November 12, 2024
📰 FEATURE STORY
Are Indian historians and academics to blame for ‘WhatsApp history’?
As the saying goes, those who don’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it. History can sometimes be a fraught subject to broach. In many ways, it has been politicised to validate or repudiate agendas and ideologies. It’s why history taught in schools is often a political battleground.
When teaching, studying, or reading history, what’s the truth? Historian and author William Dalrymple recently said the growth of “WhatsApp History”, i.e., propagating pseudo-history, has become popular since Indian historians haven’t properly communicated Indian history to the public. Are the historians to blame for India’s inability to tell its story to the world?
Context
You might wonder what WhatsApp has to do with history. The popular messaging platform has over 400 million users in India and become one of the most misused platforms to spread false information. It’s how WhatsApp University was coined – slang for a place where some of the most ridiculous news gets circulated. They’re memes, videos, and news about politics, religion, history, etc.
Historians adhere to certain unwritten but widely accepted rules to earn their stripes. Academic histories come from professional historians within university and research settings and can be written only by following disciplinary protocols. That means their works are subject to peer reviews and must undergo intense scrutiny by subject experts. This is how it’s supposed to work. No doubt, sometimes shoddy work can squeeze through, but by and large, it’s airtight.
According to Dalrymple, India hasn’t been able to tell its story to the world. Certainly not as effectively as China, for example. China has done a couple of things. First, they’ve projected their history in an accessible and popular way. Second, they’ve been good at using their story and projecting it as a peaceful global trade network to counter the militarised European networks of the 18th and 19th centuries. That’s how we now have the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Why hasn’t India been able to do something like this? Dalrymple says academic history entered a phase beginning in the 1950s where historians and academics only talked to themselves. There was little to no outreach to general audiences and citizens.
There was a void. It was filled with things like WhatsApp History and WhatsApp University. Certain historians and others have propagated a warped version of history. Supposedly, sky vehicles like helicopters were present in the Ramayana, atomic bomb references were made in the Mahabaratha and other fallacies.
A consequence of the mass accessibility of the internet and social media is the proliferation of misinformation and fake history. A lot of this has to do with the rise of Hindutva and their version of Indian history. Dalrymple questions why there hasn’t been a concerted effort to counter this.
Are Indian academics and historians to blame for allowing things like WhatsApp history to crop up and take hold?
VIEW: More outreach needed
Dalrymple isn’t entirely wrong in his assertions about Indian historians and academics and their failures to reach out to the public. One reason WhatsApp history has been successful is that well-researched academic history hasn’t been well disseminated. It’s mostly circulated among a small group of historians. Ordinary readers have difficulty accessing it. That’s not confined to just being able to get their hands and eyes on it. Academic history is often written in arcane language. Its lack of popular appeal is also a design issue.
For a long time, academic historians confined themselves to writing in peer-reviewed academic journals in language that adhered to academic conventions. They can be dull rather than engaging. While some have written with accessibility in mind, the jargon is opaque and impersonal. They also didn’t attempt to engage with the public through mediums like books or television.
Most academic historians believed their duty was to equip future generations with historical sensibilities. However, they would only do so by teaching university students. Some might attribute that to snobbery. Most academic historians choose to remain part of the peer-review system, where other historians review and scrutinise their work to help improve and correct it. Academic historians have also failed to write public history. When so much space is left to fill the public sphere, pseudo-history flourishes.
COUNTERVIEW: It’s a structural issue
Simply blaming historians is unfair. The rise of something like WhatsApp history is a mass phenomenon propelled by technological, political, and social forces. The Hindutva movement has spent time and money pushing its skewed narratives into the mainstream. Academic historians might’ve been able to mitigate or counter this with more public engagement, but they couldn’t have reversed it. Something like WhatsApp history is hard to beat since they’re well-funded and have ideas that often reinforce prejudices.
As far as public outreach is concerned, take Britain, for example. It has a better interface between historical research and the public since historians approach the media and filmmakers and vice versa. Peer-reviewing academic historical research is time-consuming for which scholars aren’t paid. It has kept many academic historians from turning their research into public history. Peer-reviewed publications are also essential for historians to secure university jobs and earn regular incomes.
Good public history will gain more eyes and ears if there’s more awareness of the constraints that academics face. The tide is slowly changing. Many historians have recognised the importance of public outreach. They’re more visible on social media as they speak head-on about politically charged issues. Many younger historians have learnt the value of writing in Indian languages to be more widely accessible.
Reference Links:
- The Hindutva challenge to the historiography of India – Deccan Herald
- Why have Indian historians failed to combat ‘WhatsApp history’? – Scroll
- The Risks of Looking at India’s History Through the Eyes of Pseudo-Historians – The Wire
- Are academic historians to blame for WhatsApp University? The answer isn’t straightforward – Indian Express
- WhatsApp history is a hydra but don’t blame Indian academics – Times of India
What is your opinion on this?
(Only subscribers can participate in polls)
a) Indian historians and academics are to blame for ‘WhatsApp history’.
b) Indian historians and academics aren’t to blame for ‘WhatsApp history’.
Previous poll’s results:
- The Indian middle class isn’t shrinking: 40.0%
- The Indian middle class is shrinking: 60.0% 🏆
🕵️ BEYOND ECHO CHAMBERS
For the Right:
As outsiders swamp party, BJP cadre in UP struggle to keep the faith
For the Left:
Muslim Renaissance Yet To Come For Indians