[Reader-list] Assault upon the Delhi University History

[Prem Chandavarkar]

On 03/03/2008, Aditya Raj Kaul <kauladityaraj at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> We were well know that originally there are only two Ramayan's that we
> recognise; one by Tulsidas and another by Valmiki. There maybe a few
> hundred
> more stories based on poetry from various places etc. But, lets for a
> change
> concentrate on the original source while studying history in an
> institution
> rather then secondary and modern opinions, translations etc etc.


To me, such a statement is the heart of the problem, and is the reason why
this discussion thread started in the first place.  It implies that there is
a primary authoritative history which must be regarded, and many secondary
histories which can be immediately dismissed as inferior and ignorable.

Such a classification should also be accompanied by an ethical and
intellectual justification of the basis on which it is made.  It cannot be
merely stated that this must be so because it is a majority belief or a
historical imperative that has endured for ages, for that is the argument
that was used to defend colonialism, slavery and apartheid.

Let me link this to an earlier thread on history and archive, and put
forward the following proposition:  The archive is an ethical, rather than
epistemological, imperative of history as a discipline.  History cannot be
ethically validated without the discipline incorporating an
ongoing discourse on the basis of which something is to be categorised as
archive, or dismissed as non-archive.