Since Childhood, I have been fascinated by the marvels of history. During my school years, while visiting my father's office, during summer holidays, before going to attend his long meetings, he would give me topics to write upon. Amongst them, I recall being asked to write upon, 'what would be the history of India, if Aurangzeb was born in the era of Akbar and Akbar in the era of Aurangzeb.' And 'what would be the history of India if Napoleon's aid had reached Tipu Sultan and the battle of Seringapatam would have been won by Tipu.' Obviously the intention of my dad was to encourage and inspire me to go on an imagination over drive. I was to write not on what had happened but on what hadn't. History since then to me has been a subject where once an event has occurred or hasn't occurred can be made to appear inevitable by a competent and imaginative historian.
Ancient history is an art of imagination. Recorded history is mostly a point of view. Recent and contemporary history is a compulsive inducement to believe what the historian (writer) believes to be true. The present is the future of the past; hence the past minute is history. So whatever we read in newspapers each day is history of yesterday written to suit the viewpoint of either the writer or to appease the reader's points of view. Twisted and mangled are facts to match not necessarily truth, but to align with the dictates of time as measured by the writer. As Thomas Carlyle put it, history a distillation of rumour.
In 1757 in a letter to a friend Voltaire wrote, '....history is nothing but a pack of tricks we play on the dead.' Most of William Shakespeare's works are about history; of how he saw and perceived events be it Hamlet, Richard III, Henry V and King Lear. After all, what is the raw material of history- imperfections, deeds with no evidence, facts, devoid of the basics to withstand the test of truthfulness. Essentially it is mere re-construction of history.
The hallmark of history is deception and make believe. We imagine, perceive and write according to our own individualistic orientation. And personally I do not subscribe to the concept of history with 'objectivity.' History by its very essence and nature is intrinsically loaded with 'subjective sentiment'. No more, no less. A recent case in point, the government 'believes' there were no more than a few thousands at Imran Khan's Jalsa at Lahore, while PTI supporters are 'convinced of the truth' that there were more than hundreds of thousands of people thronging the Jalsa. This event is not even a week old and notice the distortion.
In my seventh standard at school as part of history syllabus, I read about Mahmud of Ghaznavi. Being of Muslim faith my fascination of him knew no bounds. Inspired with faith we would quote in debates and conversations, his famous remark to the priests of the Somnath temple that he (Mahmud) is an 'idol breaker and not idol worshipper' when they made offerings to him to save the temple from being razed down. But today in a dispassionate and mature analysis my mind conjures the thought that after having plundered the temple to its bits and pieces on seventeen earlier expeditions, spread over years he may have lost interest in Somnath temple because no gold may have been left. To travel frequently from Ghazni to plains of Punjab and the deserts of Sindh would certainly require a great deal of motivation!
Similarly reading the purported will of Alexander the Great of Macedonia, I stood convinced that he must have been a Muslim at heart or else which ruler can say amongst many other facets of his 'will' that are entrenched in the ambit of Islamic thought that his hands should be outside his grave so that entire humanity must know and learn that Alex- the great who ruled 2/3rd of the then known world took nothing from this temporal world to the eternal world. Just because this mythical story is closest to my orientation, Alex the great continues to be my hero. Essentially history is the perfected art of distortion of facts and events. Victors write history and the vanquished read with bleeding hearts.
Distortions in history, I have personally witnessed. I had barely walked into my teen years when the 1971 Indo-Pak conflict took place. I have memories of those dog fights over Karachi. To defend our frontiers and to subdue secession, armed action was taken to bring order from the prevailing anarchy and chaos. Indians stabbed us alongside the Mukti Bahani. We lost East Pakistan. The victors called it 'genocide' while the government in power referred to it as an 'act of patriotism'. History converted Mujibur Rahman the 'traitor' to the 'liberator' and 'Father of the nation'. (Another aspect that he was gunned down by his people in less than four years thereafter). Just as many historians accuse Jawaharlal Nehru for offering Pakistan on a platter to Mr Jinnah, there are many people in Pakistan and Bangladesh who believe that Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto created and presented Bangladesh to Mujibur Rahman, by tearing up the UN Cease-fire resolution tabled by Poland. Since I am a die-hard Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto admirer, I refuse to accept and hide behind James Joyce remark of 1922, 'history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake'.
Not in too distant a past, during the General Zia years, history was deconstructed and rewritten to give an Islamic color to the life of our beloved Quaid-e-Azam. Deliberately showing his sherwani clad pictures on television and print media, did not make him a more or better Muslim than he was in his immacutely cut Saville row three piece suit 'with the imposing Havana cigar between his fingers'. If only leaders would pay heed to what WC Sellar and R.J Yeatman wrote a few decades back, history is not what you read (read Zia here!) thought. It is what you remember. All other history defeats itself.'
Several traditions in various religions are steeped in imaginary events, imaginary dialogues and also imaginary results. George Bernard Shaw wrote, 'if history repeats itself and the unexpected always happen, how incapable must man be of learning from experience.' History can only be a dialogue between the past and present, its repetition cannot be prevented. John. T Anderson (1876) gave the most palatable definition of history...is a narration of the events which have happened among mankind, including an account of rise and fall of nations as well as other great changes which have affected the political and social condition of the human race.
Martin Luther King used the following unacknowledged quote about lessons of history in his 'strength & love-the depth of evil upon Seashore (1981)'. The major lessons of history? There are four: First whom the gods destroy they first make mad with power. Second, the mills of god grind slowly but they grind exceedingly small. Third, the bee fertilises the flower it robs. Fourth, when it is dark enough you can see the stars.'
History is a license to believe what you think to be true, no matter how far it may be from it! And that it repeats itself, is one of the things that's wrong with History.
(The writer is a senior banker)
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