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Time of India
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Indian Historiography: New Approach to Literary History
Excerpts from the interview: Q. What was the genesis of the Sahitya Akademi-edited anthology Indian Literary Historiography ? Could you tell us more about it? A. This book began a few years ago as a conference organised by the Sahitya Akademi. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Not many people—perhaps no one—has addressed Indian literary historiography at book length. Historiography isn't widely understood or practised in India, and many may wonder what it actually is. Simply put, it is a history of histories. At a more nuanced level, it's the study of the methodologies used in writing histories. I found the subject fascinating, and I was in a position to persuade the Sahitya Akademi to organise a pan-Indian conference, with participation from many languages. This book is the outcome of that conference. I also tried to include languages not represented at the event, and so on. The subject interested me partly because I've been involved in writing a history of Indian literature myself—one that follows a somewhat different approach to most. In India, the pattern established by the Sahitya Akademi has been to give equal space to all recognised languages—14 at the time of the Constitution's adoption, then 18, and now 22. The Akademi, in fact, recognises 24. So when they organise a conference or commission a volume, they expect most of these languages to be represented in separate chapters by subject experts. This model has been widely adopted and is now expected not just from the Sahitya Akademi but from other publishing institutions as well. That's the approach I've followed here. Q. It is interesting to encounter these essays, as this area does not appear to have been explored with such a strong empirical focus before. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Would this anthology be considered an important starting point in that direction? A. Yes, but also very enjoyable. One point worth making at the outset is that during British colonisation, many officials and scholars believed that Indians lacked a sense of history—be it political or literary. This notion began with John Stuart Mill, who wrote about this supposed deficiency. Later, Lord Macaulay claimed Indian history was unreliable, citing examples from the Puranas , such as kings ruling for 27,000 years and mythic elements like oceans of milk—concluding that such accounts were implausible. This view persisted for over a century. Even as late as 1900, the British Sanskrit scholar A.A. Macdonell remarked that Indians did not write history because they never made any—an insult and injury wrapped into one sentence, appearing in his lengthy history of Sanskrit literature. Yet even his work acknowledges the vast literary output in Sanskrit, which contradicts his own claim. These are colonial slanders, reflecting a sense of superiority. But the larger question remains: how do history and literature relate? Traditional historians have long insisted that history must be grounded in strict documentation—records, evidence, material data. Under such a lens, much of Indian tradition is excluded. These historians have often refused to treat literature as valid historical evidence. Happily, some of these once-dominant voices have begun to acknowledge that there can be more than one kind of history. , a widely respected historian, now distinguishes between 'embodied' history—clearly written as history—and 'embedded' history—where historical content is hidden within literature. Texts such as plays, epics, even the Puranas, may not look like history but can yield rich historical insight depending on how they are read. Indian bilingual scholars like Vasudev Sharan Agarwal and Hazari Prasad Dwivedi also made important contributions. Agarwal, for example, drew on literary works like Kalidasa's Meghaduta to construct a picture of India in Kalidasa's time—not from a historical chronicle, but from a highly literary text. It depends on how one approaches the material. Reading for poetic ornamentation yields aesthetic pleasure, but reading from a different angle can also reveal historical depth. Western scholars—and some heavily Westernised Indian historians—took a long time to recognise this. But history is now seen as a broader, more complex field. Over the past few decades, it has also lost its exclusive claim to 'truth.' The postmodern critique has blurred the boundary between history and literature. We now understand that no single version of history can claim absolute truth. Competing narratives arise based on perspective, interpretation, and motive. History is a narrative, and so is literature. That puts them on equal footing—and makes for a very exciting intellectual playing field. Q. As literature and history converge, how might this reshape our understanding of Indian literature? Does it point to a redefinition, a new canon, or simply a fresh lens on existing texts? A. Yes, the book offers a history of the histories of literature in various Indian languages. One innovation I introduced, departing from the usual Sahitya Akademi model, was to abandon the English alphabetical order typically used in such collections—where Assamese comes first, and Urdu last. Instead, since this is a book on historiography, I arranged the languages chronologically, beginning with the oldest. Of course, determining which language is 'oldest' is not straightforward—it's a politically charged question. Is Sanskrit older than Tamil ? Is Urdu older than Hindi? Are Marathi and Gujarati contemporaneous? Still, I felt it was worth attempting a chronology based on historical evidence, which seemed more meaningful than alphabetical or script-based orders, such as the Devanagari order, which can also distort the narrative. These inherited structures—alphabetical or otherwise—are constructed paradigms that go unquestioned. I wanted to disrupt that a bit. While the model helped hold the nation together in the early years of its existence, it has drawbacks. In these collections, each language is treated in isolation, as though they developed independently. But Indian languages have a long history of interaction, influence, and exchange. The siloed structure fails to capture that interconnectivity. I couldn't change the model, but I could take a different approach. After years of working with those volumes, I was given the opportunity to write the South Asia section of the History of World Literature (in four volumes). There, I broke from the language-by-language format, which, though tidy, doesn't integrate. True integration would involve showing how languages flowed together across time, linked by chronology, genre evolution, and innovation. For instance, a literary innovation may arise in Urdu today and appear in Malayalam tomorrow—either through influence or independently. As Shishir Kumar Das noted, such patterns can reflect either prophane (early) or epiphane (later) appearances of similar phenomena across languages. This flowing model seemed a better way to capture the complexity of Indian literary history. Yes, the risks are real—we've grown used to seeing 15–20 pages per language, each in its own chapter, disconnected from the rest. As my friend Sujit Mukherjee said, such books are held together only by the binder's glue; they lack a unifying vision. So I chose to write a literary history where all languages flow together. And if some readers count pages to compare Bengali with Tamil or Hindi with Kannada, so be it—I didn't count. I followed the narrative and thematic criteria I set out, not quotas. Q. Having lived with this project for so long, what were the absolutely astonishing discoveries that you made? A. Yeah, I'll come to that in a moment. But first, let me clarify one thing. The vision I just described isn't in this book—it's in The History of World Literature in four volumes. The history I wrote there, of South Asian literature, is something I'm trying to publish in India. Now, about this book—yes, the discoveries and excitements are enormous. I believe in engaging with contributors, reading drafts, offering feedback. Many are old friends—some of the country's best scholars. It's been a rich exchange of ideas. Some rewrote pieces several times, others cut them down. Let me highlight a few cases. In Sanskrit, early histories of Indian literature were written mostly by Westerners. In Hindi, it was Grierson; in other languages too, a Western scholar often compiled the first grammar, dictionary, and history—often before fully mastering the language. In Sanskrit's case, from the Rigveda (1500–1200 BCE) to Jayadeva's Gita Govinda (~1200 CE), the language held cultural dominance. When Western scholars encountered this, they were taken aback. William Jones , who translated Shakuntalam in 1789, called Kalidasa the 'Shakespeare of India,' but also wondered why the play had seven acts and so much eroticism—things he didn't associate with drama. This attitude led to the artificial categorisation of kavya versus sahitya, a division Indians themselves never made. In Tamil, there's a long-standing competitive coexistence with Sanskrit. In Hindi, the late Avadhesh Kumar Singh listed 46 different literary histories. In Urdu, early histories were limited in scope—initially omitting non-Muslims and women, for instance. Each language has its own internal exclusions and silences, but some issues—like inclusion—cut across them all. That's the real excitement of this volume. In my concluding chapter, I review 21st-century histories of Indian literature—five or six of them—and explain how I came to conceptualise a literary history that doesn't go language by language, but follows a chronological flow, highlighting innovation wherever it occurred. There is an inherent imbalance in our linguistic landscape—Hindi is spoken by five times as many people as the next major language. I wish all languages were equally represented, but that's not how things are. We must work with what we have and compensate accordingly, striving for a spirit of inclusiveness—though it will always be seen differently by different people. That's part of the debate, and the fun. Yes, it's been exciting to work on this volume since the 2016 conference. But I must stress again: the other project—in which I imagined myself (pardon the vain conceit) riding a chariot pulled by 24 horses, each one a language—is a different model. I lived with that for 18 years, from 2004 to 2022, as part of a Stockholm-based collegium. I've followed both models in my writing—one in Indian Literary Historiography, the other in the global history project. It goes beyond what most literary discussions do. Most are either criticism or reviews of a single text. Few explore long historical perspectives across multiple languages in one book.
Calgary Herald
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Calgary Herald
Opinion: When free speech becomes a weapon
Freedom in general, and freedom of speech in particular, is deeply embedded in American identity. In the age of social media, which enables the mass dissemination of false information, freedom of speech is also being dangerously weaponized by the far right. Article content Article content This freedom took on an almost sacred dimension in the United States with the adoption of the First Amendment in 1791. It reads: 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.' Article content Article content This sentence helped make the young Republic one of the freest countries in the world. Even today, across political lines, it remains a point of national pride for Americans. Article content Article content However, the media landscape has changed profoundly since 1791. Some social media platform owners now exploit freedom of speech for both ideological and financial reasons, claiming to defend it against supposed censorship imposed by progressive forces. Article content In the 19th century, British philosopher John Stuart Mill saw the free marketplace of ideas — in other words, the absence of restrictions on speech — as the very condition for truth in a democracy. In On Liberty, he argued that truth emerges through the clash of opinions, as falsehoods are gradually pushed aside. Article content This vision of free speech eventually became dominant in the United States. The far right seized on it, using the First Amendment to defend some of its most abhorrent ideas in the name of this fundamental right. One of the most well-known examples took place in Skokie, a suburb of Chicago, where the city tried to ban a Nazi march. In 1977, citing the First Amendment, the Illinois Supreme Court — and then the U.S. Supreme Court, by refusing to intervene — ruled in favour of the neo-Nazi group, although the rally ultimately never happened. Article content Article content There is reason to ask whether social media, capable of both protecting and undermining free speech, has changed the equation. In 2012, a massacre took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones of Infowars claimed the massacre was staged to justify greater gun control. Article content Sued for defamation by the parents of children killed in the shooting, Jones defended himself by invoking freedom of speech and the First Amendment, wielding them as a shield against any attempt at regulation or sanction — or rather, as a weapon in the service of lies and violence. In 2022, he was ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion in damages to the Sandy Hook families for defamation. Article content Yet, even after that ruling, he continued to portray himself as a victim of censorship, illustrating the dangers of an absolutist interpretation of free speech. Article content In recent years, freedom of speech and social media have been put to the test by two major crises. The first was the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and the accompanying flood of disinformation. The second was the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, triggered by false claims that the presidential election had been 'stolen.'
The Guardian
20-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Trump's political bullying of Harvard will do nothing to foster diversity of thought
Few people want to live in an echo chamber. Many have no problem being friends with those who vote differently to the way they do. And many would probably agree with John Stuart Mill that 'he who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that' – that to truly know one's own argument, one must also know the arguments of those who disagree. How to create a culture that encourages more fruitful engagement between those of differing political views has become a key question in contemporary public debate. Nowhere more so than in universities, where there has been much debate about 'viewpoint diversity', the aspiration to nurture differing and conflicting perspectives within an institution or group as a means of sharpening arguments and teasing out truths. Universities have in recent decades become recognised as predominantly liberal institutions in which the range of debates can be constrained, both by the fact that most people share a similar perspective and by a culture wary of ideas deemed offensive or hurtful. Hence the growing calls for greater viewpoint diversity. The desire to create a richer culture of intellectual engagement and debate has also, however, been turned into a political cudgel, as in the current standoff between Donald Trump and Harvard University. The Trump administration sent to Harvard, as to many other elite colleges, a series of demands for the reorganisation of its governance and procedures, and for the reform of myriad departments deemed too radical. It is part of an attempt to impose political authority over academic life. One key demand is that any department 'lacking viewpoint diversity' must hire new faculty members to transform its political complexion. University authorities must 'audit' political views and only hire staff whose politics would ensure greater diversity of opinion. To engage with conservative perspectives is vital. This, though, is identity politics of a particularly pernicious kind packaged as a challenge to 'woke' beliefs, a form of social engineering that conservatives normally denounce. Whatever happened to their insistence that the person best qualified for a job should get it? Nor is it easy to see what political balance might mean. How many conservatives should there be? How many Marxists? Should there be a quota for Jews supporting the Palestinian struggle? Or for Hamas-hating Muslims? At the same time as demanding viewpoint diversity, the White House insists that 'Harvard must abolish all criteria, preferences and practices … throughout its admissions and hiring practices, that function as ideological litmus tests'. How then can the university collect data on the political views of potential hires, even were that acceptable practice, to refashion every department's ideological complexion as Trump demands? These are not merely problems and contradictions within Maga world but reflect conundrums within much of the discussion around viewpoint diversity. The lack of viewpoint diversity can be a real issue. The solutions proffered, though, often threaten to make the problem worse. Trump's demand is in essence for universities to introduce affirmative action for conservatives while abolishing diversity policies in every other sphere. Similar ideas have long percolated through liberal arguments for viewpoint diversity. In an address to the American Psychological Association in 2001, psychologist and legal scholar Richard Redding argued for 'affirmative-action-like practices' to increase the numbers of conservatives in academia. Many others, such as the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who helped establish the Heterodox Academy as an academic forum for diverse views, and Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University in Connecticut and a fierce critic of Trump's assault on universities, have followed suit, arguing, in Roth's words, for 'an affirmative-action program for the full range of conservative ideas and traditions'. Sign up to Observed Analysis and opinion on the week's news and culture brought to you by the best Observer writers after newsletter promotion Political scientist Eric Kauffman, director of Buckingham University's Centre for Heterodox Social Science, argues that he is 'not advocating affirmative action', but insists, too, that what 'a university decides to do on gender and race in terms of equity and diversity and inclusion … should be matched by equal action on ideological and political equity, diversity and inclusion'. Fostering diversity of opinion, nurturing a richer culture of debate and encouraging freedom of expression are all vital aims. But, in advocating affirmative action for certain political viewpoints, institutionalising individuals' political identities, and making political beliefs legitimate criteria for admission and recruitment, the proposed solution, cultural anthropologist Richard Shweder observes, 'embraces the very problem it diagnoses'. In defining academics by their political views, the traditional vision of scholarly objectivity, as another anthropologist Nicolas Langlitz notes, becomes subverted. Max Weber, perhaps the most influential of 20th-century sociologists, proposed a 'value-neutral approach' by which one aimed to be objective irrespective of one's politics. Many now view Weber's approach as naive, given that 'nobody has found a way to eradicate confirmation bias in individuals', as Haidt and his colleagues have argued. All that is possible, they suggest, is to 'diversify the field to the point where individual viewpoint biases begin to cancel each other out'. In other words, ensure that liberal bias in research becomes countervailed by conservative bias. This may work in many circumstances but, in others, it may make the search for answers more difficult. In many disciplines within the social sciences or the humanities, the political stance of the scholar can be vital to the argument – for instance, in the difference between conservative, liberal and Marxist views of globalisation. Here, robust debate is essential but there may be no 'neutral' position to be arrived at by washing out the 'biases'. I began by suggesting that few people want to live in an echo chamber. Nevertheless, societies have also become more fragmented and the politics of identity have helped create a more Balkanised world. It is a culture particularly entrenched in universities, where, as Shweder observes, 'exposure to arguments and evidence that challenges one's convictions' can often be experienced 'as trauma or as the creation of a hostile work environment'. These are not issues confined to universities, nor to one side of the Atlantic. These are cultural changes we all need to confront. They are also cultural shifts that cannot be remedied through state mandates or bureaucratic procedures. What we need, rather, is to rethink what is meant by social and political engagement and, in particular, to encourage and celebrate, in place of Balkanised intellectual silos, what Shweder calls 'the capacity of the human mind to stay on the move between different points of view'. Kenan Malik is an Observer columnist
