The historian and his facts

“My first answer therefore to the question “what is History?” is that it is a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the present and the past.”

Funnily enough, even though he seems to be very aware of a changing order, the author seems unable to lose the comfortable pragmatic nature he was born into. He keeps searching for a “middle ground” between two apparent extremes, but, I regard “middle grounds” as excessively safe spaces which ultimately just go to show a lack of the courage in the individual striving to get there. The middle ground is additionally always has a very arbitrary demarcation. I think a struggle to define the role of a historian is ultimately irrelevant. Over time, the historian’s role is going to change, and ultimately the statement the author makes above seems to serve the exact same purpose as an ‘incantation’ like “Wie es eingentlich gewesen”, as they both are drawing blanket definitions across all the individuals within a certain period of time. The role of a historian, I feel, can only be determined by the historian himself. As he can, for himself, decide the relative subjectivity or objectivity of facts, as he chooses to be relevant (or she. I’m a little lazy, not sexist).

There’s all this brouhaha regarding the nature of”facts”, but it seems like there’s a point being missed somewhere. There’s something valid to be got from approaching a subject from any of these viewpoints, and limiting ourselves to any single one is going to lead to having to eventually bog ourselves down with whatever snags it comes with as well.

Anyway, that aside, the “fact” to me has become a sort of ironical term...I’m still conditioned into looking at the word to define a definite, hard, verifiable and absolute truth; but, past my conditioning, I know that no such thing exists, strictly as a “fact”. Therefore, I regard a historian’s principle job to be with interpretation....as it’s not just about the relations between facts anymore; it’s the interpretation of the fact as well. Though, since I’m breaking the absolute nature of a fact, I think this also implies an expanding of the definition of a “historian”. It’s not a strict discipline anymore; it’s a necessary aspect of everyday life. If I cannot define strongly a fact, and hence a historical fact, how can I define the one who has to deal with these notions? Even in the happening of an event, we cannot observe it in a common-denominator fashion....so as only the memory remains (and this is NOT in any way downgrading the value of a memory), how can we entertain the hope for absoluticity? (It’s not a word, but it should be)

While what I’m saying does sound excessively idealistic and extremist, I guess it’s just a thought I’m exploring, and I’m just hoping that this exploration bears fruit.

Plato's The Allegory of the Cave

Plato, through the conversation between Socrates and Glaucon narrates a story of a group of prisoners chained to face the wall in a dark cave. There is a fire behind them which casts shadows of puppeteers showing their puppets. The prisoners are unable to move and have been here since childhood. All they see is the shadows on the fall, which they believe to be the truth. That is what they perceive to be reality. Now if one of the prisoners is released, and exposed to look at the fire, it would be a painful sight for him. The glare would be too strong. Though he would be told that this is the truthful reality, he would be unable to comprehend this, and want to return to his previous state of painless ignorance. Then the prisoner leaves the cave and is out in direct sunlight. The glare continues to bother him. After his eyes are accustomed to the light, he begins to see things in their own being. Slowly he begins to process these images, and understands them as the reality. At this point then, Socrates and Glaucon agree that the prisoner has reached the point where he will not want to return to his previous state of existence. When the prisoner returns to the cave, he is ridiculed by the other prisoners for leaving the cave. Because they are ignorant about what they are missing, it is this prisoner to take on the role of educating them and showing them the light.

This story is basically compared to life. The cave is the world itself, and the fire the sun.

Plato also talks about the stages in the search for truth – ignorance, belief, thought, understanding and acceptance. When one is ignorant, accept that as the truth and rarely wants to move out of that comfort zone. But once you begin to understand and accept the truth, you realise the fallacies of your earlier beliefs.

This entire theory comes from a Western view of thought – where it is believed, there is only black and white and only one single truth. It does not give room for multiple truths or beliefs.

The Allegory of the Cave tackles reality and one’s perception of reality. Everyone is exposed to more or less the same reality (all the prisoners could see the same shadows on the wall) but yet how each understands the situation will be different. The perception of any reality can have infinite possibilities.

History, Time, Knowledge in Ancient India

This article talks about the lack of history and history writing in the Indian subcontinent. During British India, a number of blatantly racist theories were thrown out, that became quite popular. James Mills, one of the historians – though never to have visitied India and ignorant of Indian language – constantly blamed the inferiority of Hindu civilization for this lack of history. They treated Indian mythology as a mere creation of fantasy and naivety. Hegel observed: the Indian negligence towards history as a subject is one to consider. Indians had made great progress in subjects like Astronomy, Algebra, Geometry, Philosophy and Grammar. History requires understanding – looking at an object independently, comprehensively and its rational connection to other objects. Those people who are capable of this have generally arrived at that period of development where they are able to comprehend their own existence as independent. Hence, Hindus are incapable thoughtful understanding of events. All ‘history’ is confused with dreams.

This extremely biased and rigidly western view of history is rather shocking. They fail to recognize the vast number of texts including those of mythology, philosophy and maths to be any indicator of the high intellectual and literary activity. The Japanese scholar Hajime Nakamura noted that all Indian books of history are tinged with fantasy. They are works of art, rather than historical science.

They also failed to note the existence of the word ‘Itihasa’ in Sanskrit which included a wider scope than just history. The point was that Indians did not lack a sense of history. They just did not value it. The texts that were maintained in the courts of kings, were not preserved carefully enough. Indian philosophy believes in a cyclic succession of the world’s ages, not a linear one like the West. Their conception of knowledge was very different, and hence history and memory are not given the status of knowledge. Memory only revives old knowledge, which makes it representative. Genuine knowledge is presentative not representative.

Another interesting point of note is that the article completely misses out on other forms of documenting like sculpture, painting, carving etc. These art forms, thought detailed are open to interpretation. They do not provide the viewer with hard facts. This is probably why these techniques were deliberately ignored. Indian philosophy is not concerned with the details of an event the way Western philosophy is.

The Historical Event

What is the difference between an event that terminates and one that begins a sequence?
Or is it a historical event a sign of a rupture in a series and a point of metamorphosis from one level, phase, or aspect of the historical continuum to another? Or is it a sign of transition from one phase of a continuum to another?

This very Western way of thinking, based on preconceptions and notions that all historical events are based upon human interaction – human emotions, achievements or desires – gives importance to the addition of something new to the state of being.
When I read this part of the article, it made me think – that’s it. A pretty simple understanding of what an event could be – Anything outside the ordinary, anything that disrupts the routine.

Then, Alan Badiou states simply – Being everything that is in the case and there is nothing that is not in the case. Nothing new can ever be added to being and there no event could ever take place.

Events only seem to occur all the time. Badiou explains the phenomenon as occurring when the knowledge of some unknown aspect of being is added to what had been previously known as being. But neither Badiou’s Eastern philosophy nor the opposite Western philosophy fail to include routine events that happen daily. It is assumed that an event only includes the unanticipated.

I think that maybe an event is anything that is in the case – that is being. Only until an event is noted is it labelled an event. An event can be anything from a fly buzzing in your ear, to the 9/11 attacks. The larger the group is that takes notice of the event, the more valid and accepted the event becomes.

History, time and knowledge in Ancient India

“What we call historical truth and veracity-Intelligent, thoughtful comprehension of events and fidelity in representing them-nothing of this sort can be looked for among hindoos.”

During the modernist era people looked at historical documentation as a bank of facts; things needed to be put in chronological order and only the absolute truth was to be written. This could come in any written from all the way from a document to the diary of a traveler. As long as life was documented the way it was.

Indian culture took to documenting their past from a very different angle as a result of which it could be as if they looked at documenting history as something of little importance.

There have been many attempts to explain this phenomenon ranging from General lack of interest to Maya and cyclical time(because of which “there is no room in this scheme for the modern idea that man is the subject and agent of history”) But within these explanations Roy W. Perrett mentions that “Indian philosophy did not recognize either history or memory as independent sources of knowledge.” This is interesting because I personally feel that this statement doesn’t necessarily need to be a negative one.

Oral tradition in India has been around for centuries. The gurukul system where a student is to live with his teacher and imbibe his teachings through simply memorizing what the teacher says is a practice that still exists in niche areas of Indian culture today. Take Hindusthani music for example; despite having books on the subject students still learn simply by listening and memorizing the teachers tune.

What I am tryng to point out is that it is in this way that quite a lot of our history has been recorded. Rajasthan for instance has an entire class of people known as bhat, the genealogists. The role of these people is to keep track of your family line, specifically the male line. There are two types of bhats - mukhavancha bhat and pothibancha bhat. The mukhavancha bhat maintain genealogy records orally, not in writing. The pothibancha bhat keep a bahi or record in which they write down names.

Each family has to pay the pothibancha bhat for the writing of their names, without which their names will not be entered into his bahi or into the bhat's memory. The practice in Rajasthan is that the bhats visit families every three years and record in the bahi the names of children born, if any, in the families in the interim years. These people are walking encyclopedias of family lineage and their history. Most people have the misconception that these people only record the histories of royalty but it was for almost anyone who wished to keep their family history alive.  This information has been passed down through generations of bhats and is still alive today.

Narrative, in Indian tradition is one of the most important ways of documenting this culture. Records of past deeds, experiences and people are all kept through stories, music or theatre. Wandering performers sing of a great sadhu or king of which someone who is inspired might make a song and so on and so forth. The process is constantly growing and evolving through a multitude of techniques.

When one looks at documenting history one must broaden ones perspective a little. All history in India is documented in some way,

Oral tradition being only the tip of the iceberg; It’s just that sometimes ones ways of interpreting could get a little more creative!

The Wall of Shadows

The allegory of the cave, at the first reading is fairly straightforward. It is a documentation by Plato of his teacher Socrates’ conversation with another student Glaucon, where Socrates uses various metaphors to explain the journey of a philosopher and original thinker who dares to look at things from beyond the prescribed point of view.

The cave is an elaborate setup, which is meant to represent the visual world or society. The prisoners who are chained and sitting in a row are individuals who are conditioned by society since birth and thereby look at the world in a prescribed manner. All these prisoners in the cave are looking at shadows of puppet showmen on the wall in front of them that is cast by the fire behind them. They see neither the showmen nor the fire, just the shadows and that for them is their reality. According to Socrates the fire represents the sun or light though he does not elaborate on who the puppet showmen are. This is the scene the allegory begins with and comprises the first part. In the second part one of the prisoners is freed from his shackles so that he suddenly realizes that the wall of shadows he has considered his reality all his life is but a small part of a wider scheme of things. He is dragged up the rugged ascent to the opening of the cave and made to look out at the world beyond – the sky the sun the trees etc. This journey is violent and tough. Then after getting accustomed to this new “truer” reality he has to journey back into the cave and rejoin his companions in the third part of the allegory. He is necessarily maladjusted when he returns since he has grown unaccustomed to the darkness and the men who have stayed in the cave all the while, resolve never to go out to explore anything in the fear of coming back disoriented and less functional.

That is the gist of the allegory, and though it is fairly didactic it still raises questions that are not directly answered in the text. The most obvious one perhaps is who are these puppet showmen and who is it that frees the prisoner and drags him up to the mouth of the cave and with what motivation? I believe out of all the parts in the allegory it is the character of the prison guard that is the most intriguing since he does such obviously contradictory things. In spite of keeping the prisoners chained for so long why would he suddenly decide to free one and forcibly drag him around to show him the things that have been kept at bay so carefully? The first impression that the prisoners are shackled by institutions, the state or figures of authority, is suddenly checked when one of the prisoners is freed, since no figure of authority would willingly make the individual look beyond the straight jacket. So the mystery grows as to what has kept these men shackled. In my interpretation the prison guard is our conscious minds with all its dichotomies and contradictions. Our consciousness keeps us focused on the “wall of shadows”, on societal realities common to everyone so that we can function and progress in ways both expected and relevant. At the same time there is a part of our consciousness which strives to break the mould, rebel against the system and experience a new kind of life and perception – and this exploratory side is at constant odds with the pragmatic side. Hence the journey into “enlightenment” or differential experience is always a tough one since one has to battle with one’s “saner and safer instincts of survival”.

A question that I posed in a class discussion regarding the allegory was whether the journey to the opening of the cave could possibly be done by more than one person: together? As I understand it that journey is necessarily an individual one because it is also an inward one. It is taken in the realm of one’s mind – from one level of consciousness to another and it is necessarily tough since one has to go against all the age long social conditioning, and the comfort zone of knowing that everybody is going to agree with you or vice versa. But then having made this tough journey and experienced an obviously more beautiful and wider reality why then does the actor have to go back to the cave? The reason is precisely because it is an inward journey, and the moment he tries to share his experience with anyone – translate his widened perception into words – he must speak in the language of shadows that is understood by the rest of the prisoners facing the wall.

The first parallel that comes to mind of this situation is the relationship between spirituality and religion. The former is a realization or journey that takes place at an individual level and is not an experience that can be shared. Religion – apart from its connotations of institutionalization and power – is simply a tool of communicating spirituality to a wider audience; in effect it is mass media that can be watched on a “wall of shadows” by those who do not make the inward journey themselves. In the process the experience is naturally diluted standardized and far removed from the authentic, but it is the only way it can be understood by a group. Similarly experimenting with hallucinogens might give you a wider experience of your consciousness but how do you translate the experience to someone else. Whether it is through language music or visuals it still remains a representation of the authentic, shadows which nonetheless may be communicated and understood in a social context.

The Allegory of the Cave- Plato

“And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have a pain in his eyes which will make him turn away to take and take in the objects of vision which he can see, and which he will conceive to be reality clearer than the things what are now being shown to him?”


The first read of the article caught my interest and brought forward that old tutored righteous didactic voice from the back of my head. A man being released into the ‘light of life’ of candid reality from his endless physical position of facing a wall looking at shadows and false impressions, is an allegory that retains thorough connotations.
But after my second and third read, I was tempted to re-quote Nietzsche’s popular comment “Plato was a bore.” Sitting above absolutes and unlikely ideals, Plato defines them as morally proper. I'd like to think though that Plato was more of a stargaze than boring, unrealistic idealism that, when the goal actually achieved by those seeking it, is clearly unnecessary and expensive, though deemed ‘ethical and moral’ (though the introduction of the article before Plato’s passage however isn’t as wholly illusory).

The long time period in history between Plato to Nietzsche cannot be argued- the gradual development of humans in the understanding of the mind and society would have progressed (not necessarily but likely) from Plato till today. So Platonic dialogue is viewed as an archaic, self-satisfied indulgent kind of dialectic, such as his opinion that there is one perfect version of Good for all people, whether they are rich or poor, powerful or weak, an unalterable Good which man should prize above all else.

Thus I see these two perspectives, both of which I can relate to- Plato’s theoretical preconditioned understandings we gather of life and Nietzsche’s practical experiential approach towards life.
Plato’s ideas are today disguised as the ‘rules’- a foundation that sets the stage, allowing me to do whatever I want with those ideas. Plato’s ideas embody external authoritative figures. Nietzsche on the other hand is a part of nihilism, which negates one single objective voice of truth and states that the power resides inside, here embodying my mind and heart.

Ethics and Method

“...new methods (of looking at history) are essential for restoring traction to the public in a public-based political order.”

This is a theme I’ve been exploring for a while now, due to the courses I’ve been taking along similar lines. The basic point the author makes then, is that the main reason for resorting to the postmodern “method” is to subvert the centres of power that have been created on the basis of these institutionalized modes of thought. Governments, religious bodies, scientific and philosophical establishments in the last few centuries have all been built up from these “worldviews” that are being propagated, or have furthered the propagation themselves....thus creating for themselves strongholds of power and inducing intellectual strangleholds. Predictably, as these worldviews transform into unquestionable truths, so it becomes easier to construct an equally unshakable structure of power around it.

I’ve often thought about this notion of postmodernism being merely a phase, a transition into a new system of worldviews and accepted notions. Personally, I feel there to be little chance of that happening. While no one can really make adequate predictions on the nature of the “post-post modernity”, to me such questions are anyway irrelevant. Postmodernism is a change not merely in the shallow form that the previous historical transitions since the renaissance were, but a change at a far more fundamental level, a revolution in method as much as thought, “...a paradigmatic shift, nothing less.” So fundamental a change is this, that attempting to make accurate predictions about the future seems a bit daft. The postmodern mindset may survive, or it may morph into something new...both seem equally likely possibilities for now, but I somehow feel it’s one that could be self-sustaining. In the seemingly “anything-goes” world of postmodernity, it seems difficult to imagine any single view gaining a comparatively greater following (though this also might be an incorrect view, as it’s viewing postmodernism from a modernists eyes), and hence producing a large-scale change.

Oh well, I think my rambling there just convinced me on the uselessness of attempting to make any accurate forecasts regarding this issue.

Anyway, returning to my previous point, postmodernism seems to be forming as a reaction to these institutions. I think (and again, this may be my modernist-conditioned mind talking, but it’s still valid) there’s a danger somewhere of even this “postmodern” mode of thought being institutionalized in some way (on reading this, I’m wondering if the term “institution” will still be valid). Getting rid of absolutes also means not allowing for the same view to be held as an absolute, and I feel if this is not adhered to, and this mode of thought becomes rigid, there would be a risk of a very reactionary mode of thought forming, perhaps opposite in conception, even restrictive. This could be one such “code”.

But then again, why am i so afraid of this outcome? I guess some part of me can understand its existence, but it would still be a shame if we allowed ourselves as a race to stifle the diversity that could exist and demarcate boundaries in our minds.

Time, Presence and Historical Injustice, Berber Bevernage

..However, as a captive of the moral truth, Amery demands a right of resistance against what he calls the anti-moral ‘natural’ or ‘biological’ time that heals all wounds: “What happened, happened. This sentence is just as true as it is hostile to morals and intellect...” Amery took an explicit stance against Nietzsche’s counsel to learn to forget and his notion that history must serve the present and future.

Around two months back I accidently spilt a tiny tumbler of hot tea on my study desk, which in seconds gushed through the rest of the table, onto my laptop, a new Mac. How did this happen? A normal every day morning- I went downstairs to the kitchen, picked up some hot tea in a tumbler, came back to my room with the newspaper, walked towards my desk and placed my tea. Leaning on the desk I noticed that it was sitting a few inches ahead of the wall, so I gave the desk a slight nudge, the rest followed; the table shook causing the tumbler to jerk- the tea falling (flowing, flying!) rapidly across onto the harmless laptop that was shutdown and whose screen was even closed. This tiny spill of tea worth barely three rupees has caused a series of extremely large unfortunate events costing me more than fifty thousand rupees. Such is the nature of an accident; a freak accident.

When I read this sheet, this chosen quote of Amery’s stood out; it amplified the sting I was left with. I cannot claim that this was a crime that deserved justice and I apologize for creating parallels with his life threatening versus my materialistic situation, but in my head all I knew was that I had no option but to go back in time and change what was done. My mind saw no choices: I had to go back and un-nudge that table, that was the only way the situation would achieve justice. I didn’t accept the idea of time. And this is exactly how I relate to Amery’s quote “the time sense of the person trapped in resentment is twisted around, dis-ordered, if you wish, for it desires two impossible things: regression into the past and nullification of what happened.”

For a whole month I was in denial that the tea had spilt on and seeped inside the laptop, even though experts had diagnosed that the logic board and display had to be changed and that it was my only chance of getting the laptop to work. I didn’t acknowledge the spilling as an action of the past. I believed that I possessed power over my action and I could beat this fixed ontological idea of time, all if I could just undo my mistake. The fate of the present and future of my laptop were in my hands because I was planning on reversing time to my past to undo the damage done. My solution for attaining justice in this scenario was by getting the laptop fixed without spending a single rupee on it. So for that one month I ran behind every expert in the city, searching and begging for any manner in which I’d have the laptop organized and proper without paying a sole rupee.

Many of my friends and family kept telling me not to get stuck in the action of the past but to move forward and learn from the experience; I detested the idea of moving forward when I was nowhere in the future. These people who discouraged my fixation of the incident, also unconsciously dissuaded my goal of achieving justice, in whatever manner I needed to. They say when the laptop is ruined, it is an action of the past, if somebody fixes it, then it is an action of the present/future but not a reverse undoing into the past. I know my present was the past- I was living that moment of nudging the table for many weeks ahead, saw no logical reason why people kept explaining these three broken down absolutes of time- past, present and future...” The emphasis on the absence and irreversibility of past and historical injustice endows the time of history with something uncomfortable, something unjust and almost unacceptable in a moral sense.”

In today’s world, if you feel that your mind isn’t sitting in the present then how do you relate to the world outside who’re constantly judging and un-accepting of your state of being categorizing you in the ‘Universal notion’ of time... "The whole history of Western philosophy, according to Derrida, has been influenced by a certain conception of time that puts too much emphasis on the present and the actual to the disadvantage of the absent and in-actual.” Who is to decide what is in-actual?

Nuke sequence

Japan Seq from Hari Shankar on Vimeo.

Recreating moments

SO when we discussed project ideas, i was in a state of complete confusion about how to take any ideas forward. i was in the middle of another course's project and was being influenced by the ideas emerging from that project (namely nostalgia) so my initial questions that were about time and the present and the nature of actuality were distorted into these new ideas. A little stepping back gave me a little more clarity in what i really wanted to explore.

I want to explore experiences of time. I want to explore present and past through the limits of physical time. The present is an instant, but the present is experienced in varying lengths of time. What we consider to be a 'moment' can range anywhere from being a second to many years. COnsequently, cosmic moments, as i imagine them, must span light years. How do days, weeks, months become measures of time when it is so relative? How do we describe some events in such close detail that makes them seem so rich and full of minute movements, while others remain rough sketches that are short-lived, brief. How do we categorize the beginning and ending of a moment when we want to re-tell it to someone? these are the questions I've been asking.

My project will be to create a series of photographic images that represent moments wherein each moment is represented by two pictures that trace its beginning and end. The length in physical time between these two images may vary from moment to moment. I already have a few sets of photos that demonstrate how experience of time is relative and how 'the present' varies from experience to experience. I will compile these images either on a blog or in a book and make notes on the time and date of each picture taken.

A more 'together' statement coming up soon. Please comment on what you think of this idea and add to it!