Nice topic Souro :)
One thing I am sure about is, history and it's study is like groping in the dark. I never fully trust it, even though I sometimes enjoy it at face-value. But to take it as an authentic account is something I cannot bring myself to do.
Another thing I am sure of is, no one, nothing in this existence is black or white. Somehow, somewhere, I have begun feeling like, it is not for us to judge whether someone/something was right or wrong. And here coming to history, we actually have no full account of their entire life, their deeds, their misdeeds. Somehow I find it hard to box people into 'evil', 'good'.. kind of like a Gandhian stance, their actions can be condemn-able but not the man :p
To explain further, I have no idea why we have to glorify or strike a person down.
History to me, is about -
- knowing about the past as much as you can
- cherishing what can be on a subjective level
- learning from the mistakes or errors committed by our fellow creatures
- learning also helps us incorporate something into our present that could help improve quality of life - in the enjoyment of arts, in administration and polity, in lifestyle, the scope is for us to imagine.
- offers a peak into human psyche
It's really impossible to say if all those people in the past and their actions were a necessary evil or pure evil, because not only do we not have full account but I really believe that no event can be isolated and viewed in separation.. because I think something is always linked to another directly or indirectly in multiple ways, just as any event could have taken multiple other paths.. and we're here today, humans did come a long way..
.. I mean, if you feel great about a historical account, then it's really your feeling, it doesn't mean that we are in some way certifying that event as deserving of our positive emotions, because again, I believe no event is so uni-dimensional, it has many facets, it is a consequence of many things knowable and unknowable.
Same with negative accounts of historical events or figures - we have no way of cross-checking them, and, there's no compulsion that we ought to condemn them, just as there's no compulsion that we ought to hold them as glorious.
And by our glorification, or condemnation or nonchalance, the historical accounts and our learning of the history isn't going to alter. We still have to learn, look into our pasts, and really take whatever we can or must.
I'd much rather adopt an indifferent view of things, and if my heart responds to something it does, I cannot help it, but I always feel my glorification or condemnation of a spectacle of the past isn't going to alter anything.
This trend of boxing people, things, events into 'good', 'bad', really certifying them needs to stop, IMHO. Why is there any need to validate or invalidate something (not directed at you, Souro, speaking in general)
Edited by Angel-likeDevil - 7 years ago
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Jodha Akbar
