The Hindu : `Historians should develop a borderless outlook'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Feb 17, 2004

Kerala

Kerala

`Historians should develop a borderless outlook'

By Our Staff Reporter

THENJIPALAM (MALAPPURAM DIST.), FEB. 16 . The former chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), S. Settar, today said that history could be a dangerous tool and this was being realised in the contemporary context.

Inaugurating the 24th Session of the South Indian History Congress here today, Prof. Settar said that only those who had a tremendous inferiority complex would use the subject in a dangerous way. Calling for the preparation of good history textbooks, Prof. Settar said that hatred and contempt for other communities had crept into the present history textbooks.

Lamenting that Sangham literature did not get due recognition, he said that it was completely rooted in the land when compared to the Vedic literature. "It speaks of love and war. Love and heroism are present in abundance.''

He said historians had to develop a border-less outlook. "Let politicians quarrel about State boundaries. We [historians] have to look beyond South. Our ancestors have broken the boundaries. If they had followed the Dharmasastras' advice not to cross the seas, they would not have achieved what they have now. They took our cultural roots to South East Asia.''

He said that for many years only the Tamilians could read Tamil historical works. Later when the new generation of historians, who did not know Tamil nor were well versed with English, came they were not able to look into the original source and interpret them. "I found that in the early 70's the application of tools of historical enquiry began to change in Karnataka. Though there was emphasis on the local language, Kannada, I found that interestingly more research came from the language department than the history department. If you conduct a survey on who all did a lot of work on Sangham literature you will suddenly realise that the work is done more effectively by language scholars,'' he remarked.

Pointing out that the new generation of historians did not have an in-depth knowledge of language, he said that first, they could not study the medieval languages and secondly, they could not master the modern languages either. They surprisingly came with the argument that teaching was more important than research. "But they were teaching without learning. What is the kind of research now going on in universities? .''

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