Summary
THE LESSONS OF HISTORY
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Extract
Whence India's present.
When power and identity mix, the result is a potent brew. Add differing flavours of the past and the concoction may well threaten to bubble over. The struggle over power, contested identities, and opposed interpretations of the past underlies some of the most challenging and seemingly intractable problems facing India today. With so rich and long a history, there have always been a welter of divergent views on the past on offer in the country, and they can reveal themselves in all walks of life, within the family, at work, in the crucible of state politics, or in civic society.
The past, or, more accurately, enduring notions that derive strength from a validated history, evidence their firm grip on the present when a Hindu Panjabi family living in New Delhi tells its son he may marry any girl of his choice as long as she is not a Muslim; when a grandmother proclaims, with unalloyed joy, "India is great" in the euphoria following the successful nuclear tests conducted in 1998; when upper-caste students set fire to buses and erect barricades in protest against legislation reserving a proportion of university places and government posts for those belonging to the lowest castes. ...See the full content of this document
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