History writing should be free from the shackles

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Shahid Amin, professor Department of History, University of Delhi, called upon the historians of the state to dig up and mine through the official records and documents of the state for creating a new perspective on history and make it exciting. He was delivering the Puthupally Raghavan memorial lecture organised by the Kerala Council for Historical Research here on Saturday.Tracing the official records, right from the time of the East India Company which employed writers, who had very little idea about the native land, to the time of delicate exchange of information between the Englishmen and the natives, Shahid Amin described an era when the Englishmen documented only what they thought was necessary, ignoring the nuggets of information passed on by natives.“This is precisely why historians should dig deep to bring out the real socio-cultural scenario of the past. Remarkable contributions of the native agents are often ignored by the historians and the colonial archives,” said Shahid Amin, also the author of the book, ‘Event, Metaphor,Memory:Chauri Chaura 1922-1992’.Shahid Amin also called for the democratisation of public  access to official records, saying that,there still was restriction to documents even under the Right to Information Act. “Access to information and availability of current documents is very essential for contemporary writing of history,” he said.Shahid Amin also expressed concerns about the vitality of history writing getting obscured by unimaginative school text writing and the official urge to control what goes into the school textbooks.He said that the historians should be permitted to record the past as it is without being shackled down, quoting Mohammed Habib at the Indian History Congress in 1948 requesting the  passing on of at least a fraction of the freedom India got, to the historians.Shahid also expressed concern at pitching the historian against the politician, by wrongful portrayal of ancestral history, often dragging well-known historians to court.He said that such control on writing about the past was insulting.“History is not a religious devotee entering temples of time after purification rites. Writing, reading and teaching of history has to be rescued from the “Yakshas” or it will be the end of any serious historical writing in India,” he said.