I wish my Dad and Mom see this. They will be really proud of you Idrees Kanth. You are special person and a special special friend. I swear Dad will shed a tear or two... You deserve every accolade coming your way. I am proud of you... Do read this special interview. Some excerpts “Unlike a chronicler who is keen on ‘facts’, the trained historian realises that there is no singular past, but multiple pasts. Historical production, it needs to be emphasised depends upon a variety of factors: the archives we use, the theoretical methods we employ, and importantly enough, our social location. So in many ways it is the dialectic and the dialogic between the historian and his/her archive that produces a particular construction of the Past.” “I don’t know how many scholars/people are aware of the fact that the National Archives of India (NAI) does not allow any access to papers on Kashmir beyond 1924. This arbitrary ‘rule’ is justified in the name of security concerns of the Indian state. Aside from the problems it raises with regard to historical research which are obvious, it also goes to show how state control populations and how it shapes societal memory through controlling archives. Verne Harris brings this up very well in the context of apartheid South Africa, especially how regimes of power were sustained through controlling the archives and thereby societal memory. “ In the South African case huge volumes of public records were destroyed around 1990-1994 in an attempt to keep the apartheid state’s darkest secrets hidden from public. Similarly, the Indian state by denying complete access to records on Kashmir has sought to promote a particular discourse of the conflict, one which has suited its own national and diplomatic interests. In short, all these examples illustrate the power of the record and state’s control over social memory: a control that involves both remembering and forgetting. Thus while the Kashmir records are completely inaccessible, or may even exist only as an ‘imaginary’, the symbolic power attached to them is brought upon by the state to legitimise a particular narrative on the region’s history. However, the same records, if they are allowed access to, can also have the power to be instruments of empowerment and liberation. “I guess we still know very little about the 1950s and the 1960s. And here is where I come back to the Archives. The entire Aftab file of the 1960s seemed to be missing from The Press and the Information department, or at least I could not find it out over three months in 2012. Thereafter when I went over to the Aftab office I was told the usual story that their records were burnt in some fire incident. So I reiterate my point again: unless we have trained historians and access to archives, there is very little progress we will make. It is not that I strongly believe in the cult of the specialist, but it makes so much sense to have a trained historian trying to write about Kashmir, than our doctors and engineers, who think it is their exclusive right and of course their moral duty to educate the masses.” “Of course the doctors, and for that matter anybody has the right to write about anything, but one would expect them to look out for alternative platforms to conduct such programmes. It is also reflective of another problem which is much more deeply embedded in South Asian societies. Not only are our social systems deeply hierarchical in every sense, but also that a particular class of people take it upon themselves the sacred duty of enlightening others, be it religious knowledge, secular knowledge, political knowledge, or some other kind of knowledge. “
Posted on: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 13:25:20 +0000
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