What is memory? A place you no longer live in? What is history? A street that has been renamed? Are boundaries only geographical? Can they be erased and redrawn? And when memory, geography and history can all be given a political context, what do you remember? The human experience or its politicised version. Questions like these interest scholar Dr Indira Chowdhury who has initiated the Center for Public History at Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology. Formerly professor of English at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, she has a PhD in History from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Her book, The Frail Hero and Virile History, was awarded the Tagore Prize in 2001.
She is helming the second session of the Winter School in Oral History that began on January 6 and will continue till January 16. The theme this time is, ‘Boundaries, Politics And Narratives: The Intersection Of Oral History, Place And Memory’ and Indira says, “When there are efforts to reshape the past by the politics of the present, it is important to create spaces for those who teach and study orality, history and memory. It becomes important to explore the politics of boundaries and what it does to how we remember where we are or were.”
The course, she emphasises, “is the only one of its kind and focusses on how oral narratives deal with boundaries, imagined and real. It will also look at people’s engagement with environment and geography.” A lot that happens within the human experience is interpreted by anthropologists and via ethnography, she says. What the course tries to unravel is the historical perspective of the personal memories.
The previous Winter School, held in November 2013, had focussed on ‘Orality, Memory and Social Change’.
What is interesting is that this time the course features not just eminent international historians but has also attracted students from different countries in Asia, Europe and the US. This year’s faculty, Indira informs, includes well-known public historian Alexander von Plato whose perspectives about the politics of Cold War and the reality of unification post the fall of the Berlin Wall will interest students.
She is also thrilled that Miroslav Vanek, director of the Centre of Oral History and a senior researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, is here to share his stories of the fragmentation of his country.
“Last year we tried to get well-known practitioners of oral history from the sub-continent, says Indira. Topping the wish list was Furrukh Khan, assistant professor at the Mushtaq Ahmad Gurmani School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore University. Finally this year, he is here to articulate what is afterall a shared memory of Partition and what followed in the social and historical arenas. “We must distinguish between what states do politically and people. There have been initiatives before where we have had citizens from India and Pakistan share their experiences,” says Indira.
Ask her if India’s strong traditions of oral narratives will fade or see a revival and she says,”I don’t think it makes sense to talk about “revival” but yes, traditions evolve. I work with Patchitrakaars (who paint stories on handmade scrolls called Pat, and then set them to music for a rural audience) and they still sing their traditional songs but now their narratives also refer to 9/11, to Tsunami.”
And just how relevant oral history is today considering every second of our lives can be frozen in time and uploaded on social media for posterity? Indira answers,”Even if we photograph everything, not everything is documented. You need to articulate the experience in question. An experiment like Humans Of New York ( a visual narration of personal histories) is one of the many ways to remember personal stories but I want to know the protagonists in depth. Their aspirations and why they have those aspirations. A site like storycorps.org probes deeper and offers more insights into people and their history.” In Bhopal the Remember Bhopal Museum uses oral histories with the Survivors to look at the past and the effects the events of that night still have on the present.”
And how does one tell a personal story without external ideologies, political or otherwise, interfering with it? She answers, “Presiding ideologies have always been there but it is important to document as many voices and stories as possible. Your historical archives should be commodious to encompass every diversity so that when analysed, a story is just a story without any filter. We can’t leave history to politicians. History is the work of historians. Within the politicisation, we must reclaim the right to interpret and collaborate.”
For more information:
Please visit https://cphwinterschool.wordpress.com/ and http://cph.srishti.ac.in/ or mail cph@srishti.ac.in
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how fascinating! wish I’d heard of this in time