BY DR.ABDUL AHAD
Is history an ocean of knowledge without shores? Is it a seamless fusion of interdisciplinary knowledge? How does it reach us and help us develop our perspectives of lived and living lifestyles? Why does it motivate us to integrate for common good?
These are some important questions whose answers we shall try to seek through the following discussion.
History is an important medium that makes us understand the interplay between social beings in a given society. It encompasses everything that comprises a society including its institutions, belief systems, its economics, politics and religions, and its science, technology, philosophy, literature, commerce and its occupations and pastimes. It is a complete and an all-embracing study of civilizations whose evolution, flowering and prosperity are the offspring of historical forces that act as a stimulating factor in causing them to occur.
When a Civilizational change takes place to push the society towards a new epoch and next phase of its development, history comes forward to take up the arduous task of documenting the transition, with all its characteristics, challenges and lows and highs, for the posterity to enable the people consider its pros and cons carefully, and draw useful lessons from it to shape their present as well as their future accordingly. It undertakes to record truthfully and unmistakably why and how the change happened and to what extent did it impact the people and was it to their benefit. The glorious and magnificent triumphs the men and women earn in the process of their transformation and the failures and tragedies it brings in its wake for many to confront in their ownward-march towards their goals are adequately circumfused by history.
While doing so it doesn’t leave anything to chance or unattended, unrecorded and unnoticed. It takes everything into cognizance that concerns the human life in all its dimensions and manifestations. Whatever is crucial to human existence it takes stock of without any favour, fear or prejudice. And whatever else is injurious to the health of a society or State it doesn’t hesitate to weigh that on the scales of objectivity, honesty and justice.
It never dares to disown people come what may. Instead it owns them overwhelmingly right from their cradle to their grave and in their totality and with both their positives and negatives and joys and despairs. It determines their birth burg, parentage, community, nationality and other related aspects of life and continues associating with them through their ups and downs, their birth, upbringing, wedding, procreation, prosperity, disposition etc, etc. It documents everything including their emotions, aspirations, feelings, pleasures, recreations, sports, expeditions, and fears and oppressions which they experience in their lives. It doesn’t shy away from unveiling the ugly faces of their superstitions, obscurantism, scourges and irrational practices to which they adhere.
It records even flirtations and love- making of handsome men with beautiful women, and rendezvouses of youthful, enthusiastic aashiqs with their dam pretty, awesome mashooqas, and tu tu main main (petty squabbling) between love birds for our felicity and entertainment.
Also it uncovers the debauchery of Kings and Queens and illicit relationships of royals, nobles and courtiers with their paramours. The love affairs of Princes with ordinary damsels too get due attention. The accounts of violent encounters stemming from hurdles created by villains for stalling the attempts of lovers to connect with their sweethearts also find their space in history.
History evaluates the great works of innovations, inventions, discoveries, mechanisms, research and other experimental assignments and their ability to make life comfortable on the planet earth. It extensively explores the disciplines of considerable significance whose knowledge is indeed necessary for us to learn how to overcome existential quandaries, and resolve amicably differences and disputes that arise to linger on endlessly in the society to disturb its socio-economic equilibrium and devastate its sources of production. Alongside natural calamities like floods, famines, fires, earthquakes, flues or any other Pandemic, it covers other areas prone to outbursts, protests, wars, intrigues, conflicts and similar other issues.
It pushes forward the facts that give us clues we can use to comprehend the essence of difficult issues and unfamiliar circumstances. It enables us to appreciate the context in which situations arise to bring the change in the society for human betterment. It delineates the hidden nuances of decadence that afflicts the society due to human error, negligence, greed, corruption, ignorance, arrogance, exploitation, crimes and degeneration, and badly affects each area of existence and spoils the very essence of life, giving a specific colour to social fabric to mark it differently with gloom and despair.
Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddima teaches us how societal advancement and decadence takes place due to the clannish instinct that brings cohesion (assabiyya) among the people of similar backgrounds, inspiring them to work together for social growth, and achievement of military prowess to conquer towns and put at their mercy the urbanites, and create new regimes. But with the passage of time they get spoiled due to excessive indulgence in luxury, pride, pleasure and extravagance and as consequence lose their assabiyya (solidarity) which compels them to increase taxes that pave way to their final decline. The decaying society is conquered by another group of people who after consolidating their power get attracted to its refinements, sophistications and urban luxuries in the hot pursuit of which they become madly cruel and degenerate beasts only to be eventually removed from the scene by another set of rulers who too become, in course of time, lax and victim of the same circumstances to pave way for new regimes to begin the cycle afresh. The process of the rise and fall, thus, revolves like a cycle.
But Toynbee’s formula of change is altogether different. Unlike Ibn Khaldun’s it holds the creative and civilized people entirely responsible for the rise and fall of civilizations. His study attributes the genesis and growth of societies/ civilizations to a Creative Minority who find solutions to respond to challenges civilizations face in cyclic manner. The people follow them blindly till the Creative Minority lose their creativity and degenerate into a Dominant Minority due to their own weaknesses, arrogance and frailty of character and worship of self. The change of hearts of Creative Minority results in the disintegration and breakdown of civilizations.
Contrary to these scholars Karl Marx gives us altogether a different perspective about the rise and fall of societies. He believes that the history is determined by materialism which has throughout remained a moving force behind the advancement of epochs and eras from primitive to feudal to capitalistic stages. He attributes historical progression of civilizations to their economic system, and the very nature of production relations that is always disposed towards setting productive forces against social relations. The conflict it ensues ultimately brings around a change, an overwhelming change like that of shifting feudalism to capitalism. Driven by impersonal forces of history, the change is the offshoot of the clash among social classes. It is a harbinger of total transformation. It is, thus, the people’s way of living and working in a given society that determines the shape of its history rather than the rulers who rule the roost.
Dr. Ahad is a historian and author