If one watches India's prime-time debates on the television channels or the internet, or even if one only reads news articles posted online and elsewhere, one is quite frequently confronted with the word 'narrative'.
Those who oppose the incumbent powers firmly believe they are indulging in a massive rewriting of history, obscuring facts not palatable to them and highlighting figures and events conducive to their agenda.
On the contrary, those in support of the ruling dispensation claim that their emphasis is only on "correcting" historical wrongs, which involves highlighting facts hitherto un-published, and demeaning facts which they see as instances of "historical injustice".
To an objective observer, the best route to understand who is in the more rationally or perhaps ethically justified position is to understand how history is written.
Ideally, history is written by academicians and scholars, who go through a rigorous process of peer review of their theories and accounts before they get published. How clean and transparent this review process is determining how factual any historical narrative is. In other words, the scientific method of observation, experiment and cataloguing is what dictates the global narratives of history. This hasn't been the case throughout most of history. Before the scientific revolution, history was taught more through anecdotes, i.e. personal reflection on the part of the individual scholar, and stories, i.e. fictionalised accounts of historical memories and narratives, were the order of the day when it came to the accounts of history. That is precisely the reason why the Mahabharata has references to events and entities that are considered 'impossible' by today's scientific standards. In other words, the distinction between story and history is not as old as a nave observer may assume.
Returning to the present, the attempt to revise history must be seen in the light of how the scientific method of chronological record-making proceeds. For this, a brief exposition of the scientific method itself is necessary.
The scientific method, developed not by scientists so much as by philosophers like Karl Popper, Quine, etc., is based on experimental observation and validation. In other words, what cannot be validated through observation is not considered science. Measurement or observation is key to the process here. That which cannot be substantiated through references, citations, and archaeological proofs is not considered history today.
The historical accounts of figures like Lord Ram, Prophet Muhammad, Jesus Christ, the Buddha, Arjun, Bhim or other characters in some of the great Indian epics have not been conceived on these lines. Why is this so? Did the historians of yesteryears have some insight into observation and measurement that today's 'scientific-minded' historians lack? Or was society intellectually very backward in that era - even during the days of Nalanda and Taxila, that they couldn't distinguish between fact and fiction?
A key to solving this mystery is in understanding the word measurement - a euphemism for observation in textbooks of modern science, especially those of theoretical physics pertaining to the quantum or sub-atomic realm of matter. In modern science, according to the most popular and accepted Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, introduced to the world by Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, pioneers of quantum physics, measurement is not an act separate from the one who is observing. In other words, although not many people seem to be aware of this, an act of observation is dependent on the person observing. There are no facts independent of the person checking them, just as there is no person independent of the environment he is surrounded with.
This does not mean that we can alter things by looking at them. It means that any scientific knowledge or any perception for that matter shows us not what things are but only shows us how we see things. In simpler words, any theory or piece of knowledge we acquire tells us more about ourselves and our own manners of perception rather than the thing perceived by us. In most crude language, anything we see, hear, taste, smell, feel, touch, or perceive in any possible manner, does not show us reality, but rather it shows us our brains perceiving reality.
Bringing us back to History and the battle of narratives being fought out on our television sets, computer screens and smartphones, what is the measurement or observation of a historical fact? Are the individual historians observing or researching a fact and modifying it while checking it? Are the institutions of historical scholarship and academia co-creating facts when they peer-review each other's research and publish only what is personally acceptable to their club, so to speak?
It could indeed be that historians are subconsciously or perhaps consciously changing history while observing it and that the 'clubs' of academic scholarship are being run by those who wish to dictate historical narratives based on their own self-defined notions of academic superiority and scholarship, which would even dictate what counts as 'proof'.
BJP loyalists, pejoratively called 'Bhakts' and 'Andh-Bhakts' by their opponents, might actually have a point when they question the validity of the erstwhile mainstream historical narrative or account. It is just that they're firing their bullets at the wrong target. Instead of focusing on "rewriting" while peddling it as "rediscovering" history, it would be more suitable for them to question the validity of historical narratives as being objective per se, with an as unbiased and non-political approach as possible.
In other words, we are indeed living in a 'post-truth' world, as those who keep shouting the words 'false narrative' to counter another person's point of view might have realised. But the point of realising that truth or at least knowledge is subjective is not to challenge the other person's subjectivity with one's own subjectivity, whether one supports the left, right or centre. It is to realise that we all live in our own subjective perceptual fields, which should ideally make us respect our opponent's point of view more and try to listen and learn from it. The truth will only emerge from a discussion between those who oppose and respect each other. It will not emerge from realising on the one hand that knowledge is relative and subjective and then immediately imposing this subjectivity upon another who we also acknowledge as being equally subjective.
Democracy is based on disagreement and reconciliation, not in self-imposed intellectual contradiction and forced imposition of this ailment upon others. If that were so, then we would all be mentally ill, and the whole world would be a 19th-century lunatic asylum, with no one fully communicating with anyone else, except that, in this case, even the healers and nurses would be patients with us, which is not a fantasy many of us would like to indulge in.
(The author is a research scholar)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.
View post:
Why is Sangh Parivar engaged in rewriting history? - Deccan Herald
- Netflixs 3 Body Problem: The science explained by an astrophysicist - Vox.com - March 24th, 2024 [March 24th, 2024]
- Entanglement entropies of nuclear systems gro - EurekAlert - March 24th, 2024 [March 24th, 2024]
- The Quest for a Theory of Everything Scientists Put Einstein to the Test - SciTechDaily - March 24th, 2024 [March 24th, 2024]
- Vibrating atoms are seen 'tuning' the energy of a single electron - Earth.com - March 24th, 2024 [March 24th, 2024]
- Innovator Spotlight: Joseph Maciejko | The Quad - University of Alberta - March 24th, 2024 [March 24th, 2024]
- A Breakthrough in the Control of Quantum Phenomena at Room Temperature Has Been Achieved, Researchers Say - The Debrief - February 16th, 2024 [February 16th, 2024]
- The End of the Quantum Ice Age: Room Temperature Breakthrough - SciTechDaily - February 16th, 2024 [February 16th, 2024]
- Quantum computer outperformed by new traditional computing - Earth.com - February 16th, 2024 [February 16th, 2024]
- URI program to help STEM professionals pivot into quantum information science careers - The University of Rhode Island - February 16th, 2024 [February 16th, 2024]
- Quantum realm controlled at room temperature for the first time - Earth.com - February 16th, 2024 [February 16th, 2024]
- Quantum Breakthrough: New Method Preserves Information Against All Odds - SciTechDaily - February 16th, 2024 [February 16th, 2024]
- Quantum computers get new design that makes them more "useful" - Earth.com - February 16th, 2024 [February 16th, 2024]
- Beyond Classical Physics: Scientists Discover New State of Matter With Chiral Properties - SciTechDaily - February 16th, 2024 [February 16th, 2024]
- Quantum research sheds light on the mystery of high-temperature superconductivity - Tech Explorist - February 16th, 2024 [February 16th, 2024]
- Unlocking the Mysteries of Quantum Many-Body Systems: A Look at Quantum Simulators and Universal Scaling ... - Medriva - February 16th, 2024 [February 16th, 2024]
- Functioning quantum internet makes giant stride closer to reality - Earth.com - February 13th, 2024 [February 13th, 2024]
- Exploring New Futures in Space: A Revolutionary Integration of Neuroscience, Quantum Physics, and Space Exploration - SETI Institute - February 13th, 2024 [February 13th, 2024]
- Uncovering the Quantum Plateau: Significance and Implications | Nature Physics - Medriva - February 13th, 2024 [February 13th, 2024]
- The State of the Art in Quantum Computing - Medium - February 13th, 2024 [February 13th, 2024]
- Beyond the Visible Universe: New Research Reveals How Gravity Influences the Quantum Realm - SciTechDaily - February 13th, 2024 [February 13th, 2024]
- Leader of IBM's Quantum Safe Team to speak at URI - University of Rhode Island - September 23rd, 2023 [September 23rd, 2023]
- University Assistant Predoctoral, Physics job with UNIVERSITY OF ... - Times Higher Education - September 23rd, 2023 [September 23rd, 2023]
- Zentropy A New Theory That Could Transform Material Science - SciTechDaily - September 23rd, 2023 [September 23rd, 2023]
- Researchers Studying the Quantum Realm Observe Alice in ... - The Debrief - September 23rd, 2023 [September 23rd, 2023]
- Augusta University graduate starts business in the artificial ... - Jagwire Augusta - September 23rd, 2023 [September 23rd, 2023]
- Quantum Echoes: A Revolutionary Method to Store Information as Sound Waves - SciTechDaily - August 14th, 2023 [August 14th, 2023]
- 'Quantum superchemistry' observed for the 1st time ever - Space.com - August 14th, 2023 [August 14th, 2023]
- Quantum Avalanche A Phenomenon That May Revolutionize Microelectronics and Supercomputing - SciTechDaily - August 14th, 2023 [August 14th, 2023]
- Applications of quantum mechanics at the beach - Symmetry magazine - August 14th, 2023 [August 14th, 2023]
- Book Review: On the Origin of Time Stephen Hawking's Final Theory - Moose Jaw Today - August 14th, 2023 [August 14th, 2023]
- Harnessing Quantum Technologies: The Next Big Leap in Global ... - Fagen wasanni - August 14th, 2023 [August 14th, 2023]
- The quantum avalanche - At the Vienna University of Technology, it ... - Chemie.de - August 14th, 2023 [August 14th, 2023]
- Semiconductors: The Linchpin of AI in Quantum Computing - Fagen wasanni - August 14th, 2023 [August 14th, 2023]
- The Promising Collaboration Between AI and Quantum Computing - Fagen wasanni - August 14th, 2023 [August 14th, 2023]
- String theory physicist changed quantum field theory - USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences - August 14th, 2023 [August 14th, 2023]
- QUANTUM SUPERCOMPUTERS. The words Quantum and ... - Medium - August 14th, 2023 [August 14th, 2023]
- Fourteen MIT School of Science professors receive tenure for 2022 ... - MIT News - August 14th, 2023 [August 14th, 2023]
- The Fascinating World of Quantum Integrated Circuits: The Next Big ... - Fagen wasanni - August 14th, 2023 [August 14th, 2023]
- Conclusive Evidence for Modified Gravity: Collapse of Newton's and ... - SciTechDaily - August 14th, 2023 [August 14th, 2023]
- Physicists Open New Path to an Exotic Form of Superconductivity - SciTechDaily - August 14th, 2023 [August 14th, 2023]
- The Principle of Least Action Now Exists in the Quantum Realm - Popular Mechanics - June 10th, 2023 [June 10th, 2023]
- Quantum materials: Electron spin measured for the first time - EurekAlert - June 10th, 2023 [June 10th, 2023]
- Life in a hologram | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT News - June 10th, 2023 [June 10th, 2023]
- If Black Holes Evaporate, Everything Evaporates - Universe Today - June 10th, 2023 [June 10th, 2023]
- Clever Ant-Man Easter Egg Links The Movie to the Real World's ... - Startefacts - June 10th, 2023 [June 10th, 2023]
- Quantum Cryptography: The Cutting Edge of Secure Communication - CityLife - June 10th, 2023 [June 10th, 2023]
- This 17-year-old works to make quantum mainstream - Indiatimes.com - June 10th, 2023 [June 10th, 2023]
- The multiverse is doomed and even Spider-Man and The Flash can't save it - Yahoo Entertainment - June 10th, 2023 [June 10th, 2023]
- Physics of Time Travel: A Scientific Perspective - Mirage News - June 10th, 2023 [June 10th, 2023]
- Quantum Spin Liquids: The Future of Superconductors - EnergyPortal.eu - June 10th, 2023 [June 10th, 2023]
- Interview: Three Books That Make Tess Gunty Angry - The New York Times - June 10th, 2023 [June 10th, 2023]
- Events Calendar School of Mathematics and Statistics Colloquium ... - Carleton University - June 10th, 2023 [June 10th, 2023]
- Graphene and Quantum Computing: A Match Made in Heaven - CityLife - June 10th, 2023 [June 10th, 2023]
- A Quantum Computer Simulation Has Reversed Time And Physics May Never Be The Same - Twisted Sifter - June 2nd, 2023 [June 2nd, 2023]
- Realizing the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox for Atomic Clouds - Physics - June 2nd, 2023 [June 2nd, 2023]
- The US and UK team up to advance quantum information science - Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory - June 2nd, 2023 [June 2nd, 2023]
- How plants can perform feats of quantum mechanics - Big Think - June 2nd, 2023 [June 2nd, 2023]
- Physicists Make Matter out of Light to Find Quantum Singularities - Scientific American - June 2nd, 2023 [June 2nd, 2023]
- Eventually everything will evaporate, not only black holes - Science Daily - June 2nd, 2023 [June 2nd, 2023]
- Julius-Maximillians-Universitt Wrzburg Researchers Use ... - HPCwire - June 2nd, 2023 [June 2nd, 2023]
- TNTs The Lazarus Project Uses Suspense Trapping to Ask Smart ... - Roger Ebert - June 2nd, 2023 [June 2nd, 2023]
- Quantum Exponential: building a cutting edge quantum technology ... - The Armchair Trader - June 2nd, 2023 [June 2nd, 2023]
- IMDEA Software and IMDEA Networks work to deploy in the ... - EurekAlert - June 2nd, 2023 [June 2nd, 2023]
- Ian Hacking, Eminent Philosopher of Science and Much Else, Dies ... - The New York Times - June 2nd, 2023 [June 2nd, 2023]
- Does mass increase when nearing the speed of light? - Big Think - June 2nd, 2023 [June 2nd, 2023]
- Answering Questions about Boring Numbers, Disasters, Fusion, and ... - Scientific American - June 2nd, 2023 [June 2nd, 2023]
- Spiderman: Across the Spider-verse | Reel World | timesnewspapers ... - Webster-Kirkwood Times, Inc. - June 2nd, 2023 [June 2nd, 2023]
- There's a Secret Way to Get to Absolute Zero. Scientists Just Found It. - Popular Mechanics - May 6th, 2023 [May 6th, 2023]
- Photon Precision: How Quantum Physicists Shattered the Bounds of Sensitivity - SciTechDaily - May 6th, 2023 [May 6th, 2023]
- Do we live in a hologram? Why physics is still mesmerised by this idea - New Scientist - May 6th, 2023 [May 6th, 2023]
- Is Ultimate Truth an Equation? Nah. The Stute - The Stute - May 6th, 2023 [May 6th, 2023]
- UChicago Lab Creates 'Quantum Casino,' a Win-Win to Educate and ... - Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation - May 6th, 2023 [May 6th, 2023]
- Physics - Tweezers in Three Dimensions - Physics - May 6th, 2023 [May 6th, 2023]
- Brave new world: On the edge of a second quantum revolution - University of Cape Town News - May 6th, 2023 [May 6th, 2023]
- Researchers pull back the quantum curtain on 'Weyl fermions' - Phys.org - May 6th, 2023 [May 6th, 2023]
- Scale separation: Breaking down unsolvable problems into solvable ones - Phys.org - May 6th, 2023 [May 6th, 2023]
- Postdoctoral Research Associate in Quantum Optics job with ... - Times Higher Education - May 6th, 2023 [May 6th, 2023]
- Australia's first quantum strategy predicts $6 billion in revenue and ... - SmartCompany - May 6th, 2023 [May 6th, 2023]
- Nature's Quantum Secret: Link Discovered Between Photosynthesis ... - SciTechDaily - May 6th, 2023 [May 6th, 2023]
- Two ERC proof of concept grants for the University of Bonn - EurekAlert - May 6th, 2023 [May 6th, 2023]