Writing history in contemporary times should provoke readers to think, four historians concurred, while speaking at the Bangalore Literature Festival (BLF) on Saturday, December 3. Anirudh Kanisetti, author of the ‘Lords Of The Deccan’, who writes primarily on medieval history, was one of the panellists. He said, "By writing about the past, we are trying to get a sense of how the past has unfolded behind us. The way we write history has to provoke us to think." Anirudh was discussing a question about why it is necessary to read history in contemporary times.
Responding to the same question, another historian Pradeep Chakravarthy, based in Chennai, said, "When I write about history, my observation is that, fundamentally, human nature has not changed. What we feel, what we are scared about, how we respond to changes, has not changed from the past. We can understand ourselves better by reading history."
Vinay Lal, a historian and an academic at UCLA, California, opined that India is the source of, by far, the greatest number of stories in world literature. "The Panchatantra is an example. Why is India an anomaly? There is no real history writing culture. We have an extraordinarily rich history of storytelling but not necessarily the same can be said of history," he said.
The historians also discussed the term 'WhatsApp University', a pejorative term which refers to the fake news and misinformation spread in India through WhatsApp forwards. "Those who follow ‘history’ on WhatsApp also think they are discussing history, but there is a need to counter them," Anirudh said. "All opinions cannot be treated equally while studying history. This is why the work of a historian is important. It involves protocols and discipline," Vinay Lal said.
"We have to view characters from the past as people like you and me and not as caricatures that are used for political reasons," Anirudh added.
Vikramajit Ram, the only one in the group who is a writer of historical fiction, said that when he writes on history, he is interested in reading about human details of a person. "When I read about the unnamed sculptor in Anirudh's book (Lords of the Deccan), I was curious who this sculptor was, where did he come from? Bengaluru or Nelamangala? Because the book mentioned them. What did he think and what was he like," he said.