Suppress ego to write biography: Ramachandra Guha

Guha said history oscillates between social sciences and literature

GN Bureau | February 24, 2017


#history   #biography   #Ramchandra Guha   #India news  


Noted historian Ramachandra Guha has listed reasons on why historical biographies never took off in a big way in India.

Delivering the annual lecture at Sahitya Akademi’s Festival of Letters in New Delhi on Thursday, Guha said that historical biography is that part of history which is more allied to literature than any other parts of history. “History oscillates between social sciences and literature,” he said. 
 
Here are his reasons on why Indian historians refrain from writing biographies.
 
•    The burden of religious inheritance. Religions such as Hinduism are inimical to writing a biography due to its inherent belief system based on karma and rebirth. 
 
•    Scholarly inheritance, especially Marxism since Marxism diminishes the importance of the individual. 
 
•    History’s tilt towards social sciences, though history began as a branch of literature. 
 
•    Indians’ indifference to record keeping. The archives in the country, central and state, are in complete disarray. 
 
•    Indians are diffident on writing biographies for the fear of offending eminent individual. 
 
•    Biography is a challenging literary form. 
 
•    Writing of biography requires writers and scholars to suppress their own egos and write about another writer with an equally big ego. 
 
Guha explained how anthropologist Verrier Elwin’s life and works transformed him and his critical outlook. He illustrated the challenges of writing a biography through his attempts to write a biography of Verrier Elwin. He observed that while historical biography is an underdeveloped field and challenging, young scholars should tell their stories since historical biography in India is on the rise and in the coming years we are likely to see more number of historical biographies.
 

Comments

 

Other News

The Xi-Trump summit: The unending rivalry

Diplomacy is akin to an art, wherein the summitry, conflict resolution and negotiations form apt constituents of the entire context of deal making and “playing for keeps” in the international arena. The Xi-Trump summit in Washington last week, in which the American president broke all conside

“Indians, yet treated like outsiders”

Moving to Delhi-NCR for education can be an exciting experience for students from Northeast India. It gives us a chance to meet new people, experience a different culture and become more independent. But living away from home also comes with challenges that people who have not experienced them may not al

Import duty on major edible oils cut

The government has reduced the Basic Customs Duty (BCD) on major imported crude edible oils with a view to moderating domestic edible oil prices, providing relief to consumers and mitigating inflationary pressures arising from the sharp increase in international edible oil prices.  

From pyramid to platform: BRICS agenda for Global South

In his opening address at the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on September 12, prime minister Narendra Modi did something India`s diplomacy has been building towards for three years: he moved the ‘Voice of the Global South’ from a slogan to a work plan. Addressing the leaders, he argued that t

How to realise the full transformative potential of PM-JAY

The Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY), a welfare scheme which covers approximately 45 crore beneficiaries across India, provides cashless health cover of Rs. 5 lakh per family per year. It is the largest health insurance scheme which helped crores of poor families by reducing out-of-pocket expend

The missing men in India`s family planning story

Every pregnancy requires two people. Yet India`s family planning programme continues to ask only one of them to bear almost all of its medical consequences. The newly released National Family Health Survey-6 (2023-24) confirms just how entrenched this asymmetry remains: 36.5% of currently married women a

Upcoming Conferences



-->

Archives

Current Issue

Opinion

Facebook Twitter Google Plus Linkedin Subscribe Newsletter

Twitter