Ramachandra Guha: The Historian and Chauvinism
Human beings tend
towards an extreme attachment to their family, their caste, their village,
their religion, their nation. This exaggerated loyalty to one’s personal or
political circle goes by the name of “chauvinism.” For all their professions to
objectivity, scholars can be chauvinists too. This is certainly true of
historians, who, in their search for the truth about the past, can be
constrained by an excessive allegiance to the frameworks they have inherited.
Indian historians are
particularly prone to the chauvinism of discipline, the narrow-minded belief
that only a person who has a BA, an MA, and a PhD in history can teach or
practice the subject. This is a dogma that I particularly relish resisting, for
I last formally studied history when I was twelve. I majored in science in high
school, and did a BA and MA in economics before pursuing a doctorate in
sociology. It was through a chapter of accidents that I became a historian.
Happily, I am anything but alone. The great historian of ancient India, Damodar
Dharmananda Kosambi, was a mathematician by training. The great historian of
medieval and early modern India, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, took all his degrees in
economics.
Studying history at an
advanced level is not mandatory to becoming a professional historian yourself.
What is mandatory is the learning, or self-learning, of the practice of
history. You must learn to do original research. You must learn to find
documents nobody else has seen. You must learn to craft your narrative in a
compelling and interesting way. But it is not essential that your own academic
degrees must be in history...
Disciplinary
chauvinism takes many forms in the Indian university, where the boundaries
between the departments are unbelievably rigid, defined in the most peculiar
and old-fashioned ways. The teachers of different disciplines rarely interact
with one another professionally, while in most of our universities students are
discouraged, and often prohibited, from taking courses in departments other than
their own... read more..
https://www.theindiaforum.in/article/historian-and-chauvinism
