“History is to nationalism what poppy is to a heroin addict”. The rather implausible parallel drawn by the British historian Eric Hobsbawm was recently recalled by the pre-eminent early India historian Romila Thapar while delivering a recent lecture on the complex relationship between historical research and majoritarian nationalism.
Titled “Our History, Your History, Whose History?”, her speech delivered at the annual C.D.Deshmukh memorial lecture at the India International Centre brought out the primary contradiction between professional historians who depend on methodological analysis that “demands a training in reading sources” to give an understanding of how our past came to be and popular historians who lack training but more often than create an imagined history to establish majoritarian supremacy.
“Origins generally rise in status when placed in the ancient past. They then have to be legitimised by assessing evidence and accuracy. What comes from the poppy and enters the mind of the heroin addict, conjures up fantasies about a magnificent past – or otherwise – and about which fantasy sustains the present,” she said.
— source thewire.in | Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta | 16/Jan/2023