History for what?

Humanity works on the cycle of rebirths and we are at the crossroads of new ones. And now our life becomes more digitalize by each passing day. And we are adopting it very fast. But the question is always remains that why we need history? We are spreading our arms towards future we care about it planning for it. We are giving our 100% to present to secure future, then why past? Why we need to look back and learn from past? Why we need history as a subject in schools?

What is history? Voltaire said “history is the lie that everyone agrees on” because we preserve past write it, save it, we know this past will always remain same. It takes lots of efforts to change it or prove history wrong. When we are in history class the lecture becomes the class of active imagination the class were we living the past, we were building our perspective. Attending a history class is an act of creation. But it doesn’t mean that every history book has same stories, you can’t expect Japanese and Americans learning the same history of Second World War. They have edited, focused on certain news events which they think reflect on their society. History is now also treated as the concept of ‘the kin group’ by Francis Fukuyama.

As a society, we obsessed by the present. Unknowingly we biased towards the present we want to know every single thing that is happening into the world, we update ourselves, feeding news of that have happened every 5mintus, and yet we have to sustain and nourish and inspire us are a lot older. Since the beginning of humanity, our activities are slowly have been registered without us aware of it. As we know history is a study of past it basically tells us how we turn nothingness into an amazingly large structure, hunting to agriculture, wheel to spacecraft, industries, and herbs to medicines and so on.

We learn from past, and history is everything that we can look back and learn. Each and every mistake we did wrong or right. If you look carefully at past parallels how things happen and trying to understand that if you get the big picture, you may avoid repeating some of the errors.

Some region, community, monuments lost their identity just because they failed to hold history in their hands. In India, many ‘Aadiwasi’ communities lost their identities and living their life in extreme conditions just because they don’t preserve their history. African-American also fought for their history to secure their future. Misleading of history or past not only just blurred the reality but also contribute to snatch the thinking ability to imagine and scale the values and ideology in a balanced parameter.

We preserve our history mostly by documentation.  But for robbed the identity, culture, and religion the Nalanda University destroyed three times and rebuilt for only two. It’s said that Khilji is too religious so he burned down the whole library. The library has precious books carrying the number of knowledge but the treasure of knowledge about science, mathematics, economics and more just become just a piece of history. Nothing is most horrifying than imagining that one fine morning you have no identity, no history to see future. History just not helps to know about past. It helps to prepare for future.

History involves in every subject. History marks its presence to the invention of Zero to applying the concept of Genealogy. Many times for selfishness people plays with history and it can change the future of that certain group of people who surrounded by that thing. History helps in many inventions like plastic surgery, a hydrogen bomb, television, electricity and so on. These are some examples that re-invented after it became history.

 Eduardo Galeano said “history never really says goodbye,” history says ‘see you later.’  Human behavior doesn’t change in large-scale, the human is used to repeating the same things again. And that is why history can live itself again.

Why we need history? Marcus Garvey said, “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.”   The history we need not just because of glory, wars, sacrifices and future we need it to strengthen the roots. Most of the time history becomes controversial just because showcasing the wrong history can easily take over someone’s present identity. That is the reason the most of the controversies especially included Movies (for ex. Padmavat, Jodha Akbar, Bajirao Mastani, Water) 

But somehow is history is the one of the reason that opposing us to adopt new technology. History is the philosophy teaching by examples but some conservative minds only focus the tradition instead of learning from it and change it. People are busy to preserve their culture and past, but pay less attention to improve the society by using it. Many Indians follows the rituals because of the history but never tries to understand it and know the reason behind it.

Why we study history? Leann Rimes said, “And the rest is history.”   The answer is we virtually must need it when we study it reasonably it emerges with relevant skills, simple awareness, and enhanced capacity for citizenship. History is different for the different individual. Some enjoy the beauty of it, some own us, and some challenge it. We need to study it to find the correct path to walk on.