National and Regional Identity in Design: Part I

Part I- The Question of a Culture of Design

I had heard stories from Snehanshu of his spirited paternal grandmother. She came to Birnagar near Kolkata, from Kanpur in the early decades of the 20^th century as a young bride. The intricate purple, pink and gold Benarasi silk sari that was bought for her wedding, was given to me by my mother-in-law. As a 25 year old, new to Bengali customs and completely unused to wearing saris, I draped on the beautiful heirloom with some trepidation at my wedding reception.

My Grandmother-in-law's Wedding Benarasi Sari
(Purple silk worked in zari, probable date of manufacture: 1910 CE) 

Some of my mother’s saris, including the red Benarasi silk worked in silver thread that she chose as part of the wedding gifts my father’s family bought for her, have also come down to me. My mother was born in the mountains, much removed in space and time from the Kanpur of my grandmother-in-law’s childhood. She spent her girlhood in and around the Garhwal Himalayas in the 1950s and 60s, largely in a place described by a British officer in the 19^th century as ‘the beautiful valley of Deyra, luxuriant with many-tinted forests, and refreshed by the rippling little rivers, which, with as many arms as Briareus, run in a meandering course through the wide length of the vale, from the Ganges to the Jumna’.[1] Many of the Benarasis that formed part of my mother’s wedding trousseau, despite frequently jostling cheek-by-jowl in iron trunks with my father’s treasured whisky bottles across army cantonments all over the country, still retain their lustre and delicacy. Though it is only infrequently that I wear saris, I took the red Benarasi out recently to wear at our friends’ wedding reception.

My Mother, Aruna Shekhar's Sari: Detail of Aanchal and Main Body
(Red Benarasi Silk worked in zari, probable date of manufacture: 1965 CE)  

 What has all this got to do with design and regional and national identity? First, that in my subjective opinion, the design of the sari ensures that it is flattering to most women in the Indian sub-continent. It was the overwhelming mode of dress for Indian women, whether a Bengali brought up in North India, or a Pahari travelling all over the country. Secondly, the fact that the sari, even with its dwindling popularity, is an identifiable symbol of India. Which is why, so many of us, who may not wear saris on a regular basis, still fish them out on formal, celebratory occasions. Or why, professions or people who are involved with presenting India to the outside world, whether in the hotel industry or in the political arena, also often opt for the sari as a formal mode of wear. Thirdly, that different regions in India have different and recognisable patterns, weaves and motifs and even ways of tying the sari. The Benarasi, the Chanderi, the Sambalpuri, the Baluchari, the Dhakai – saris from different cities and regions of India, carry the names and ethos of their cities or regions with them, and conjure up specific variations on the theme.

So, the Benarasi sari, though evidently associated indelibly with a specific place in India, was a cherished possession in the plains of many parts of north and east India – as was the Patola or the Paithani sari in western India, and the Kanjeevaram in southern India – wherever the sari was the preferred mode of garment. And even in some of its mountainous regions, where the flared skirt or the lehnga was more practical and was also the traditional choice for wedding apparel, the Benarasi sari was still a significant part of special wear for many women. Attributes of saris from different areas also percolate down to a shared lexicon used to evoke certain textures, or types of pattern – even when not describing clothes, and sometimes in rather unexpected places. I was reading out to my daughter from a Hindi Science magazine. This was an article on the tailor-bird. Originally written in Marathi by an ornithologist, it describes the appearance of the tailor-bird thus: ‘its orange eyes, rusty head, set off by its green jacket – soft as Chanderi silk.’[2] The delicate Chanderi, a product of the town in Central India famous for its fine weaves, is still familiar to most people in India – from a little girl in a metropolis to an ornithologist who grew up in the Ghats of Western India.

The sari then is as much representative of a regional as it is of a national culture. This is not to disregard the fact that the sari is not worn all over India, even traditionally. The lehngas of Rajasthan, Kumaon and Kutch and the woven shifts of the Nagas are just some spectacular exceptions. Neither is the sari worn in the same way over different regions of India. What it does show is the preference in the Indian tradition, for an unstitched, woven, multi-purpose garment – despite the technology and the knowledge of stitching and sewing from very ancient times, evidenced by the archaeological finds of needles in many sites of the Harappan civilization. This predominance of a flexible, unstitched garment may also be seen in traditional men’s wear – in the form of the dhoti, the mundu, and the lungi, where depending on the fabric, the intricacy of weave and the style and variations of drape, it may be used for occasions varying from pujas to weddings to simply lounging around at home.

Even most traditional stitched garments in India, such as my personal favourite, the lehnga, offer this feature of flexibility and multiple use, though naturally not as much as the sari. My own wedding lehnga has been reused sufficiently, not just by me at festivals or marriages of friends, but also by a much taller cousin. One of the lehngas I treasure the most, is the one made in the early decades of the 20^th century for the marriage ceremony of my grandmother, who is of partly Kumaoni extraction. It has come to me via my mother, the only one of my Nani’s daughters to marry into a Kumaoni family.

The Silk Wedding Lehanga originally made for the wedding of my Nani, Basant Kumari Ghildiyal, nee Joshi
(probable date of manufacture: 1925 CE)

And I use my odhnis, duppattas and shawls – other unstitched garments, which the lehnga is conventionally teamed with – to protect my head, chest, ears and arms in the dry summers, the sudden monsoon squalls, and the blustery winters of Delhi. Like the sari, the lehnga can suit both casual and formal occasions; the waist can be drawn in or let out depending on how much you have eaten in the recent or distant past; it can be lent or handed down successfully without any alterations to people of different dimensions. In fact, as Rta Kapur Chisti, who has researched and written extensively on the saris of India, also demonstrates, some of the many ways in which the sari is worn, includes a form of draping and pleating which makes it function and appear like a lehnga![3]

Thus, most traditional saris, while being a perfect compound of not just obvious hallmarks of our regional and national identity, also reflect an individual identity that owes as much to each of their makers as to their users.[4] Even in the same region, there is variation depending on the material of the sari, different guilds and so on. In Banaras itself, the two main weaving traditions that still exist, have distinct and characteristic motifs. Yet, saris woven by different craftspeople in the same area, or even by the same craftsperson, even when they bear similar sorts of patterns, are never identical. How does this happen? Design, in its conventional meanings today, is limited to dictionary definitions, such as ‘to indicate, to draw, to contrive, to form a plan of, to set apart a plan or scheme formed in the mind’.[5] But, evidently the sari is a designed garment, and equally evidently, rarely is it made through elaborate drawings.

Detail of the Aanchal of my Grandmother-in-law's Wedding Benarasi Silk Sari

If the idea of luxury touted and sold today ‘still harks back to bespoke…not just ownership or consumption of an expensive object, but an enriching, individualizing, personal experience…which stays with the user for posterity’,[6] then in India, the idea of luxury has been accessible to rich and poor alike, for generations in the past, in the form and design of the sari. In fact, even as late as about three hundred years ago, Europeans visiting India, noted that there was not much difference between the dress of the poor and the rich, except that the clothes of the rich were perhaps cleaner.

Definitions by themselves, then, will not take us far, especially in the context of India. As Chaturvedi Badrinath notes in a discussion on the Mahabharata: ‘One characteristic of Indian thought has been that in the place of definitions of things, it asks for their attributes or lakshanas. That is because all definitions are arbitrary, whereas the lakshanas or the attributes, are what show a thing, through which a thing becomes manifest. Thus, not the ‘definition’ of truth, or of love, but the attributes of truth and love by which they are known is what is central.’[7] It may be worth our while then, to look for the lakshanas of Indian designs, in the context of their regional and national identity. Are there any obvious characteristics in form, or external treatment or any intangible features about designs made in India that render them recognizable as Indian?

One attribute of design historically and over a fairly wide area of the globe, and certainly in India, was a shared knowledge and appreciation of aesthetics informing the practitioner and the patron alike. N.J. Habraken in his writings on Thematic Design records and analyses experiences in different parts of the world, to explain how design practiced within a shared image and language allows the creation of cohesive yet varied and well-suited forms and details.[8] The presence of a shared image, and the engagement of the craftsperson as well as local resources in the production and development of artefacts, was a factor in most societies in the world – not merely in Indian society – before the onset of large-scale mechanisation. That also seems to make the sari a metaphor of universally and historically valued attributes.

However, notwithstanding such similarities in localization and customisation before industrialization, historical examples of Indian design, across various fields, show some elements that seem to be quite different from other traditions. One of these distinguishing elements of design in the Indian tradition seems to be the preference for attributes that offer flexibility and versatility, for multiple purposes and occasions. As well as of the strong streak of individual creativity that eschewed replication even while following conventions.[9] We find thus, in designs ranging from saris to cities, a high aesthetic sensibility and skill which ensure that, they are, in almost in every case, both beautiful and practical.

The Pink Cotton Benarasi Sari of my Mausi, Mohini Jayal 
(probable date of manufacture: 1960 CE) 

So, not just those of my mother and grandmother-in law, but the saris of a majority of women from their generations and before, are stunning pieces of craftsmanship and design. At a cousin’s wedding recently, my aunt brought out some of her old saris to see if any of us would like to wear them. One of them, a particularly beautiful pink cotton Banarasi, was her wedding sari. As we carefully handled its now fragile folds, we decided not to risk wearing it, till we could get someone skilled enough to add on a cotton lining to it. I instead photographed it in detail, and mailed the photos to her daughters in China and England, who had not been able to attend the wedding celebrations at short notice. I had forgotten, till my cousin in China reminded me, that years ago, while I was in college, I had been lent this very sari to wear at her sister’s wedding! My mausi’s sari linked three weddings in different decades in our extended families, and reawakened memories across two continents and three countries.

Such instances of a spirit of optimum efficiency, designed through creative improvisation within a cohesive whole, can be found in many indigenous folk and classical Indian traditions – music, theatre, architecture. But the sari perhaps is the best representative, and also practically the only living example, of this tradition. As Rta Kapur Chisti clarifies: ‘The sari allows us to go back at least a thousand years in design terms with variations in pattern, weave and structure between its inner and outer end-pieces and its two borders which provide drape, strength and weight while the body enhances the form of the sari or dhoti when it is worn.’[10] In most traditional saris, the decoration is part of the structure of the garment. The overall dimensions of the sari are more or less fixed, and the variations happen within a certain range of a fixed length and breadth. The design effort knits together and goes into spinning the material, composing the patterns and directly weaving them on the fabric. And once it is done, the same sari can fit different women of different sizes at different ages and different times of their lives. It can be bequeathed from generation to generation, and yet look different on each person, transforming itself by taking on the silhouette and the volume of the form it drapes. It is not tailored and sewn to fit one individual at one point of time in their life. The weavers and spinner’s skill and craft can be conserved and presented and displayed and worn for generations.

It is in this context that the sari can also be used as a distinguished example of the qualities that marked out much of Indian design in the past, which we can learn from and apply over a wide field.[11] Does formal Indian design in the hands of professionally designated designers exhibit these values of efficiency, multiple purposes, and customization exemplified in the sari? Do we still have a culture of design?

To explore these questions, read the next essay on The Question Of Identity:

National and Regional Identity in Design: Part II

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[1] Captain Mundy, Journal of A Tour in India, Ch. IV, pp.174-5, ‘The Valley of Deyra’.

[2] Kiran Purandare, ‘Cheuhit’, p.17, translated from Marathi into Hindi by Aamod Karkahnis, as published in the Children’s Science Magazine in Hindi, Chakmak, June 2012; translated into English by Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

[3] For a demonstration of the different ways of tying the sari, see Rta Kapur Chisti on TED:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbqqeNCfQIk

[4] For a brief and brilliant discussion on the sari, see ‘What is the Sari?’ By Ashoke Chatterjee, http://www.craftrevival.org/voiceDetails.asp?Code=218,

[5] The Chambers English Dictionary. The dictionary has more words under Indian, including Indian berry, Indian hemp, India rubber, Indian fig, Indian ink, India shawl, Indian gift, etc. There is nothing that is listed or distinguished as ‘Indian design’.

[6] Living, Issue 7, The Park Magazine, ‘Made to Measure’, p.03,

[7] Seminar April 2010 issue: The Enduring Epic, ‘Living with the Mahabharata’, p. 69

[8] ‘Sharing’, The Appearance of the Form, N.J. Habraken, Awater Press, Cambridge, USA, p. 13-17, pp. 23-34

[9]  Habib Tanvir’s explanation of how Sanskrit drama as well as the folk and classical traditions that succeeded it, is illuminating in this respect, p. 23, ‘My Milestones in Theatre, Habib Tanvir in Conversation’, Charandas Chor, Seagull Books 2004, Kolkata. Nageen, Habib Tanvir’s daughter, who continues to work with his theatre repertory, explains her father’s experience with scripting his plays and directing folk actors “Up to a point it’s important to leave the actor free. And in Indian art it’s important to let them improvise.” http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/living-theatre/article4724470.ece  

[10] ‘The Unstitched Garment’, Rta Kapur Chishti, http://www.india- seminar.com/2010/609/609_rta_kapur_chishti.htm

[11] See http://anishashekhar.blogspot.in/2009/02/most-magnificent-palace-in-east-red.html for a discussion on the tradition of designing multi-use and flexible architectural space, brought to perfection in the 17^th century palace-fortress built for the Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan.

Images © Anisha Shekhar Mukherji; Text © Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

The SPA Effect

Even when you leave SPA (finally!) after five years (hopefully), and bound forward, relieved or regretful at successfully negotiating the endless ‘crits’ that had occupied your mental and physical horizon, you can’t really shake it out of your system.

Neither can you escape bumping into an SPAite every now and then.

You may back into one on a seemingly deserted train platform. Or discover another lurking amongst the leafy plants in the quiet elegance devised by Joseph Allen Stein at the Triveni Kala Sangam. Or yet another determinedly drifting amidst a den of tourists anywhere in the multitude of ‘hill-stations’ in India. Or spot one casually draped around the paintings in an avant-garde art-gallery. I haven’t been to the Arctic (yet) but I have a feeling when I do land up there, there is sure to be at least one SPAite already dawdling or doodling there.

Considering the fairly small numbers that made up the undergraduate course – at least till somewhat recently – this is a fairly remarkable phenomenon. I suppose what it means is that we are a fairly diverse and adventurous lot. The question is, whether we were always Like That Only, or is it some change that SPA hath wrought in us? Like the famous and deluded prince in English literature, we may well wonder if it is our stars, Horatio, or us?

Not having the ability to read the stars, I vote for ‘us’, aided by The SPA Effect. The SPA I joined – by lucky chance since this was practically the only college of architecture I applied to – was chock-full of ‘characters’. It was a great relief after a tortuous week of Economics classes among a gaggle of more or less similarly clad and trained population at the Lady Sri Ram College. SPA, by contrast, ran the entire gamut from khadi and kambals to Levis to lehngas. Before architecture got to be as mainstream a choice of study as management, those who joined the School of Planning and Architecture were (some more visibly than the others) an individual lot. Architecture wasn’t so respectably middle-class as engineering or medicine; it wasn’t obviously understandable like administration or law. It certainly was a professional course, unlike merely studying Physics or English or History, but what the heck architects did – and why they took so long to do it – was a mystery to most.

So, the varied populace of SPA, whether those who wandered in via the SAARC and NAM route from Nepal, Palestine, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malayisa, Afghanistan, or via villages, towns and cities in Orissa, Nagaland, Assam, Himachal, etc. were a combination of those trying to unravel the mystery – and those who revelled in adding to it. The more exciting and excitable ones had run away from home to join the course, or having finally made it here, dreamt of running away somewhere else. Even the apparently more conventional types, had a streak of embedded eccentricity. All in all, they were certainly not standard types.

And by the time, most finished with SPA or SPA finished with them, whichever way you look at it, they became even less of a standard type, and acquired unmistakably SPA overtones. Perhaps it was the sheer variety of subjects trained at us – structural mechanics, mathematics, history of Western and Indian architecture, plumbing, photography, arts and graphics, air-conditioning, housing, theory of design, building construction, etc. etc. You may have flunked a couple of these or more, but it wasn’t really possible to get seriously bored. I shudder to think what would have happened if I had made it to IIT and missed, well, at least some of this.

But an encyclopaedic course is presumably common to all colleges of architecture. So, what’s so different about SPA? I suspect it is its urban, melting-pot quality due at least in part to its location, in the heart of Delhi, away from the rarefied university campus air. The School of Planning and Architecture is probably the only college to have its Architecture and Planning departments housed in two separate ‘plots’ linked by a length of slip road bordering as public a space as the Ring Road. We sit cheek by jowl with a graveyard and the magnificent ruins of Firoz Shah Kotla, and within sneezing distance from the IP Power Plant, Vikas Bhawan, ICCR, and Mandi House. We are almost on the banks of the travesty that Delhi has made of the Yamuna, more-or-less in line with history and the City Of Shah Jahan and the other cities that came before and after it.

We cannot help an acquired acquaintance with the high road and the low road. It also probably explains an average SPAite’s elusive tolerance to noxious substances and the nonchalant ability to pass by or bypass everything from the sublime to the ridiculous. In fact, it may be the very lack of an identifiable, enclosed territory, and the relative isolation of an academic institution ‘doomed to be a university’, which gives us our peculiar ability to appropriate everything in our vicinity and beyond, and to rise above the state or size of our ‘campus’. A sort of ‘At Home in the World and at Home with the World’ syndrome. Which may be the reason I was foolhardy enough to negotiate the way back to the hostel in the Planning Block alone, at 2 am after a party in the SPA Audi.

On a less flippant note, there was a more focused larger engagement with the world, through our faculty and the course-work which paid at least lip-service to the social and ethical aspects of architecture. And since we didn’t have recourse to a larger academic fraternity, we were actively engaged within the college (sometimes with rather tangible results) that used to make it such a heady place. The SPA building itself, was a practical lesson (some called it a practical joke) in what not to do. And successive generations of students had a lot of scope to work on it to picaresque and picturesque advantage – from the Art Thesis sculptures that doubled up as outdoor and indoor seating for the canteen, to the boundary wall that worked as space to careen, exhibit, and receive mud missiles at Utopia, to the superlative quality of cartoons that passed for graffiti on the staircase walls. The library, almost always full of students from 8 in the morning to 8 at night, was scarcely the quiet, hallowed place sacred to learning in most educational institutions. It was a favourite hangout for dozing, debating, dishevelled students feverishly finishing assignments – or not. A piece of SPA lore recounts one senior’s exasperated holler on a day when the noise in the canteen was more than usually deafening, telling everyone to “Shut up, this is not the library!”

So, it was rather a shock when I walked into the library after returning to teach intermittently at SPA, and found it a sad and silent space, with books piled all over the tables and no one but the librarian in sight. Surprising too, since SPA is bursting at the seams with about 120 students in each undergraduate batch. The distinct, tightly knit community with its special ethos, has seemingly mutated into a distant cousin of DU – in its attire, in its architecture and its attitude. It may be an uphill task for the SPA Effect to thrive in the midst of the shiny floor-tiles of the canteen in its new avatar of a cacophonous Call Centre lobby-like space. Like the poet hoped for Abou Ben Adhem, ‘may the tribe increase’ – but not immoderately or inordinately, and certainly not at the cost of the qualities which gave SPA its distinctiveness, its intense engagement within the college and with the city.

© Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

Are Indians an ahistorical people? Part II

Are Indians an ahistorical people?

Part II

Let me pose a hypothetical question.

What if the British had not chosen to civilize India? Would we have no history? What would we have? What did we have?

Apart from many tangible examples of history, in the form of old temples, palaces, towns, ceremonial buildings, celebratory water-features and gardens, we had some of the most extensive written literature – consisting of legends, philosophical treatises, codified manuals and stories. This literature, which was encyclopedic in nature, records not just dominant modes of conduct, philosophies or people but also the tertiary, non-mainstream ones. For instance, the Carvakas, materialists whose way of thinking and living is more nearly like the dominant material values of the world today, were historically always a minority in the Indian subcontinent. Nonetheless, they are mentioned repeatedly, and not just in the philosophical treatises of the Sankhya, Yoga, Jain or Buddhist schools but also in many versions of popular epics such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Thus, the idea of history being a multi-faceted perception, and the retention of different perspectives for the listeners/readers to make up their own minds about the relative value of each perception, was especially true in the Indian tradition. By that measure, it certainly appears that the Indians cannot be called ahistorical.

In India, culturally and philosophically there was no sudden, sweeping Industrial Revolution. An oft-remarked phrase is that in India you can see several centuries at the same time. Even today, when we are being consciously propelled towards a western-dominated society more than ever before, different ways of living coexist simultaneously, some reflecting 21^st century modes and others that seem to have existed since very ancient times. However, with colonization and its aftermath, our perception and understanding of history has changed so drastically, that many of the beliefs, knowledge systems, and alternative records which constitute our many histories, have already perished.

The Objectives of History

To understand why this continues to happen, we need to look at the objectives and methodology of history in the colonial period (whether directly those of the colonizing power or of dominant cultures at that time that may not necessarily have been colonizing our country). The British, (who by the time they came to India were themselves a society living in ways that were a definite break from their own past) formulated ways of recording the vast and complex Indian civilization that they encountered. Two main categories of such recording and interpretation work are generally identified – termed the Orientalists and the Utilitarianists. The Orientalists had a romantic notion of India, and the Utilitarianists had a contemptuous attitude towards India. Their major motivations, depending on either orientation, were therefore essentially:

a)      to understand/ control an unfamiliar area, people and resources;

b)      to highlight/ appropriate aspects of these areas, people and resources useful to them;

c)      to ignore/ denigrate aspects of these areas, people and resources not useful to them.

Both these categories of writers/researchers/historians, naturally, ultimately failed to understand the Indian world-view. Their version of Indian history, led to a distorted view of Indian presented to the world – and to Indians.

The other main source of our history, is through scholars who were not directly participating in the colonial enterprise. They did not have any direct interest in controlling and exploiting resources in this country. Their objective however was not mere academic interest either. In Germany, as in France, and in many other countries of the West, there was among some intellectuals a profound dissatisfaction with the mechanized, inhuman ways of their society that resulted from large-scale industrialisation. They were looking for a second Enlightenment, a second Renaissance that would liberate them from the deadening effects of their industrialized society.

Just as the first renaissance arose out of the revival of concepts and ideals from the ancient Greek culture; so it was believed that the second renaissance would arise from the East, from the ideals of ancient India. Hence, the overwhelming emphasis of such scholars and Indologists on the most ancient and the oldest aspects of Indian history that they could unearth, to the exclusion of the later periods of Indian history which were identified with a jaded and fallen people. Some of these scholars were also looking for a justification of their own present – hence Max Mueller’s statements about the ancient Aryans being most akin to the ancient Germans, and his belief that they were the most vigorous and enterprising races in the world with the authority and responsibility of leading the rest of the world.[1]

The conventional manner in which historical studies pertaining to India are generally still regarded, practiced and studied, follows such a colonial tradition. And so we dream of our glorious ancient past, rue an abysmal immediate past and present, and look forward to a potentially bright future – but only if we follow the footsteps and the direction of the West. Not very different from the stated beliefs and policies of our colonial masters. So we continue to view ourselves through the eyes of the West, and can only see our reflections reduced and distorted through time and space.

Evolving Histories

Is it pertinent to continue with this definition and concept of history which we inherited with colonisation – or do we need to evolve a different way of looking at history? To paraphrase the physicist Richard Feynman’s famous quote: “first figure out why you want to learn and what you want to know and the method will result more or less by common sense’.[2] Why do we study history today? Are the purposes the same as why the colonial powers did? If yes, then our purposes are certainly misguided; if no, then it is time we reevaluate both our motives and our methods of looking at history.

There will probably not be any disputing the fact that the motive for learning history is, or should be, to direct our understanding of the past so as to make us aware of our cultural, national and local identities, and to help us to shape ourselves and our societies in positive ways. Obviously these objectives are very different from those of the ‘historians’ of the colonial period. The methodology evidently should be different too. We therefore need to redefine history from our context.

Defining history merely as ‘a study of the past‘, limits the reach and sources of history to the professional and excludes a wide swathe of sources as well as people from their own history. The exclusion of the layperson in recent times is not just confined to the field of history. Increasingly, in India we follow the path of the western world where, as N.J. Habraken observes: ‘We have been educated in a culture of science, technology, and organization that is overwhelmingly professional. This culture is, if not ignorant, deeply suspicious of the productive power of the lay world and its variety of social patterns.’ [3]

So, while we certainly were not an ahistorical people when the term was first applied to us, most of us – and paradoxically, even professional historians – are in danger of becoming so now. The dialogue with the past gets far more muted and limited every day. Carried out behind closed doors amongst only among a handful of professionals, such whispered and occasional dialogue, keeps out of the conversation a large section of people who also carry the memory of their past. It therefore misses out not just many important words and phrases but even lengthy passages of the story from the past, and then presents this incomplete fragmented story, as the complete and only version of the past! With the concentration on only one sort of recorded history that professional historians espouse, it ultimately serves to keep away both professional and the laypersons from their shared history – and from each other.

So most of us, educated or not, literate or illiterate, are ambivalent and negligent about many aspects of our history. Not just our philosophies and myths, but also the more tangible remnants which refuse to fade away from our landscape. This perhaps explains the extreme distrust between professional custodians of monuments and local communities who, finding that they no longer have any claim to their immediate history, refuse to recognize any duties towards protecting them either. We carve our initials on them, inscribe ‘Raja loves Meena’ on them, vandalise and trash them, and even carry off their bricks and stones as mementoes or to build our homes.

Refuse dumped on the historic Bijay Mandal

Even when we recognize them as repositories of culture, of knowledge, of history, etc. and put up plaques recognizing them as important national assets, in actual fact we ignore them. While we may physically conserve them, we do not believe they have anything which may be applicable for us to follow today. The fact that climate, ecology, even culture is a continuum, and the responses to them in older architectural forms and spaces may contain aspects which may have relevance to our lives today, is not even considered. Thus, everyone agrees that Jaipur is a foremost example of city-planning. Yet, the new extensions to Jaipur are built as if they could be anywhere in India or even outside India; as if there is nothing within this feted historical city that architects and planners may learn from, that could be integrated in modern cities.

In short, we treat our historical assets, our monuments and our cities, just as we study or regard history – as a separate compartment, as something frozen, as only representative of a certain time different from the present, as something to be visited briefly – and then forgotten. And as something to be kept beyond the reach and comprehension of the layperson, the non-historian. On the other hand, many counties of the western world who look after their tangible history so well, still do so in a museumized, mummified way. Unlike our bustling teeming old cities, filled with every variety of human activity but unkempt and crumbling, their cobbled streets, thatched houses, beamed rooms, are alluring and well-preserved, and house endless permutations of museums, interpretation centres, souvenir shops, restaurants, design offices, galleries – but have no trace of the diverse life that first gave rise to them.

The linguist, Helena Norberge-Hodge, who has spent a large part of her life in the region of Ladakh, generally seen as a remote, backward, exotic land, arrived there in 1975. During her time there, she visited and lived in many villages there. After spending sixteen years in Ladakh, she wrote the book, Ancient Futures, Learning from Ladakh. Recollecting her experience in the earlier part of her time spent there, she writes: ‘I have never met people who seem so healthy emotionally, so secure, as the Ladakhis. The reasons are, of course complex, and spring from a whole way of life and world-view. But I am sure the most important factor is the sense that you are part of something larger than yourself, that you are inextricably connected to others and to your surroundings.’[4]

In conversations with my maid and my cook, I notice the same connection with the villages and the local cultures they have come from, as well as how much more aware they are not just of their customs and religion, but also through them of the larger world. Practically all the days in a year have some significance for them. They are far more attuned to the changing cycle of the seasons or the movement of the moon and the sun. The rituals, fasts or festivals that highlight important times of the day, season or year help them not merely to celebrate their present by meeting with the family or the larger community, but also to keep their past alive through shared memories of other celebrations and rituals.

Perhaps it is this lived connection with our surroundings, which we need to recognize as an important part of history. Perhaps we need to redefine history as ‘an understanding and record of the past’ rather than merely a ‘study of the past’. Such a definition would necessarily include and question various ways of looking at the past, whether through written and oral records, societal beliefs, art forms, mythology, ritual practices and so on. It would give credence to local, decentralized histories; to lived histories, that help to root us to our context and route us to our directions. We may then be better able to understand the significance of different remnants of our personal and shared memories, and which of these we must amend, continue, transmit or discard.

So, one of the relevant answers to ‘what is history’ – which is naturally as subjective as any other one – could be ‘a rediscovery of values that have existed for thousands of years – values that recognize our place in the natural order, our indissoluble connection to one another and to the earth’.[5] From that point of view, a large part of the world today, not merely many Indians, may be termed ahistorical.

Images © Anisha Shekhar Mukherji; Text © Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

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[1] Vasudha Dalmia, pp. 1-27, ‘Friedrich Max Mueller, Appropriation of the Vedic Past’, Orienting India, European knowledge formation in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, Three Essays Collective 2003, New Delhi.

[2] “First figure out why you want the students to learn the subject and what you want them to know, and the method will result more or less by common sense”. Richard P. Feynman, as quoted in Special Preface to Six Easy Pieces, p. xviii, Penguin 1995, this Edition 2008

[3] Appearance of the Form, p. 2, Sharing

[4] Ancient Futures, Learning from Ladakh, p. 85, OUP New Delhi 1991

[5] Helena Norberg-Hodge, Ancient Futures, Learning from Ladakh, p. 191.

Are Indians an ahistorical people? Part I

Are Indians an ahistorical[1] people?

Part I

To me that is an interesting and pertinent question. I have repeatedly encountered it, and often posed more as a statement than a question, both by Indians as well as foreigners.

To really answer this, we need to pose a counter question. What do we mean by history and historical? I doubt if there can be an absolute definition of history, acceptable to all people and cultures. After all, my personal history apart from being of interest to me, can be said to be really relevant only to my immediate family and friends. For the rest of the world, especially to those who do not even know I exist, it is a mass of relatively useless information. So, evidently all information about the past, even if it is true, does not qualify to be called history in a larger sense. And if the person I pass occasionally on the street is unaware of my personal history, does that make him or her ahistorical?

Who decides then, what is history?

In India, shortly after they arrived on our shores, it was essentially the British who decided this. Apparently before these enlightened ones (and other colonial and intellectual powers like the Germans and the French) made us aware of it, we in India had no history, or at least no sense of it. So, we had to be taught history. And since the Indians were too foolish and weak to resist the onslaught of the Europeans, it certainly did not make sense to spend much time in teaching them their own history. That would constitute relatively useless information. Instead they must be guided to devote their energies in gaining information primarily about a little island many miles away in a different part of the world. Who were the kings who ruled there/ what were the plants that grew there?

I was reminded of this as I recently read a collection of short stories written by Munshi Premchand to our eight year old daughter. The first story was called ‘Bade Bhaisahab’ (Elder Brother). The story is about two brothers sent to school away from home. The younger brother spends his time in playing, flying kites, and running around in the fields while the elder spends practically all his waking moments in studying various incomprehensible subjects. Despite repeated admonishments, the younger brother cannot apply himself to diligent study. Strangely enough, he passes his examination with flying colours. And the elder brother? He fails!

What does this mean? “Just luck”, observes the elder brother who is in class 9 for the second time. “Wait till you reach my class”, he warns, “and you have to read, among other things ‘Inglistan ka itihass’. Just remembering the names of the Kings will wear you out. Eight Henrys! Which catastrophe was in which Henry’s rule? How will you – how can you – remember? Write Henry VIII instead of Henry VII, and you will not get a single mark! Dozens of Kings called William and James; probably crores called Charles. You will then see your brain whirling dizzily. Had these unfortunates only asked me, I could have told them 10 million names, but all they seem to know is a handful of names behind which they keep on adding I, II, IV, V!”

Of course, the British must have believed that knowledge of the names and the deeds of the different King Henrys was indispensable to the growth and development of a young Indian boy.[2] So did the poor boy. However much he longed to go and play football and kabaddi under the open sky like his younger heedless brother, he steeled himself not to, in a valiant bid to master the deeds of English kings, long dead and gone, but inevitably a part of history.

So, that was an indispensable part of ‘Indian’ history then. We have been born many years after Munshi Premchand, who lived and died before India achieved independence from the British Raj, and have escaped the real or the recorded tyrannies of the Williams and Henrys. We now read of other kings in our school histories. There is, certainly for Indian tongues, greater variety and ease in their names: Ashoka, Bindusara, Chandragupta, Harshvardhana, Mahendravarman, Iltutmish, Akbar, Sher Shah, Shah Jahan.

Nonetheless, we still remain preoccupied with kings and dynasties.

The Myths of History

So, is history then essentially the knowledge of ‘who’ ruled ‘when’? And therefore, if you and I cannot summon this knowledge at a moment’s notice, does that mean we have no sense of history? Even conventional definitions of history today do seem to be broader than this. Most dictionaries state that history is: ‘A systematic account of the origin and progress of the world, a nation, an institution; the knowledge/study of past events; the past considered as a whole; a course of events.’ Related terms, such as ‘Historicity’ and ‘Historiography’, are defined as ‘historical truth or actuality’, and ‘the art or employment of writing history’ respectively.[3]

This seems to offer a fairly wide field for interpretation, free from political dominance. But, implicit in these definitions seems to be the idea that ‘history’ must be ideally written to qualify as history. Evidently then, such a definition or idea of history arises from cultures where the written word is revered more than the spoken.

But does the mere fact of writing definitely imply that what is written did actually happen? Conversely, does non-written knowledge of past events related to institutions, societies, cultures (which may include highly systematic oral accounts, rituals, visual records or performance-based records) not qualify as ‘history’? The Vedas, the oldest extant texts in India, (also one of the oldest written records in the entire world, as recent research has shown) were for a long time transmitted orally. Did they become part of ‘history’ the moment they were written? For many Indians, and non-Indians too, they represent a highly systematic account of the origin and progress of the ancient world as lived in the Vedic civilization. However, ‘systematic’, of course, is not an absolute term. So, to many other people, they are merely spiritual hymns, myths, allegories, and do not qualify as history.

What value then do myths, rituals and legends have in the context of our past and our present? Again to answer that, one may have to pose another question.

What is a myth?

Some scholars believe that ‘A myth is an extremely complex cultural reality, the foremost function of which is to reveal the exemplary models of all significant human activities in a given society from birth to death. Indeed myths are the most proud and meaningful possession of all early Pre-Industrial Revolution societies. They provide the living entities by supplying models of human behaviour’.[4]

Though one of the definitions of a myth as ‘a traditional story concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social fact’ mirrors this opinion, the other two meanings also included in most dictionaries seem to convey the very opposite: ‘a widely held but false belief; an imaginary person or thing’.[5] The origin of the word is from Greek mythos: story/talk. And the many synonyms of the word: ‘allegory, fable, legend, lore, mythology, symbolism, fallacy, fairy story, false notion, fiction, old wives’ tale, misconception, untruth’, seem to indicate that a myth is generally equated with a falsehood. Again the implication seems to be that the written word is more accurate than the spoken.

But we all know that human observation, recollection and recording – whether pictoral, textual or oral – are all very subjective. E. H. Carr explored this question in his book, What is History, first published in 1961. He quotes Professor George Clark from The New Cambridge Modern History, who writes about ‘the doctrine that, since all historical judgements involve persons and points of view, one is as good as another and there is no ‘objective’ historical truth’. Carr himself questions ‘the empirical commonsense view of history’ as ‘a corpus of ascertained facts existing objectively and independently of the interpretation of the historian’ and finds it ‘a preposterous fallacy, but one which is very hard to eradicate’. His own answer to the question of what constitutes history is, ‘that it is a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the present and the past’[6].

This seems to leave enough freedom of interpretation, and give equal importance to both recorded and lived histories.

Myths certainly do keep alive the dialogue between the past and the present. Devdutt Pattanaik has shared his abiding fascination with myths through his many books and talks. To him, ‘Myth is truth which is subjective, intuitive, cultural and grounded in faith…truth seen from a frame of reference’.[7] This frame of reference not only enshrines codes of conduct and value-systems, but also often offers clues of a more tangible nature – if only we know how to look for them. B.B. Lal, one of the most senior archaeologists of India and a former Director-General of the ASI, has excavated and discovered many important historical sites. In his book Piecing Together, he writes about the discovery of stone-ware associated with the Mahabharata tradition, in sites associated with the Mahabharata story not just through literary data, but also through oral tradition. He cites the example of Saini, located between Meerut and Hastinapur. According to local tradition, when Bhima, the third Pandava, passed through this place, he dusted his shoes. And lo and behold, a mound grew up. As Lal observes: ‘Surely, Bhima’s shoes had not accumulated that much dust so as to create such a high mound as that at Saini.’ But the legend does indicate an association of this site with Bhima, and the Mahabharata story. When Lal explored the already exposed sections of the mound, he found that it revealed the stone-ware that had been discovered at other sites associated with the Mahabharata story.[8]

Despite their enduring value, and what Ashis Nandy describes as ‘the salience given by Indian culture to myth as a structured fantasy which, in its dynamic of the here-and-the-now, represents what in another culture would be called the dynamic of history,’[9] most of us are reluctant to accord any ‘historical’ value to myths and rituals. Perhaps the main reason for this is related to how ‘history’ as something separate – which was no longer a part of life, and therefore which needed to be studied in order to know something about it – arose as a field of study. In the western part of the world, this happened with the onset of what we know as industrialisation; and in the countries of the South and East, such as ours, with the onset of colonization. All traditional societies anywhere in the world, were in touch with their history in a more inclusive sense, till this major break with their past occurred, leading them to ‘study’ history instead of ‘living’ it.

The ways of recording and transmitting history, which are linked to the ‘objective’ of history, naturally underwent a major change. Pre-industrialisation and pre-colonisation, the objective of being in touch with one’s history, may be essentially summarized as firstly, to have ideals to live up to, and to shape character in succeeding generations. Thus, the prevalence of epic poems and stories glorifying the deeds of the brave and the loyal/the true/the faithful, etc. Another important purpose of history was to enable succeeding generations to utilize the bank of knowledge gained in previous generations, whether in the realm of useful inventions, innovations or best agricultural and social practices, etc. The third purpose was to enshrine in public memory events or acts deemed to be important in shaping the identity of a people. Naturally enough then, different groups of people deemed different acts/events/practices to be important, and therefore histories of different groups of people in different areas differed. There was no ‘one History’.

Reformed Histories

With industrialization, the reach and scope of history changed dramatically. People could move quickly both inland and overseas with the invention of the steam engine and the steam ship; differences of regions and locales got effaced; standardization was brought in for greater control of resources; national identities assumed greater significance than regional identities; there was greater volume of contact between people in different regions – and so histories began to be written over a larger canvas. This also meant that people began to move away from traditional occupations and traditional communities, and so lost touch with their immediate histories. When these fast-paced societies did realize the significance of recording their past histories, many of the smaller, local histories had already been lost. In the event, the histories that survived were naturally those of the dominant section of people or the majority.

With colonization, the scope of these dominant regional or national histories, increased even more. And the colonized societies were ‘re-formed within the history of the colonizer’. This not only meant that they had to literally ‘learn’ the histories of the colonizer (thus, for many years Indians, as also communicated in Premchand’s stories, had to memorise the succession of British monarchs, Prime Ministers as well as features of the geography and religion of the British Isles) but also had to re-learn their own history from the point of view of the coloniser. The ideals deemed to be worth striving for, were those of the colonising culture, and those of the host society were deemed to be inferior. This was true not just for the areas under British domination. So, for instance, Indians in Pondicherry, where the French established an enclave for purposes of facilitating trade in 1673, studied French history and geography.

History was recognised as a crucial weapon and a tool in demonstrating this difference between the colonisers and the colonised. This is how the British dealt with, as Ashis Nandy puts it:

‘the ideological problem of British colonialism in India which could not easily grapple with the fact that India had a civilization, howsoever strange by European standards…everything said, there were the traditions of four thousand years of civic living, a well developed literati tradition (in spite of all its stress on oral cultures), and alternative traditions of philosophy, art and science which often attracted the best minds of Europe. The fact that India's past was living (unlike, say, pre-Islamic Egypt) complicated the situation. Some explanation had to be given for her political and cultural 'degradation'.

The colonial ideology handled the problem in two mutually inconsistent ways. Firstly, it postulated a clear disjunction between India's past and its present. The civilized India was in the bygone past; now it was dead and 'museumized'. The present India, the argument went, was only nominally related to its history; it was India only to the extent it was a senile, decrepit version of her once-youthful, creative self.

…Secondly and paradoxically, the colonial culture postulated that India's later degradation was not due to colonial rule - which, if anything, had improved Indian culture by fighting against its irrational, oppressive, retrogressive elements - but due to aspects of the traditional Indian culture which in spite of some good points carried the seeds of India's later cultural downfall. Like a sinful man Indian culture was living through a particularly debilitating senility…Thus, in this argument, there was a postulate of continuity but it applied more to sinfulness than to virtues; for an explanation of India's virtues one had to fall back upon her contacts with the modern world.’[10]

Despite this takeover and ‘makeover’ of Indian history, and the overt equation of all Indian traditions with superstition and degradation, many rural communities or those in the smaller towns, not as affected by association with the British as in the larger urban centres, persisted in ‘living out’ their histories. The past becomes relevant only when there is a real connection between people’s memories and aspects of their past. So, when in 1914, the Pondicherrian soldiers returned after fighting with the French ‘on behalf of the mother country’, ‘France was no longer a mythical country…whose history and geography one studied in books. It somewhat became their own country whose people and landscapes filled their memories.’ [11]

Lived Histories

Almost half a century ago, The Children’s Book Trust, New Delhi, published a book called Life with Grandfather, written and illustrated by Shankar, a renowned children’s author. The stories are meant for young children and are written in a way that they could be situated anywhere in India. But the drawings that accompany them, the clothes that people wear and the landscape they are drawn in, show that they are set in South India. Perhaps this book records the memory of Shankar’s own childhood. In that case, it may be said to record information from about seven decades ago. One of the stories is called ‘A Game of Chance’. 

This is how it starts:

‘Every year there was a monsoon festival in one of our big temples. The main event of the festival was a mock battle. The battle was fought between two groups of people, those living on the west side of the temple and those living on the east. Hundreds of men, each armed with a sword and a shield, gathered on opposite sides of a large field. When a special signal was given they marched towards each other and started fighting. Nobody was ever killed or wounded in these mock fights. People were trained to play this mock battle in memory of a real battle fought at that place between two kings hundreds of years ago.

A big fair was also held at the time of the festival. The fair lasted many days. Tradesmen from different parts of the country came there with all kinds of goods to sell. Hundreds of shops were set up and many markets held. People waited for this fair to do their annual shopping. They could buy anything from a small pin to a big elephant.’[12]

The battle was evidently important to a large community who lived around the area, so they enacted it in order to preserve their memory of this battle. Through the fair, they not only transformed this memory into an occasion for celebration, commerce and conviviality, but also transmitted this memory to other communities who came to participate in the festivity associated with the fair. Rather more effective than merely learning about the battle in history books? And perhaps if the history books were written by somebody far away, they would not bother to include a local battle in it. So who is ahistorical? The people who enact the battle? Who celebrate stories through festivals that gave them a connection with their past? Or those who do not believe that such memories and associations are important, and omit to record these in favour of the bigger battles and wars?

 © Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

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[1] Ahistorical: Adjective:

Lacking historical perspective or context.

[2]  Thomas Babington Macaulay, a British poet, historian and politician, served on the Supreme Council of India between 1834 and 1838. He stated in his ‘Minute on Indian Education’ (1835): "all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgments used at preparatory schools in England." http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/macaulay/txt_minute_education_18

[3] Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary, Compact Oxford Dictionary

[4] N.R. Ray, 1976, p.xi, as quoted in S.R. Rao, The Lost City of Dwarka, p.10, Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi 1999

[5] Compact Oxford Dictionary Thesaurus 2005 Edition

[6] What is History, p. 30, Penguin 2008, first published Macmillan 1961

[7] Devdutt Pattanaik, MYTH=MITHYA, A Handbook of Hindu Mythologies, p. xiii, Penguin, India 2006

[8] B.B. Lal, The Memoirs of an Archaeologist, p. 4, ‘The Yawning Gap and I’, Aryan Books International, New Delhi 2011.

[9] Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy, p. 57

[10] Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy, pp. 18-9.

[11] Animesh Rai, p. 8, The Legacy of French Rule in India, 1674-1954, IFP Publications, Hors Seris 8

[12] CBT New Delhi 1965, this edition 2006, pp. 38-9