RECONSTRUCTION of
HISTORY
Hrushikesha Mohanty
University of
Hyderabad & KIIT DU, Bhubaneswar
History
is the signature of time that has flown down. Some signatures are washed away
by time itself and some remain for some years. Some says of the past remain
timeless like our epics. Question is now about epics and history. Do our epics
have something to do with history? History is of the reality that existed or
was enacted before. When we look into history we look for reality. It’s a
search for truth. A historian is a truth seeker. How does a historian transact
its business?
Written
history is not there in India since the dawn of civilisation. The caves,
paintings, temples and sculptures are the signatures of time that reflect the
bright past. Some sculptures are still hidden to say of history. Say, diamond
triangle of Odisha, still site has something buried in and some are excavated.
The place at a glance seems eager to tell of the past it has gone through. Its
eagerness is historians’ temptation. Some go emotional to with poetics and
novels. Thus history turns a fertile source of literature. But, History is not
literature, it could be an emotional eruption due to history. History is based
on facts and figures. In order to get those, historians may take help of archaeologists,
scientists to experiment and analyse the historic artefacts. What does one get
from such experiments? Is it just the time period by carbon dating? Now
historians are interested in much more. Before, history is for kings, emperors
and rules of the land; that’s why they say history is of powerful people. But,
now the concept has changed. Currently historians are interested of knowing the
days of the past. How was the world that time, the world of people to plants,
antelopes to ants, everything? Why do they want to do that? It’s to see how the
world has charted its path from past to the present. That study is necessary to
understand not only the change patterns but also the survivability on forecasting
the change the future may bring in. The scope of study of History has, infact,
expanded. We need to devise new methods in studying History now.
Such
a method is reconstruction of the past. It’s a method to visualise the past to
infer more information from the visualisation and later validate the derived
information with direct or inferred information. For an example, say at Lalitgiri, one can visualise the
bygone days of monks there and their association with not only locals but people of farfetched lands. This picture, if
historians can recreate with facts and proofs available at the site and
museums, will provide an integrated picture of the past. This picture is not
only of the kings and nobles but of the world of past. The picture in total
should reflect start of the monasteries, reaching to the pinnacle and then the
miserable end. On analysis of the picture, one understands how and why time
scripts a civilisation. Does a civilisation script its own end? Or is it forced
to end by external enemies? Or does God bring its wrath on a civilisation?
Answers to these questions are important for setting a civilisation to a
corrective path or steering it to face a challenge for continuity.
Reconstruction
is not bringing back life to a dead. If deads reappear then the worldly problem
will increase manifolds. It’s so for reconstruction of history. Hence,
reconstruction of history has to have a defined process coupled with both
scientific as well as sociological values and virtues. Reconstruction of
History must have ethics to it, it must be driven by a philosophy. Each
landmass has its own philosophy that is time immemorial; it is initiated,
followed and will be followed by its people forever. This ethos of the land
should be guiding principle of reconstruction of History. A reconstruction must
not bring up a life threatening Frankenstein rather it should bring Ahalya back
from the cursed rock; life must be celebrated following the ethos of the land.
Historians through reconstruction of History are to bring the forgotten best of
the past to the present for the bright future.
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