Is it fair to look at historical events with a contemporary lens? Should we change the way we judge their characters?
How should we remember Winston Churchill? A man whose determination and grit saved Britain during its “darkest hour” in 1940. A cigar-chomping, Scotch-swilling, half-American former journalist, who is considered by many Britons as the greatest Briton ever, greater than Shakespeare, Newton and Darwin. Or was he a young rapscallion, a product of aristocracy, who leveraged it to acquire ultimate power despite missteps that would have sunk another career? Or was he an enabler of genocide, a horseman of the apocalypse, whose acts of omission and commission directly led to the death of millions in united Bengal and Odisha through famine and pestilence, a worthy successor to the plunderer of Bengal, Robert Clive? The problem is unfortunately that we tend to see history, particularly in today’s partisan times, as either this or that. No human is perfect, not even Mahatma Gandhi or Winston Churchill. And just like British historians tend to forget some of Churchill’s excesses, in India, the army of Gandhi’s hagiographers ignore his early beliefs on race and his rather troublesome later years with regard to his personal life. We tend to brush inconvenient facts under the carpet and hope nobody notices. But eventually, every carpet is replaced and dust has a bad habit of not disappearing.
Churchill’s address to the House of Commons on how he and Britain would fight the Nazi menace is one of the greatest fighting speeches in history and British students learn of that from an early age. Churchill must be remembered for his actions during the War and after it. But that should not be used to gloss over his actions in India. Just like Indians must learn that despite Gandhiji’s greatness, the man had his warts. Sure, there are some truly despicable men who are still celebrated. As William Dalrymple wrote in The Guardian recently, the statue of Robert Clive in Whitehall is an affront to all Bengalis. But there is no denying the fact that Clive changed history. Maybe celebrating him with a statue is a bit much but one cannot erase history. No one can change that Christopher Columbus’ monumental navigational error led to the massacre of millions through disease and pestilence because back in the 15th century, we valued life very differently. But as we learn more, we should teach our children about history differently. We need a new breed of historians who can narrate these stories, the good, the bad and the ugly.
