PANAJI, Dec 08 (PTI) "Historians cannot have politicalor religious leanings," said noted historian Ramachandra Guhawhile delivering the keynote address of the eighth edition ofthe Goa Arts and Literature Festival (GALF) that started hereyesterday.
Guha was explaining the four types of chauvinism thatregulated history.
"The chauvinism of discipline, the chauvinism ofsource material, the chauvinism of ideology and the chauvinismof nationality," he said.
"Historians cannot have political or religiousleanings," Guha said while explaining the chauvinism ofideology.
He cited the example of how a Marxist historian is nota real historian because of his or her political ideology.
Rlaborating, Guha cited his own research into theChipko movement to explain the chauvinism of discipline.
"History is a good blend of social science andliterature and is never one dimensional," he commented.
Guha explained the chauvinism of source material bystating that historians should stop restricting themselves togovernment documents alone.
He said that they should instead study, among othersources, newspapers which provided a wealth of social history.
Guha stated that history has taught us that there areno permanent winners or losers.
Earlier in the evening, Mini Krishnan, Editor,Translations at the Oxford University Press in her keynoteaddress on the topic, "The hinge of integration—translation"explained how greater integration was possible throughtranslations in a diverse country like India.
Krishnan cited the example of how the Stella MarisCollege for Girls in Chennai had translated a Kannada bookinto English and made its reading compulsory forundergraduates.
Likewise, she said she was happy that young urbanIndians understood Dalit ideology and literature because ofgood translations.
Paying tribute to the slain journalist and writer,Gauri Lankesh, Krishnan lauded the late journalist'srecommendation that children be compulsorily taught in theirmother tongue till grade five.
The festival, which is currently underway at International Centre near Goa, will culminate on December 10.
PTI RPSBNM.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.