“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
George Santayana
Honestly, is it too hard to care for priceless things? Do we care about how irretrievable our vacuous inflictions can be? It breaks my heart to imagine how ruthless we are being. How much of ourselves are we losing, as we stand aloof, blithely watching the days of our past fade into a void of neglect and dereliction? Can you hear the cacophony of decay yet? Do you care to?
Indeed, the past is a cycle, it always comes full circle. We are humans, after all. Humans, who had committed those mistakes in those bygone days. How are we any different from them? Multifaceted and disparate in some way, but when did human nature and its diabolical fallibility ever alter its ways?
A familiar apprehension clenches my heart, as almost every feature of fascism matches that of the regime of my country. Controlled press and media, a slow and steady onset of a one- party nation, religious bias, suppression of freedom of expression, disdain for human rights, ultranationalism and protecting corporate power whilst imposing fiscal sanctions over common man. I wonder if they see what rabbit hole all of this is winding into, or are a lot of them carried away by the cult of a leader, another badge of fascism, by the way? Intricately intertwined, isn’t it?
When that one distantly-related fellow, who himself knows not how to listen, rambles about how womanhood intrinsically attaches one to domesticity, I wish I could grab a duct tape, besides willing them to understand that it is society’s inferiority complex and insecurities that makes a ‘second sex’ out of women. I wish they understood that human society was never originally misogynistic, and that it was warped into this structure of sexism that became a tradition. Perhaps, they never knew that the ancient civilizations, like the Indus Valley civilization and the early Vedic society, treated women with respect and as equal to men.
When some pedagogue ingrains into young ladies the idea that “one can never go against society”, I wish they pondered upon the irony. It was the effort of the liberal few who stood apart from teeming multitudes, that enabled education to be availed by all females today.
Sycophancy never birthed the path to liberation, rebellion did. Do they know that even a British man could establish the Indian National Congress when India was trampled and tormented by his own country? Certainly, there are specks of light in the dark, too, because that age-old sycophancy can never make a way out.
That snob who derides that person with their English as torn as their nation, I wish they understood that they are the ones speaking a language foreign to a country which made it its own—but English was never Indian. It matters little if one doesn’t speak it, unless they need to. They do not understand so they think that a language can amass the entire education which the world spins around. They do not understand why I am writing in English, why English is our first language in our admission forms even though our mother tongue was never that. They do not understand their past. They are like adults with amnesia who do not remember their childhood, what their past was like—they do not understand their identities, they do not care to.
When I see my nation rife with communal hatred, I wish they remembered that a Hindu Queen could own mighty ships and trade with the Portuguese in a Mughal Court. I wish they remembered that one of Aurangzeb’s daughters was actually a liberal poet who was hidden behind the bars of society, and adopted Sufism—the path of the liberal mystics. I wish they remembered that Jahangir would touch the feet of his mother out of respect, honourably greet her, doing sajda and taslim, and carry her palanquin, when she would leave the fort, on his own shoulders, even though she was a Hindu woman–and this is not even a miniscule drop in the ocean.
[Sajda: This position involves having the forehead, nose, both the hands, knees and all toes touching the ground together. It is done before The Almighty in Islam, while praying. Taslim: It is the concluding portion of the Muslim prayer (salat), where one recites- As- salāmu ʿalaikum wa-raḥmatu-llah (“Peace and blessings of God be unto you”) once while facing the right, and once while facing the left. ]When they denounce homosexuality as some soi-disant distortion stirred up in the modern age, I wish they knew that the “Madho” in “Madho Lal Hussain” is the name of the boy he loved with all his heart even though he was a poet who lived four centuries before us.
When they dismiss people as either black or white characters, I wish they remembered that the same Akbar who piled up corpses in the Chittor Siege could also commence Din-i-illahi and still not enforce it and transform the cultural fabric of Mughal India for the better. That same Akbar could ride his horse with all speed to thwart the forced sati of Rani Damayenti, even when he was in his forties.
They never understood that history is what makes them who they are. It is what has made our society what it is today. Most are conditioned to see history as a one-dimensional, unfeeling monotony, books which we study and keep at the tip of our tongues just for the exam to score those cent marks. As a profession, it is highly neglected and politicised. History is not boring lessons and yawns, it is just the system that often makes it so rampantly misinterpreted—it is wrong. However, it’s never too long to make a change. If you are someone who does not understand that history and heritage is not just a few textbooks, I will refuse to agree. It is what lives before our eyes, our customs, language, culture, ideals, our prejudices, our follies, a part of our being as a society.
It is true that we will make the same mistakes until we learn from them. Nonetheless, we turn blind to our own past even though every corner of it is screeching in our ears to be heard because it can teach us the way to the right path, like a discerning mother holding your finger tenderly in a dark and lonesome tunnel.
How do you truly understand yourself without knowing all the trauma, happiness, crests and troughs that you have walked past? You wouldn’t be who you are if all that happened to you wouldn’t have happened to you. Your existence has no meaning if you abjure your own past—it is like treading a dark tunnel without knowing what hides inside it. It is similar when it comes to history, heritage and culture. You cannot truly understand your existence, your being, the world surrounding your being if you do not understand, accept or respect where you come from. The utmost least that can be done is to render respect. How much should we lose, either due to baseless politics, mindless negligence or deliberate ignorance?
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