On history

The idea of subjectivity vs. objectivity, in any field has always intrigued me personally. In my opinion humans are highly subjective beings. We perceive, understand, and react in accordance to our own contexts. From our experiences to the way we are brought up, to where we are brought up the people who surround us etc constitute of our context. How does one completely detach ones self and create or recount or infer?

In history, of what little experience I have of it, one has always debated weather it should be subjective or should it be clean-cut objective. This article brings to light that not only us, as the laymen receiver of information, but great scholars have a recurrent debate over it. In fact there exist different schools within history who believe in facts vs. ‘’articulated facts.’’

This brings us to an important part in our discussion. When we studied history in school the BJP political party had just come into power. Being the capital of the country, along with other states they took it upon themselves to edit and re write the curriculum, textbooks included. This way they controlled the perspective from which the youth read about their nation. Thus they could propagate their achievements and beliefs. They took the existing information and ‘’saffronised’’ it.

This makes me wonder if its legal if at all to change and manipulate information like this. How does one get the real information?

The author sheds some light on the differentiation of facts and of writing history. He quotes Pirandellos characters, ‘’ facts are like a sac, it won’t stand up until you put something in it.’’ On the other hand you have journalist C.P Scott who says facts are sacred and opinion is free. They are both not wrong in their respective places. The manipulation of facts per say would be wrong for the use its put to and the harm it can bestow upon a nation its people etc. on the other hand facts would not tell us anything, it would be like seeing an skeleton but not feeling the presence of the creature. I believe that one of the basic instincts of human nature in narrating. When we communicate with each other or express ourselves we are in a manner narrating or story telling. Before the written texts existed word of mouth was used along with the wisdom of the elder generations to transfer information. Eve now folklore exists trimmed with lots of hemming and other accessories to accentuate the actual fact. Even in this manner the information changes from one individual to another depending on their own belies and contexts.

The author here makes a very valid point by saying, ‘’the historian is necessarily selective. The belief in a hardcore of historical facts existing objectively and independently of the interpretation of the historian is a preposterous fallacy, but one which is hard to eradicate.’’ He further goes on to quote the views of Collingswood, ‘’ the philosophy of history is concerned neither with the past by itself nor h the historians thought about it by itself, but with the two things in their mutual relations. It is made by nobody save the historians: to write it is the only way of making it.’’ If no one recorded even facts would they actually exist? And if one were to record facts then how would they become common knowledge?

The idea of including rather than secluding or shunning the author (historian) seems more human than striving to pull apart the two. Acknowledging the fact that the historian perceives try’s to understand the facts and then narrates them makes history in some sense a rather open field, leaving it open to discussion and inviting different points of view. In a sense then it is not ingrained in stone. This brings me my conclusive point that with every individual information will change somewhat according to their biases and contexts, each right according to theirs.