The Hindu : New Delhi News : A date with history

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Feb 08, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

A date with history

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, FEB. 7. It was an evening to understand the challenge of contemporary history with one of the country's well-known modern chroniclers Ramchandra Guha here today.

"I think the best maxim for a historian is what a Cambridge historian once said: That which is now in the past was once in the future. We judge Sardar Patel in 1950, by what we know in 2005. But for him in 1948, 1950 was the future. I think as a historian you must detach yourself from what you know,'' he said.

Stating that Nehru's economic policy was largely a consensus of the intelligentsia of his day, he said: "In 2005 we might find it fatally flawed, but then it was everything that a developing country would need. You would probably need a gap of one generation to judge events. I think we are too close to Hindutva or the globalisation of the economy to know its eventual political impact.''

Organised by the India International Centre and the New India Foundation, the lecture was the first in a series titled "Independent India''. The lecture series aims to fill in the gap left by modern chroniclers who seem to have stopped writing history and commenting about the developments in India after the achievements of Independence.

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