IN OCTOBER 1968, the Institute of Historical Studies held its sixth annual conference in Srinagar. It invited Sri Ramesh Chandra Majumdar to deliver the Presidental address. An 80-year-old Majumdar who could not physically attend the event sent his typed lecture to the organisers.
Majumdar’s lecture has not only passed the test of endurance, it remains a beacon of guidance and an eternal warning to both historians and the discipline of historiography. By itself, it is also a historic document, one which must be made prescribed reading for advanced students and researchers of history.
Among other things, it shows the razor-like sharpness of Majumdar’s intellect at that age. It is a veritable feast of a wealth of insights drawn from a lifetime of painstaking research, study and experience.
Perhaps the crux of Majumdar’s lecture is his warning cum prediction about the lethal direction in which history was headed in India. Majumdar was the only surviving colossus of the Golden Era of Indian History writing, an era which he and his equally distinguished compatriots had sculpted.
It is rather eerie and surreal when we think about it today. The very next year after Majumdar’s lecture, Romila Thapar and her distortionist cabal published an ideological screed titled Communalism and the Writing of Indian History, which pioneered the dark art of enslaving Indian history at the feet of Karl Marx.
But I get ahead of myself. Read some excerpts directly from the great man’s pen. The lecture is titled Indian Historiography: Some Recent Trends.
Some formatting changes have been made.
Happy reading!
I AM FULLY CONSCIOUS of the great honour you have done me by asking me to preside over the assembly of historians representing the different regions of our country and I thank you for the same. This may be the last occasion on which I shall have the pleasure and privilege to meet the distinguished fellow-workers in a branch of study which has been my first as well as my last love, and of which I have been a faithful and devoted worker for more than half a century. I cannot reasonably expect to attend any more meeting of this kind. So you can take it as my farewell address to you all.
An old man is fond of recounting his personal reminiscences, and a student of history feels a special interest in tracing the origin of institutions.
Both these instincts induce me to refer to the early history of the assemblies of the type which have brought us all together, particularly as 1 may claim to be one of the very few, alive to-day, who were associated with all of them from the very beginning.
My mind flies back to the year 1919 which saw the first meeting of the All-India Oriental Conference at Poona, presided over by the doyen of Indian historians, Sir R. G. Bhandarkar. [Likewise, another] institution was the Historical Records Commission, also founded in the same year, 1919.
Then after an interval of eighteen years came the Indian History Congress which was originally intended to supplement the Oriental Conference. The Institute of Historical Studies, under whose auspices we meet here to-day, was established in 1961, and is thus the youngest of the All-India organisations devoted to the study of the history of India.
In common with the Indian History Congress, which has undertaken to write the Comprehensive History of India, this Institute has taken up the big project of the Dictionary of National Biography. Both are in the formative stage, and we can only hope that they will be successfully accomplished.
When this Institute was first started, it was regarded, not unnaturally, as a rival body to the Indian History Congress, and there was apprehension in the minds of many that an unhealthy rivalry might produce more evil than good. That apprehension is passing away, and let us all hope that a healthy rivalry in future would do good to both and mark a steady progress in the historical studies in India.
This is not a mere pious platitude on my part, but I seriously think that historical studies in India need careful watch, supervision and guidance. It is my belief — I hope it may prove wrong — that the end of British rule has led to a steady deterioration in that critical method of historical studies which we Indians learnt from our contact with the West during the last half of the nineteenth and the first half of the present century.
THE FIRST ITEM in the Aims and Objects of the Institute of Historical Studies is, among others, to “analyse the recent trends in the development of historical studies and to suggest means for the improvement of the present position.”
Whether this was deliberately laid down owing to a realisation or premonition of the evils that are growing up in our historical studies, I cannot say, but I have not the least doubt that the fulfilment of this object represents the most important service that an All-India historical organisation may render to-day. I need not, therefore, offer any apology for dealing with this subject at some length and frankly state my opinion for whatever it is worth.
In the first place, I think we are gradually losing sight of the fundamental object and principles of writing history and a lot of confusion of ideas has crept in on this subject.
I have no doubt in my mind that the universally accepted idea which we imbibed at the beginning of this century is that history must be regarded as an eternal quest for truth. This is the fundamental basis—the raison d'etre of the study of history—everything else that may be urged on this behalf being only secondary and subordinate to it.
This was laid down as the first principle of history by both Niebuhr and Ranke, the two great commanding figures in modern Historiography. “In laying down the pen,” wrote Niebuhr, “we must be able to say in the sight of God, ‘I have not knowingly nor without earnest investigation written anything which is not true.’”
Ranke supplemented it by the following observation:
History has had assigned to it the task of judging the past, of instructing the present for the benefit of the ages to come. To such lofty functions this work does not aspire. Its aim is merely to show what actually occurred.
I take all this to mean that truth, nothing but the truth and the whole truth as far as it maybe ascertained, should form the steel-frame of history, on which you may build a structure according to different plans or patterns.
Moral judgment as well as various inferences are welcome and even necessary, only when the facts are established with a scrupulous regard for truth alone, without any influence of preconceived judgment, and afford sufficient materials for forming a judgment.
To be continued
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