What
is history?
History
is about past. When we write history we have our inclinations or bias. E H Carr
says “there are so many writings, but all
the writing are not history”. There is no consensus or unity among
historians or writers. History basically means writing down events.
Peter
Gay and Gerald J Cavanaugh: History is critical thinking
about the past
Marc
Bloch: Science of
men in time
E
H Carr: “Continuous process of interaction between
historians and his facts and unending dialogue between present and past”.
J
H Hexter : Any patterned, coherent account of the past intended to be true
Historians
are to see; from the angles and minute, not to tell lies, not to impose their
ideas and
Sources must be
accurate. It is a science because of enlightenment. Human beings are repetition
of nature, Human nature does not change.
Why do we study
history? : To learn from the past mistakes, to look at the past critically.
There are four methodological issues / Reasons
took place behind the history.
1) Rationale: Every event in
the past has a reason behind it. Science always depends up on Imperials’ data.
History is not just a record of chronology, but to see the reason behind every
event.
2) Proximity: People
interpret situation, surroundings, context in different ways. Eg. Paul‘s
understanding about women is interpreted by different people differently.
3) Expediency:
(Accessibility). It is possible to know the past from the document, and oral
tradition. The question arises is it possible to know the real picture of past
like church history of heresies. Winners will become orthodox and losers become
heretics. History is about winner.
4)
Historiographical unities: Augustine of Hippo differentiated church history with profane
history. In his writing he differentiated city of man and city of God. City of
man represents history and city of God represents history of Christians. We
must adopt the role of the faith in our values and approaches.
However Augustine‘s differentiation may face lot of
practical problem. God works in history through natural processes i.e. through
people and intervene. World history is basically about, polities, nation,
leaders etc and Christian History is of how God works among the people of God.
Post-colonial
It starts with colonial power. By 1930, 84.6%
of world populations were colonized or ex-colonies. Post colonialism does not mean liberation
from colonial rule. Post-colonial is not a matter of colonial rule or not. It
is a mindset. If we learn education at the cost of our traditions we lose our
identity. Post-colonial is not only a critique of western literary but
heterogeneous in nature. British, Portuguese and Spain were main
colonizers. Even after 1947 India became free from colonization, we are still
under colonization in the field of dress, food, language.
Post-colonial does not
try to state that it is colonial rule. It was basically trying to identify
things that are subordinating elements. British gave us alphabets. It replaced
the oral tradition. We became westernized in many terms. We lose our
traditional identities in many ways. It challenges the norms. What westerners
told well was good for Indian, what was told bad was bad for Indians. It
challenges the classical history. It was
heterogeneous in nature not only in literature. It has many dimensions. They
had a burden for us; they came and preached the gospel. But the side effect is
that we are being colonized.
How
Post-Colonial came in?
The
idea was first started by Edward Said.
The Asian people claimed themselves orientalists. Basically orientalists try to
tell us what we are. During the missionary era they divided the world into save
and unsaved. Unsaved were treated as heathen. Post colonialism is effective
anything which is subordinating.
Post-colonial
is a mindset document of the colonial past. Why? Why do we need to document the colonial past?
It is not just a matter
of colonial rule. But the mindset that
we are still colonized remains the same. Even after colonial era people can be
still colonized by/through mindset because the legacy of the colonial rule is
still there.
Even the missionaries
were also not free from colonial powers. Colonialism and mission was going hand
in hand. For eg. William Pettigrew, a pioneer missionary to Manipur was
government appointed teacher. He was also very instrumental in recruiting
soldiers to fight in the First World War.
Deconstruction
of Post-colonial
In Post-Colonial
Studies we deconstruct the colonial past or legacy. The way colonial powers
influence us did not stop but continued in many areas.
Worship:
We see westernized Christianity in church worship. Western influence is very strong
in
our worship. For example songs and, dress code in worship. We need to
deconstruct
colonial form of
worship to indigenize it.
To deconstruct we must
change the hymns to lyrics and bhajans, which is very popular among
Hindus. When the European became
Christian they made the Christianity their own way. The Europeans changed the
Christianity to set their own culture. Here also we should change Christianity
to our culture.
How to re-read and re-write the history.?
1)
Our job is to deconstruct the history.
2)
We need to read between the lines, i.e. means we need to listen to silent
voices.
3) We need to take oral tradition seriously.
Why
do we need Post-colonial theory or thought?
Sometimes
we need to adopt colonel practices to certain extent in our religion because
many religion practices have their roots in pagan practices. For eg. Mizoz were
closely connected with alcohol. All the important festivals were with practice
of drinking wine. Here it finds difficult to Indigenize Christianity.
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