and motivations, we would have to be inside the minds of the key players. To fully understand, we need to consider the context, cultural nuances, national psyches, and global events. It gets complicated.
Take India’s independence in 1947. The way it is taught and normally understood is as if a handful of Indian leaders drove the British out of their prized colony. This is a simplification, and there were other forces at play as well. Before 1947, there were the two World Wars and The Great Depression. Europe reeled from the brutality of Fascism, and Communism was spreading fast. The established order was dismantling. Colonies no longer offered the economic returns of the 19th century, and thus, between 1945 and 1960, three dozen Asian/ African nations (including India) got freedom from their European rulers. One could say that Hitler too had an important role in the decolonization of the planet!
The same instinct to simplify shapes our view of history. We want to identify the good guys (the ‘us’ guys) and bad guys (the ‘them’ guys), and we would like to ensure that we portray our ancestors, our ethnic group, our nation, and all the other tribes we belong to as Aladdin in the story — not Jafar. That we align with Rama & Krishna and have no interest in the stories of defeated Ravana or Duryodhana.
Take the recent Israel & Palestine conflict. The world is divided, op-eds are pouring in, and TVs are holding endless debates where people are red in the face arguing a simple solution, for what is a very complicated story.
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The human craving for simplicity is just one aspect of this puzzle–add to it the complexities of going back in the timeline.
Anyone who has tried tracing their Family Tree knows how quickly it comes to a dead end after just a few generations. Coherent reconstruction of the past is challenging and gets murkier the farther back we go.
Same way, historians lack sufficient data when examining the pages of the past. The popular history only covers the last couple of millennia, which is a mere blink of an eye compared to the Earth's age of a few billion years and the arrival of Homo sapiens 300k years ago. It illustrates the difficulties of traveling back in time.
In its simplest form, historians have access to three kinds of data: i) physical relics, ruins, pieces of bone, and shards of pottery; ii) what was once written or recorded; and iii) the words spoken by people, the folklore, the songs, culture, and customs that have carried over the centuries.
All these depreciate and mutate with time.
Then there are gaps. Throughout history, across the world, those in power have deprived marginalized and oppressed classes of acquiring and distributing knowledge. In India, ancient texts reflect the point of view and ideas of political, social, or religious elites. How does one get around this gap in knowledge?
And it does not stop here. Evidence that has survived a few centuries gives us one perspective, but what about evidence that’s lost to time? The topography, political context, culture, and language all change over centuries. Nature plays its part–earthquakes and volcanoes reshape topographies, fires destroy, rivers change course or dry out, scrolls succumb to moisture or termites…and so on. Even more pernicious are the changes made by humans — dynasties rise and fall, monuments are erected and destroyed, victors redact and rewrite histories to suit their narrative, languages are born and they die… and so on.
How does one sieve the truth from the bias of a 6th-century traveler’s diaries or a 13th-century court chronicler’s eulogy to his king? Ornamental flourishes (the beheaded king continuing to wreak havoc on enemy forces, seeking divine intervention, etc.) of the old days are now seen as hyperbole.
Experts estimate we lose 90% of all people and events every 1000 years of rewind. If that were true, rewinding to the start of Christianity, we would be left with just 1% of surviving evidence.
“History is an aggregate of half-truths, semi-truths, fables, myths, rumors, prejudices, personal narratives, gossip and official prevarications. It is a canvas upon which thousands of artists throughout the ages have splashed their conceptions and interpretations of a day and an era.” — Philip D. Jordan, American historian.
It is important to remember these challenges, esp. when reading Ancient History. Mencken, an American satirist, once said that ‘The historian is an unsuccessful novelist’. Maybe someone gave the historian the responsibility of creating a coherent narrative using a few shards of pottery, three broken statues, and local folk tales. And a tale he thus spun?
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The constraints that historians work with naturally dictate how historical events are written and consumed. Broadly, it occurs through Oral history and Fact-Based Methods, and anything in between.
Fact-based history appeals to logical academicians, and Oral folklore carries the faith of the masses. Both methods claim superiority over the other, and both are not free of criticism.
The tradition of spoken word preserved and passed on the history for a few thousand years — this included mythology, ballads, folk songs, culture, customs, and other art forms. The use of written words was limited to royal charters and religious scrolls on papyrus, leather, wood, or rock faces. In the Western world, a town or village had the only holy book with the local pastor; back home in India, Vedas and Upanishads were exclusive privileges of a handful of elite Brahmins. The literacy levels amongst the masses were low.
Therefore, collective knowledge was passed on to the next generation by the spoken word & stories. The truth was often secondary to memorability. Great oral communicators were masters of rhythm, rhyme, and meter. Works like Ramcharitmanas, the Odyssey, and the Iliad are meant to be read aloud.
Such orally transmitted accounts of the past were adaptable, and they survived by changing with the sensibilities of the time and their intended audience. For instance, Indian Mythologist Devdutt Patnaik claims that in Rigveda (dated two to three millennia ago) there is no mention of God Shiva getting married. But in Ajanta Ellora caves, which are about 1400 years old, we find him with Parvati and his family. In Valmiki’s Ramayana, Hanuman is a monkey, and Ravana has 10 heads. Yet, 1500 years back, Jain scholars scoffed at the exaggeration — for them, Hanuman was a tribal warrior who carried a flag with a monkey emblem, and Ravana wore a necklace of mirrors that reflected his head 10 times.
Such elasticity of truth in oral tradition accommodated an enormous diversity of views. Within the Indian subcontinent and the South East Asia, there are dozens of versions of Ramayana, the Hindu epic. The story has also found adaptations in Buddhist and Jain literature. A playful aside — Hanuman is a celibate God (Brahmachari) in India, yet as Ramayana traveled to the South East in the 10th century, his marital status changed. In Cambodia, where polygamy existed, he had multiple wives.
The hold of Oral histories on society remains strong. Traditional folk songs immortalized significant historical events — great wars, heroes, kings, and their acts of deceit or chivalry — and these oral histories seeped into social behavior. Recently, I came across an interesting example of such a social norm where some sub-castes of Rajputs do not permit inter-marriages… Several centuries ago, a Chauhan upstart had killed a Tomar king, and local ballads have kept that act of deception alive in the region’s social memory for centuries–thus, Tomars don’t marry into Chauhans.
People often equate mythology with history, but they are different. Old school scholars present ‘The Ramayana’ and ‘Mahabharata’ as itihaas (roughly translated as history), but modern historians scoff at this label and classify them as mythology. Etymologically, the word comes from Greek mythos, meaning ‘stories of Gods and heroes’ (and not Sanskrit’s mithiya, which means falsehood and delusion).
Let’s move to the opposite side of ‘Fact/Evidence-based’ historians, but here a slight diversion to a 15th-century event is in order…
The event was the invention of the printing press in 1440 at Gutenberg, Germany. The printing press transformed society; access to books and the written word moved from the ivory tower of elites to ordinary people on the streets. Written words were not just a means of communicating information, but also an easy repository of knowledge. It changed the way humanity thought and lived.
Written cultures differed from the Oral. They didn’t value memory as much because they could record and store ideas. Words are no more ephemeral, and ideas don’t evaporate with time. The capturing of them on pages allowed the building up of more complex ideas. Such externalization of knowledge enabled its expansion — logic developed, and sciences flourished.
Back to the subject, this scientific attitude extended to History as well, favoring Evidence-Based objectivity. Today, Archeology, Genetics, Linguistics, and Geology are all tools of a modern historian. In time, this move towards objective truth began to ridicule the Oral Histories, where the lines between facts, myths, and legends are blurred.
However, this ‘scientific’ evidence-based method faces its own set of problems. First, as we have seen before, the sources and evidence get thinner and thinner. As the historian travels back in time, the past gets more diffused and faint. Second, the disciplines of Archeology, Genetics, Linguistics, Geology, etc. are still evolving, and every few years a discovery (e.g. DNA Sequencing) changes the narrative. Vast gaps remain in our knowledge, which the historian has to fill with imagination to create a coherent narrative.
For example — ancient Indian epics, texts, archeological remains, inscriptions, coins, etc. are the filters through which the historian tries to reveal the past. But that needs careful contextualizing and analysis. Ancient texts were written in Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit, Aprabhramsha, Tamil, Kannada and Telugu. Multiple authors composed many of them over extended periods. Dates of authorship of various Indian epics (Rig Veda, Ramayana, Mahabharata, etc.) have long been debated, and most agree that multiple authors worked on them over centuries. The very thought of text and language evolving and morphing over centuries is mind-boggling. No simple answers here.
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Let’s now talk about the Historian’s Bias, the proverbial elephant in the room.
As we saw earlier, the ‘unscientific’ Oral history is diverse and more accommodative. Over the centuries, it has kept morphing with changes in social attitudes with the ethos of ‘If my story isn’t to your liking, create your own and all will be well’. There are countless versions of Ramayana on the Indian subcontinent, serving as a good example. The Oral tradition tacitly admits that truth can vary among individuals.
The historian’s bias is more an accusation towards the modern ‘Objective/Evidence-based’ Historians, who strive for the absolute truth. Under the garb of scientific evidence and objectivity, many often propagate a particular narrative or ideology, acting like court chroniclers of the Middle Ages.
Take, for example -
- In Maharashtra, people hold Shivaji, the current favorite of resurgent nationalists, in high regard. Yet, Rajputana, which was at the receiving end of Maratha’s ‘shock and burn’ raids in the 18th/19th centuries, has a less complimentary take on him.
- Was Tipu Sultan a religious zealot or a valiant defender against the British invaders? The answer varies based on your political alignment.
- Churchill is a WWII veteran in the UK but is reviled in India for causing the 1941 Bengal famine.
- In the mid-18th century, the Jat rulers of Rajasthan audaciously raided Agra and Delhi and took off with massive loot. People today perceive those historical figures in various ways within a distance of 50 km — as brave saviors in Bharatpur and brutal robbers in Agra.
- India removes Aurangzeb from its streets, while Pakistan honors Mahmud Ghazni, Mohammad Ghori, and Ahmad Shah Abdali! The same person can be hailed as a ‘patriot’ or branded a ‘terrorist’, depending on one’s viewpoint.
“It might be a good idea if the various countries of the world occasionally swapped history books, just to see what the other people are doing with the same set of facts.” Bill Vaughan, American writer
Post-independence, in India, ‘Left’ historians ruled the academia and framed Indian history with their socialist bias. Today the pendulum has swung, and the ‘Right’ is stirring the communal cauldron, producing a hyper-nationalist version of history.
After the Renaissance and Industrial Revolution, historians wrote with a pro-European bias. After all, Europe then ruled the world. It’s only after the end of colonial rules that darker details of their exploitation have emerged. Post WWII, Stalin, and Mao redacted national records to cover up their crimes or follies of judgment. Such instances are endless.
And now, in today’s postmodern world, these biases are tampering with history to a new magnitude. The Internet has revolutionized society, similar to how the printing press did in the 15th century. We live and breathe in Social Media bubbles that feed misinformation and half-truths, appealing to our confirmation biases. People argue continuously with a distorted view of history gleaned from WhatsApp University. I can’t decide if this tower of babble is a utopia or a nightmare!
A decade or two ago, our perception of history relied on school books, a few magazines, and newspapers, and limited TV channels. These mediums had bias, but also editorial filters that’d verify the authenticity of source information.
The Internet changed it exponentially, and now Artificial Intelligence (AI) is stoking it. Today anyone with a smartphone and a cheap data package is a publisher, without the need of a gatekeeper/editor/authenticity filter. As consumers, we have a limitless choice of opinions to subscribe to, depending on our prejudices, biases, and incentives. Hence, active communities exist in echo chambers where the Earth is flat, a secret cabal runs the USA, and vaccinations are a Pharma conspiracy to mess with human DNA. In the Indian context, the less we mention Gandhi and Nehru, the better.
If you were to post today that Dubai was founded by one Dubey ji, and Misr (Egypt) by Misra ji, chances are that many will buy it.
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To sum this up, we can ask a legitimate question- why do we need History, a subject that is obtuse, full of knowledge gaps, and susceptible to biased narratives? Why not leave it to the scholars who work in sterile labs and write research papers, with a little interface with wider humanity?
Because History shapes cultural identities and values. It helps make sense of a complex world. Mythical history was always used to explain the origins of people and shape their customs and beliefs. For example, the Roman myth of establishing Rome by Romulus and Remus helped to shape the Roman identity as a people descended from gods and goddesses. Rulers have used it to perpetuate their divine rights — Japanese emperors claim descent from the sun goddess Amaterasu. Many erstwhile ruling families in India trace their lineage back to the Sun or Moon Gods. India’s caste system is firmly based on cultural identity.
And when the subject deals with individual identity and social values, one can’t keep Politics and Religion away for long. Both prefer a biased and incomplete version of history to serve their agenda. Politicians are ever ready to appropriate historical figures as a project to frame national identity. We can view the latest political project of the BJP in India, which aims to project Indian identity as a ‘Vishvaguru,’ through the same prism.
The downside of such a myth-based identity is creating stereotypes and obscuring the facts. It can hinder progress when society gets lured into believing its ‘golden past’ that rejects new ideas and technology. You can’t drive forward, looking at the rear-view mirror.
Summing it up, the past can be beautiful, uplifting, and inspiring, but it can also be ugly, upsetting, and disturbing. Instead of judging, we could aim to understand the complexities and avoid simplistic stereotypes when reflecting on the past.
That is…Until the next meme about a historical injustice, pings on our black screen.
PS: I am not a trained historian or an expert in history, merely an interested outsider. Talking to people on the ground and reading more authoritative texts, we came across multiple versions of the past, which triggered this post as we started exploring India and its ancient credentials.
The constant barrage of half-truths and propaganda on WhatsApp University made this effort even more interesting.
History, the great Dutch scholar Pieter Geyl, once remarked ‘is an argument without end’. I am open to an honest argument if you care to share your opinion below.
