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What does history teach? By- Arun Gupta Arun Gupta was educated in Electronics Engineering at IIT-Madras and in Theoretical Physics at Caltech. He is now a software systems analyst. His intellectual wanderlust does not let him rest easy. He wishes he knew everything about everything. Please Click Here to read other articles on Rig Veda and History by Arun Gupta.

"Those who do not learn from history ...." -- The common cliche warns of the dire consequences of ignoring history. But what can history teach us ?

Think of India's problems. Poverty is big one. Disease, lack of health care and sanitation is another. Illiteracy is one. Degradation of the environment and the pressure of a high population on the land is a looming problem, too. History does not suggest a solution to these problems, only the possible consequences of ignoring them.

India has a "communal" problem -- mostly, a seemingly unending set of disputes between groups of Hindus and Muslims -- and this has its roots in history. May be history can help us with this problem. Or maybe history is the problem.

History was cited by all sides to the dispute in the recent Ayodhya Ram Janmabhoomi versus Babri Masjid case. I don't intend to go into here what history says, except to say that I believe there is strong circumstantial evidence suggesting that the Babri Masjid was erected in 1526 [8?]AD [by one of Babar's generals ] on the site of a demolished Hindu temple, and there is direct evidence that the site remained sacred to Hindus in the subsequent centuries. But there is something far more curious and interesting in the history. The strongest case for the theory of temple demolition is made from Muslim sources.

Indeed, much of what we know about temple demolitions comes from court historians of the Muslim rulers who did these things. These are typically panegyrics praising the ruler for doing away with idolatry. ( There is a school of historians that finds primarily economic and political reasons for temple desecration, but that a topic for another debate. ) For instance, take a look at the Vishwa Hindu Parishad web-page. The Hindu sources only go towards proving that a temple existed. Evidence for a demolition comes from Muslim and European sources.

Then there is the case of Somanath. There is no dispute that Mahmud of Ghazni destroyed the temple to Somanath (Shiva) in Prabhasa Patan in Saurashtra in January, 1026 AD. Mahmud retired from India, and the area remained under Hindu rulers, who rebuilt the temple. Some two hundred years after the Somnath demolition, the ruler of Gujarat, Arjunadeva, made the remarkable Veraval grant of 1264 AD. With the blessings of the Pashupatacharya of Somnath, the king made a grant of land and revenue from the Somnath temple to a ship-owner, Noradina Piroja, to build a mosque. (There is a school of historians that finds primarily economic and political reasons for this grant -- doesn't that sentence sound familiar ?). Whatever the reason for the grant, the religious temper at that time could not have been like that of today's India.

As I've noted in my previous article, Hindus were never a history-minded people. Unlike Islam and Christianity, the Hindu religion does not rely on the historicity of a Founder. The central fact in Islam and Christianity is the Revelation received uniquely via the Prophet Muhammad or from Jesus Christ. For Hindus, the Revelation, or reaffirmation of the Revelation, happens constantly. So perhaps, history has been peripheral to Hindu concerns.

Perhaps records of temple desecrations were not kept out of shame, or out of indifference ? Or maybe they have been lost ? A modern interpretation is that our Hindu ancestors failed to learn from history, were foolishly noble and generous, welcoming even those that would destroy them. Reform and revival of Hinduism requires that the modern Hindu take cognizance of Hinduism's long history as a victim of invasions, temple desecrations, forced conversions, and so on.

Just as some Hindu reformers would do away with murti-puja, others would introduce history as an essential part of Hindu ideas. Hindus should learn to take an eye for an eye, history demands it. A much delayed eye, the Babri Masjid, but probably better late than never. Should Hindus adopt a program based on a reading of the history of the last millenium ? Perhaps history has something to say about that.

The world watched (and intervened) in fascinated horror as during the 1990s, Yugoslavia self-destructed. The Serbs were a people with a reputation for high courage and daring. Situated on the periphery of European and Ottoman empires, and repeatedly swallowed by one or the other, they have had to fight for their existence. Along the way, the Serbs have collected several hundred years of grievances and grudges, and they cling on to these with the same intensity that they face battle. The paranoia engendered by their national myth made them prone to the worst excesses of nationalism.

The bloody war in Sri Lanka is in part because of a national myth of Aryan Buddhist Sinhalese having a perpetual struggle with Dravidian Tamils. (Never mind that ancient Tamil kings were called "Aryan" by ancient Sinhalese.)

So, clinging to history can be fatal, history certainly teaches us that. I like to think that our Hindu forefathers were really smart, and knew that one has to deal with real people, here and now, and not with the ghosts of history. I see that as the real lesson of history.

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