Saturday 27 December 2014

History is a Mystery in India


 I was pondering over this for a few days and felt that I should write a post on it. Its a universal fact that a lot of students in their school days struggled with history. Some even found it boring. Even I felt the same but my perception about history has changed over the years.


      None of us hates history, we actually hate the way it is taught. We don't realize this fact and think that we hate the subject. If you remember how we were told in school about Neanderthals, Homo-sapiens .etc. somewhere around fourth grade. We were told in brief of about how humans evolved from monkeys and for some reason were rushed through all the related topics. The only things that were stressed on were the invention of fire and wheel. Somehow we kept on muttering homo-sapiens, fire and wheel throughout fourth grade. It was much later on that we dived into the detail of how life started on earth (probably in 6th grade). We learnt about how algae developed in a primordial soup in the sea and then single celled organisms came into being and then multi-celled creatures evolved and after millions of years they came on land. However, for God knows what reason 'what were these multi-celled animals?' was totally ignored in the school syllabus and neither did teacher tell us about them. It was over the years (seeing encyclopedias) that I came to know about these creatures. These multi-celled creatures include squids,pre-historic crustaceans, horse-shoe crab .etc.
      I would like to stress on the horse-shoe crab because it is an animals which is estimated to date back 450 million years and it still lives with us. Now you may say that what use is this crab to us? Yes it is. It is the blue blood of this creature which is used to test our medicines for contamination. Because the blood of this animal is very sensitive to contamination, we humans pick them up from the beaches, take their blue blood and dump them back exhausted on the beach, sometimes even picking up the same crab, in the process causing possible death. We were never told about these creatures in history lessons. I once saw them in Pokemon when I was small but felt that they were fiction. It was later on that I realized that they were real and actually live since much before us. If I had not seen this following documentary I would have never known what big a favor it does on human-kind. I suggest you have a look at it and then you too will truly say softly deep down in your heart "Thank you little crab".




"The education system just focuses on human achievements and not on sacrifices"
      It can be noted that our school history directly jumps from algae in the sea to monkeys and homo-sapiens. Where is the evolution in between? Why no mention about these guys?....

(Source: Jurassic Park)

....and related species from which they evolved. It is said that we have lived on earth for 1 million years. Comparatively, dinosaurs were here for at least 165 million years. So this planet belongs to them more than it belongs to us. As a kid these creatures always fascinated me. I used to wonder how would it be like seeing one in flesh and blood. (Inside a cage obviously) I just marveled at their body structure and how they must have evolved. I used to every year open my history book at the start of the academic year thinking 'Yes! Surely this year we will learn about dinosaurs and prehistoric animals' but no, every year we just learnt about fire, wheel, and then in later years Harappa-Mohenjodaro .etc. I literally felt like tearing my history book one year when I saw a dinosaur on the outer cover and inside there was homo-sapiens. Learning about them would prepare us to answer when kids ask us 'Why did dinosaurs die millions of years ago?' It reminds me of this famous dialogue from the movie Jurassic Park which goes like this, "Dinosaurs and man, two species separated by 65 million years of evolution have just been suddenly thrown back into the mix together. How can we possibly have the slightest idea what to expect?In short, we never learnt in detail what the following diagram shows:


      It was seen as extra-curricular, something which you are expected to read about from encyclopedias and not text-books. We never learnt what Pleistocene epoch was. We never knew what Mesozoic era was. We didn't know how many mass extinctions had taken place on earth and how they happened. We were never taught how various animals evolved over the ages. Like did you know that the whale was actually a hyena like animal millions of years ago which lived on land. An article from Berkeley explains it. There is an animation also to demonstrate it.

Whale evogram
(Source: Berkeley)

      These are very important in understanding which are the strengths of animals and how they have evolved over the ages to behave. (It may come handy when confronted by a wild animal as you know what to do and what to definitely not do. It also helps in conservation of species)
      After homo-sapiens and hom-erectus our syllabus goes on to tell about Harappa and Mohenjo Daro. This is one very good thing that our syllabus teaches us. These civilizations were indeed ahead of their times and we can learn a bounty of things about town planning from them. However, there is a need to stress on what we can learn from them and not how many marks we will get by writing about them in the exams. A lot is written about them in text books and I will not detail about them here.

      Post Harappa-Mohenjo Daro, our history directly jumps to the Mughal empire. There are very small bits and pieces about other empires like the Maratha empire and that of Ashoka. Many a time these were summarized into one lesson or just one page. Because I was schooled in Maharashtra, the Mughal empire and the Maratha empire were taught with a bit more detail. Apart from these, there were other great empires too, some of which can be found in  Prashast Jain's answer on Quora, which is an elaborate depiction of the glorious empires we missed out on. This answer is a part of many answers written for the question: What are some things every Indian should know about Indian history? (also see detailed articles on Wikipedia about Medieval India)
      When we were told that Ashoka was a great king in Indian history, we used to wonder what great deed did he do to humanity? Why does India give him such great honour that we have the Ashoka chakra on the tricolour? He was just another person who left this worldly life and took on the path of Buddha. This because a big lesson was put forward in front of us with all his triumphs, wealth, commerce .etc. etc. etc. and at the end of the lesson in just two lines it was written that Ashoka after the Kalinga war had a change of heart at the end of the Kalinga war. This is the actual reason why Ashoka is so famous. His change of heart at the end of the war is a very important account of history showing that indeed a human can change for the good at any point in time. (read another article on Ashoka's change of heart) It is this moment of self-realization and raw emotion of 'I will do good now onwards' that our text-books and history teachers should have dealt with in detail and gentleness. But instead the focus was on 'Students mark this point for a question on why did Ashoka embrace Buddhism? It is an important question and come every year in the exam'. It is when we humans see emotion related to history, we are affected psychologically and strive for good.

"History is not about remembering dates, its about remembering emotions"

      After this the history some how fast forwards to the East India company and India's freedom struggle. Obviously, Indians should learn about the freedom struggle of their forefathers. However, textbooks don't tell much about the Dutch, Danish, French and Portuguese Indian colonies. Considering the fact that a growing number of young Indians are taking interest in French cuisine. And by history of other colonies I don't mean 'India drove out the ........ in the year ........ India was given back ........ colonies in the year .......'. What it should mention is the standard of living of people in these colonies, which rules were more favourable for economic development .etc. The other day I was scratching my head when I saw a documentary about the Dutch colony of India. I was wondering 'Did we learn about the Dutch having a colony in India?' I must have read about it but could not just remember because our text-books only mention about Britain.
      Apart from these there was very little importance given to world history. We know nothing about the Greeks apart from 'Democracy started in Greece'. We know nothing about the Greco-Persian wars (a part of which is the plot for the movie 300). We didn't learn much about Ancient Egypt.We also know very little about US history. This especially when a lot of Indians are opting to go to the US for a MS. I can only imagine an Indian student going there and when an American says 'Hey today is so-and-so day', the Indian counterpart will probably say 'Err.... I'm sorry I don't know about it. Can you tell me about it? I will check it up on the net later'. Learning about world history helps us understand and respect other cultures.
      We did learn a bit about the Middle Ages but whether to deem it as satisfactory knowledge? I don't know. We however, did dive into detail about the renaissance and to some extent the industrial revolution.

      We also learnt to some extent about the world wars. (Each war summarized within a few pages) Mostly about only key events in the wars. There is an awesome three episode documentary by the History channel called The World Wars which depicts a lot of the events in new light and keeps people engrossed with its cool screenplay. It depicts the emotions and happenings that shaped the leaders of the wars. How passion and patriotism lead to a revolution and rage and ego lead to the demise of an empire.
One of the episodes tells a marvelous tale (authenticity is still a matter of debate) of how Hitler during the first world war had a close shave with death. Hitler was injured and had a standoff with a soldier called Henry Tandey. Tandey had a clear shot at his head. Being injured, Hitler didn't even bother to lift up his own rifle in retaliation. Hitler had given up on living at this point. (imagine what a heart-broken Hitler would look like) Tandey had his finger on the trigger but just could not press it. He had mercy on Hitler as he was injured and both went their ways, Hitler waving at him in appreciation. Imagine what world history would have been had Tandey pressed the trigger. And Hitler too did not take advantage and fire one in Tandey's back. I can imagine all day long what emotion those two must have had on their faces. Priceless! (read more about this on Wikipedia) Here is a trailer of The World Wars:




      These emotions, feelings and aspirations I feel, are the main reason what we should learn from history. Which aspirations lead to development and which aspirations lead to destruction can only be learnt from the examples our forefathers set for us. 
      Apart from this what this TV show teaches us is that videos are the best and most effective way to learn history. Nowadays there are videos, documentaries, shows and movies about almost every historic event, culture and revolution. It should be leveraged to teach history to kids in a more meaningful and fun way. Let me remind you again that history is not about remembering dates but about significance of those dates.

"Tell me, I'll forget. Show me, I'll remember. Involve me, I'll understand"


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