Unaccountable story-tellers

Can we trust our historians’ objectivity while writing about past events?

December 9, 2017: Let me today share a story of writing history. More precisely, it’s a story of rewriting events of the past. While working on a project I came across shades of some stunning historical facts which have remained unreported in the socio-political historical narratives of our state (J&K). Even as I approached ‘relevant quarters’ to authenticate my findings and to seek a detailed account of the incidents, I found these story-tellers missing the stunning events in their historical narrative.
However, it was a delight when one of the prominent and veteran local ‘historian’ gifted me five volumes of book on Kashmir history (political) authored by him. He, in fact, guided me to the exact volume and chapter of his book where my project’s concerns were addressed. But my delight was short-lived when I found the book missing what I exactly needed, except a one-line reference of the events which were significant to my project.

Later a young lawyer resolved my issues when i was able to get exact references dating back to early 1930s. So, a lawyer remotely connected with historical narratives became my reliable source to access to the original historical documents which helped me to capture the first hand account of these unreported historical events which our political story tellers have grossly missed in their socio-political narratives on Kashmir. But at the same time I was shocked to know that the veteran ‘historian’ whose five volume book on Kashmir history is considered as an authentic source of past events had done a blunder even in that one line about the historical event. It simply contains a factual error and is enough to mar the credibility of the author as well as his book. Now in such a situation how can one rely on these local historians who seem to have penned down Kashmir history without authenticating the past events.
For the past few decades, particularly since the inception of militancy in 1989, we observed a boom in rewriting history even by those who were remotely connected with the subject. Obviously the purpose was to hit the bulls eye for their own name and fame as Kashmir’s political history became suddenly most interesting chapter for one and all. Most of these local ‘historians’ without a background engaged (continue to engage) themselves in casting new light on old facts in their own style and unfortunately, during the course they muzzled the historical facts. A series of versions about the history of dispute engulfing our peace and prosperity, precisely through wrong narratives of historical events, has done a huge psychological damage to the state subjects during the past three decades.
In other words, these kind of story-tellers rewrite history to ensure death of history. They have been taking advantage of unaccountability factor while writing about the past as the system vetting the reference to the past does not exist. Most of the times these story tellers of the past reinterpret the events and personalities of the past to determine their point of view. This way they resort to writing fiction rather than recording the past in an objective manner. These factual errors while rewriting events of the past is simply breeds confusion.

Since history writing here has become a profitable business, there is a group of writers/story-tellers who collect all manner of information about the state and get them published with main aim to earn fame and money. Otherwise, it is not an easy job to evaluate the historical validity of the past events. This kind of writing lessons on history tends to confuse readers about what actually had happened. Pertinently, these authors exercise their prerogatives to mix events of the past with fiction by resorting to factual errors and doubtful interpretations. Even their source of information is shady and mostly not enjoying credibility. Precisely, hearsay account of these story-tellers has remained (continues to remain) ‘credible’ source of information for them.
This situation leads to a few inevitable important questions: Is this breed of local ‘historians’ objective and accurate while writing about past events? Can we trust their historical narratives on Kashmir?
Meanwhile, to conclude, it makes a sense to quote Elazar Barkan, a renowned Professor of History & Cultural Studies and author of The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices in the context of contentious historical issues. He says: “The challenge is to get historians in conflict areas to sit down together and reach a consensus on events in the past, and then write a joint narrative of those events acceptable to all.