Looking Through Glass

After nearly 52 years of perpetual ignorance, the histrography of the sub-continent needs to be revisited. The only problem, an obstacle, towards objective historic analysis is that we have created these walls of myth around our leading personalities of the period and are unwilling to ask critical questions concerning their conduct, lest we destroy our own false set of assumptions by which we have grown to judge our own history.

Before an accurate historic picture can be created, of the time preceding and immediately following partition, we have to understand that our repspective leaders were human beings and not demi-gods. Being human, they were subjected to the same vices which haunt all human behaviour: prejuduce, greed, selfish motives, petty interests, visions of grandeur and above all, the fallibility of the human character itself.

Another historic truth that we, in the sub-continent, need to learn is that history is not the summation of great events and noble deeds practiced and urged in the name of loftier principles, but rather the confluence of human failings. Just as the motto of the French Foreign Legion suggests, ``we will muddle through``, history is created by mistakes committed and through the personal faults of its contempories. Why did Santanya say, ``those who fail to learn from histroy are condemed to repeat it``. He uttered those words, because the lesson of history is accumulative and an undertanding of history is always perfect, blessed with a hindsight, but its creation is always marred by doubtful indecisions.

Hence,the only way in which can truly appreciate history is by realizing that it was created imperfectly and those whom we study were imperfect just like us. The real lesson of learning history lies in disciphering the mistakes of the past and in seeking to avoid them in the present and therein begins our historic journey into a realm of an accuquired wisdom.