Today morning, I have came across one article on my Facebook news feed, after reading this I have decided to give very less importance to this dangerous source of Knowledge called Social Media, though I have reduced the time spent on Social Media for knowledge, but I believe it is still influential in absorbing the knowledge and on our opinions on different subjects..! at the same time But I can not ignore at all..!!
This particular article shared by prominent congressmen Shashi Taroor, made me to Think Again, and changed my opinions on people and My country’s History, although I am an admirer of Mr. Gandhi, Patel and others, and I have red books of them and did watch the movies but, I have understood that, there is still more to dig..! and there is much more to know and understand..!! I hope I will do this and apply my unconditional knowledge and learning to write more intellectual articles..! Let’s hope for it.!!
So, coming to this article, which was published in “Factor Daily”, their culture editor Sharbonti Bagchi took the interview of the popular Historian and the author of most prominent books like “Makers of Modern India”, “India after Gandhi: The world’s largest Democracy”, and “Gandhi before India” Mr. Ramachandra Guha..! The Insights from the interview follows,
The following points are excerpts from the original article “Social Media is a world of conspiracy theories, innuendo, gossip, paranoia, sheer craziness:Ram Guha”
Social Media – A Real Danger
1. The original sinner was the congress of Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi
Now, one unfortunate consequence of the Congress’s misrepresentation of history is that Jawaharlal Nehru, who was a great figure and should not be conflated with Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi (who never knew Nehru and what he stood for), also becomes demonised. Under Sonia Gandhi, the Congress never talked about people who were great Congressmen and their contributions. Sardar Patel was a great Congressman, Rajaji was a great Congressman, Kamaraj was a great Congressman, Subhash Bose was a great Congressman…
2. Gandhi and Nehru never neglected Mr. Patel
Patel is a great figure and Nehru unfairly sidelined him, Gandhi should have made Patel Prime Minister’ — even though the truth is Patel did not want to become Prime Minister! Nehru and Patel worked very well as a partnership when Nehru was PM and Patel was deputy PM. However, social media got fixated on the idea that if Patel had been PM, we would have been a great country; and then maybe Nehru killed Bose — all kinds of things, all so far removed from fact…!
3. Social Media – A world of falsified content
4. We are lack of Knowledge of History as a Nation..!
Sharbonti: Do you think this comes from our lack of knowledge of history as a nation — because we don’t study history seriously when we are supposed to study it? Or, say, because in engineering colleges, humanities are not taught seriously… is that why we are easily misled by misinformation?
Ram Guha: That is one reason. A second reason is that the Congress may have presented a particular version of history. A third reason is, there is a strange psychological characteristic of young Indians (especially men, I would say, my sense is mostly men) who are educated, who are in the tech world, want India to be a great nation — a superpower — and are resentful that India has not got the acclaim and respect that it should. This discontent – that India is not getting its due — takes one of two forms. Either you say that we were great in the past — that we had invented the zero, we had invented plastic surgery — or you say that we would have been great if it had not been for that rascal Nehru. The problems of today you blame on a long dead man. What happened 70 years ago is responsible for India not being great today.
Which begs the question, what have you been doing all these years? (chuckles). So it’s a very strange kind of psychological situation that young Indians have — that they desperately desire their country to be great. You see, they are often in international jobs, they are in a much more globalised world than when I grew up. I grew up in Dehradoon, studied in Delhi, I first went abroad when I was 30 — now these young Indians are moving around with people, and they say why should a Frenchman be greater than me, why is a Chinese guy getting respect – it must be because of that Nehru. So you’re right — partly it’s that we don’t have good humanities education, partly the Congress party itself has presented a distorted form of history, and partly it’s a kind of frustration among young Indians; a tendency to blame others for your current misfortune.
5. Gandhi – A real reason behind United India – most of Indians doesn’t know the fact that we were not independent nor democratic and there was no country called “United India”
Gandhi is difficult to understand. There are still many people who admire Gandhi; it’s more complicated. Many people admire him, many revile him. Part of it is this youthful desire to change everything at once, and Gandhi believed in non-violence, compromise, one step at a time. You think that an armed struggle would have got us a great, glorious country, whereas the truth is wherever countries have got independence through armed struggle, it has led to more trouble, more violence, more retributive violence — a spiral of violence. Gandhi’s vision was to take everyone along — take Muslims along, take women along, emancipate Dalits. I think we have also forgotten that actually, the roles of Gandhi, Ambedkar, Patel, Nehru, Bose were all complimentary.
So these positions are contradictory, inconsistent — they don’t understand the complexity of that time. And above all they don’t recognize what a difficult job it was for people like Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar, Patel to create a united country, to bring different people together, to give a democratic template to a society which had never known democracy, never known freedom of choice, to give women equal rights in a society that was deeply patriarchal, to at least fight against caste oppression, to allow affirmative action for Dalits and Adivasis… it’s an extraordinary achievement. I mean, you look at the countries around us, how Pakistan, Bangladesh or Nepal are doing and then you’ll appreciate the role of Nehru and Patel in building this country.
6. Bose never hated Gandhi, perhaps he named one of his Army named after “Gandhi” and Bose is the first time to ever called Gandhi as ‘Father of Nation’
After he left the Congress, continued to admire Gandhi. He disagreed on the question of violence vs non violence. So he left, he went to Japan, he ran* the Indian National Army with Japanese support. And what did he name the Brigades of the Indian National Army? He named them Gandhi, Nehru and Maulana Azad Brigades, and the fourth brigade was named after himself. He didn’t name it after Savarkar or Golvalkar — he named it after Gandhi, Nehru and Azad, and in his broadcasts from the Azad Hind Fauj, he for the first time ever called Gandhi ‘Father of the Nation’. He would start his broadcast from Singapore, Malaya or Bangkok by addressing the ‘Father of the Nation’. Now Gandhi was in jail in Poona, he couldn’t hear it, but that’s the first person he’s saluting. Likewise, Nehru and Patel worked together. The other strange thing is, to bring down Nehru they will use anything, so first they used Patel, and then they used Bose — though the fact is, Bose and Patel hated each other! It was Patel who got Bose dismissed as president of the Congress.
7. Social Media is not a Good Vehicle to understand the complexity of our country
I’ll say that young Indians have an interest in history; they want to read serious reflective stuff, but social media is not a good vehicle for understanding the complexity of our country. In 140 characters, you cannot get to the truth of anything. Hopefully this will pass and some kind of balance will be restored, but this polarizing of discourse is very, very unhelpful.
8. Godse – A man who killed Gandhi, just not because he allowed partition, because he hates Muslims and Pakistan who added Shias in second class, irony is Jinna who is Father of Pakistan was Shia
Godse was a very complex and angry young man. He joined the RSS then left, he joined the Hindu Mahasabha, he was dissatisfied. He was a Hindu supremacist. [In] most of his writings in the 40s — he edited a magazine in the 40s — he vilified Muslims and glorified Hindus. And after Partition, his main criticism against Gandhi was he [Gandhi] wanted Muslims to live with peace and dignity in India. So it was a fundamental, ideological battle. On one side you had Gandhi and Nehru saying ‘whatever Pakistan does to its minorities, in India everyone is equal — Hindu or Muslim or Sikh or Christian, and also man and woman and Dalit and Brahmin’. That’s a really far-sighted position to take. Whereas the Hindutva line was vengeance: ‘If Hindus are treated badly in Pakistan we won’t allow a single Muslim to live in India’.
And this battle continues… it’s a choice Indians have to make. Do you want a plural, tolerant, accommodating society, or do you want a Hindu Pakistan? The way Pakistan has persecuted its minorities, has thrown them out, the way Christians are treated in Pakistan, the way Shias have been given second-class status (the irony is Jinnah was Shia) — do you want to go that way?
9. True Indian History was never been taught, because it took over by political parties and they used History as one of their tool to influence the country by pushing their Ideology on us..!
It is true that you had a kind of Marxist cabal who controlled the universities. It dates back to the time when the Communist Party of India (CPI) aligned with Indira Gandhi in Parliament to save her majority and in return she gave CPI historians control of ICHR, NCERT etc. Partly, it is true and it needs to be challenged. It needs to be opened up. I wrote a long essay in Caravan about why there are no conservative intellectuals in India and why we need conservative intellectuals. For a healthy democratic debate and discourse, you need Left, Liberal and Conservative [strands of thought]. You need a variety of intellectual approaches
10. Nobody cares about Intellectual work because there is no much visibility..!
Intellectual work is hard work. It’s not 140 characters on social media, it’s not appearing on television, it’s not even writing a column. If you want to make a mark as an intellectual, you have to write serious essays and books..!
With this, I hope you, now understands the Importance of Intellectual Knowledge Resources..!
Watch the whole Interview here,
Jai Hind..!!
avinash chennuri 