9ROXPH,,,,VVXH,9-XQH,661   The Politics of History Writing - Fact or Fiction? :A Study of

Kanika Assistant Professor (Ad Hoc) Shaheed College University of Delhi

Of all the Human faculties, memory is the most tragic. It is certainly vivid to remind us of our sorrows, yet sufficiently unreliable to make us doubt ourselves when we commemorate our achievements. We cannot discount memory, and we cannot count on it.1

The paper will attempt to analyze narratives that recount historical events, the event here being Chauri Chaura. What stands here to be explored is how this recounting also simultaneously entails, almost inevitably so, a recasting, a selective appropriation and re-appropriation of the available “facts” for certain ends. Of course, these “ends” can be anything, from being political to purely personal. One of the customary and bourgeois outlooks of history is that “it happened”. But history cannot be restricted to the past “that happened”; rather it demands an investigation of what is reproduced about that past in the present and why. This will require that history be seen as an evolutionary process formed from both facts and counter-facts; stemming from the perspectives of people who are in power and who write it. Any exploration of the field of representation should take cognizance of, what Judith Butler calls, the “framing of the frame.”2 This will entail looking at how the “frame” regulates the degree of perceivability and the manner in which the “presentation” is made, which eventually impacts the reader’s/viewer’s responsiveness and the subsequent formulation of criticism. This study of the “frame,” and a probing of “how it shows what it shows,” will aim to strip bare the norms which go into structuring that which we see/are shown as “reality”/”fact”/”history”. It is only on taking account of the machinations of this “frame”, with its principles of exclusion and

 1David Gordon 2Judith Butler “Torture and the Ethics of Photography,” Verso, London.2009. 

5HIHUHHG 3HHU5HYLHZHG -RXUQDO KWWSZZZLMHOOKFRP  9ROXPH,,,,VVXH,9-XQH,661   inclusion, that the reader’s gaze can be (re)directed towards it with a “renewed critical capacity.”3 Keeping this in mind, the paper will attempt to re-examine the event of Chauri Chaura, and see how this “event” has come to us, filtered variously through different “frames,” and materializing in different shades and colours eliciting varied responses. The project will be looking at Shahid Amin’s account of the event Chauri Chaura as delineated in his book Event, Metaphor, Memory - Chauri Chaura. Chauri Chaura was understood differently by different perspectives “outside” discourses that did not adequately take the local into account while narrativizing the event, and hence the event emerges as a problem for the historian. produced a metaphor of the event and its significance was deemed to lie in Gandhi’s interpretation of the event and not in what the participants in the riot might have said or thought about their acts and motivation. To Gandhi, and subsequently to Indian nationalist history, Chauri Chaura signified the failure of . Gandhian nationalism presented a national interpretation of the event, thus replacing or substituting a possible local explanation. In line with Althusser’s view that “the ‘actors’ of history are (not) the authors of its texts,” we here have Shahid Amin desiring to restore the significance of the local in terms of place and agency, to figure out the truth of things. Amin knows and acknowledges the problematic nature of the process whereby historians gain access to past and desires to write in the narrative itself the “problems” associated with writing history. In the light of above issues, what is required is a re-examination of the event of Chauri Chaura, where our historical ideology is not restricted to what happened in the past as an event, but also how perceptions have framed and given a different outlook by making the event a metaphor for Nationalist movement. The was not individual in nature, but was rooted in a vague sense of political wrong. If history is both the past and the narratives that represent the past, collective memory is, then, a conceptualization that expresses the sense of the past. Maurice Halbwachs understood collective memories as shared representations of the past, and claimed that only memories which are supported by shared social frameworks, and are given form in texts or art has a chance of navigating the gap that separates different generations. But this does not preclude the fact that whatever an individual remembers as memory can be wiped out by collective memory. What constitutes a collective memory majorly depends upon how information is assimilated,  3E.H. Carr in What is History? (1961) argues in favour of the impossibility of writing objective history, because all historical facts are themselves subjective, as historians selectively choose which “facts of the past” get to become “historical facts”. For Carr, history is a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts.

5HIHUHHG 3HHU5HYLHZHG -RXUQDO KWWSZZZLMHOOKFRP  9ROXPH,,,,VVXH,9-XQH,661   remembered or archived by its agents or witnesses. But Halbwachs theories ignore conflicting memories and tend to suggest that those memories that do not accord with the group gradually fade from memory. The vagueness regarding individual memory shaping the collective memory or vice- versa is deepened by the ambiguity of the concept of historical consciousness, which in a sense banks on both the forms of memory. The relationship between history and memory is intriguing and is marked by conflict and interdependence. While negotiating between historical records and prevailing sociopolitical agendas, a collective memory shifts its focus and selectively emphasizes, suppresses and elaborates different aspects of those records. However, the criteria of “what remains” has more to do with who is acting as witness and who is remembering the lived experience than it does with whether a narrative adequately sums up a historical event. The way a narrative form affects the possibility of historical objectivity can be seen in line with Hayden White’s argument.4 Readers of stories about historical events do not have personal first-hand experience of the information or interpretation given in the story and have access only to the information provided by textual sources. In line with this, historians should be cautious in presenting the readers with objective truth about the past events. Also, the problems of narrativization are multiplied by the fact that the most of the evidence available to the historians themselves consists of stories told by other earlier interpreters. Authenticity of the documents is thus brought into question.5 This insistence on the impossibility of one true story is reinforced by the narrative structure of Amin’s book. Instead of telling one story from a single point of view, Amin calls to  4In The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality, (1987) Hayden White discusses both the advantages and disadvantages of history. The value of narrative resides in its capacity for communication, for expressing our interpretations of reality to one another. In order to be effective then, the narrative has to obey certain conventions that make understanding possible, it has to in other words appeal to “common sense” - which as White points out is actually common only to a certain society in a specific historical situation. The truth that storytellers (historians as well as fiction writers) implicitly rely on to make communication and comprehension possible must be considered conventions, evolved within and accepted by the members of a particular group. Since narrative constitutes the most effective and perhaps the only means of expressing and communicating our views of the world - especially where the past is concerned - the use of these conventions is not only inevitable,but also valuable. At the same time, however, their unquestioned acceptance threatens to obscure their conventional nature and to cast them as objective self-evident truths. Accordingly, narrative is often seen as an objective account of reality rather than a culturally conditioned interpretation of it , and historians in particular seem to do little to prevent this, inspite of the fact that the “telling” of the past reality poses additional problems in this regard. (Narrativization is the belief that “no meaning is inherent to a collection of historical facts and events retained or selected from the past. Rather the act of narration itself is responsible for any sense of meaning that links historical events together.) 5To White though, the answer seems obvious; rather than claiming or aspiring for objectivity, historiography should make it clear that events do not and cannot “tell themselves.”

5HIHUHHG 3HHU5HYLHZHG -RXUQDO KWWSZZZLMHOOKFRP  9ROXPH,,,,VVXH,9-XQH,661   the fore a series of “storytellers”, all of whom speak in their own personal distinctive voices. Amin’s articulation of the event forces the reader to recognize that even “facts” to a certain extent, are accepted rather than proven, belonging to the realm of convention rather than of reality. Also, one must be cognizant of the fact that the nation states presentation of the past may not always be based on historical records. It is pertinent to inquire into the source of “official history” and the channels through which it comes to enjoy its coveted place in the state’s textbooks and the networks through which it comes to us. 6 In 1922, and The initiated and lead a non- violent and non-cooperation movement. The movement gained such popularity so as to threaten the mighty British rule. The success of the movement was attributed to unprecedented support coming from beyond the elitist circles. Nationalism was at its peak. February 4th marks a turning point of the movement. A group of protesting peasants, within the small town of Chauri Chaura, burnt down a police station resulting in the brutal “murder” of all 23 officers. They chanted the phrase “Victory to Gandhi”. Gandhi disapproved of the incident, branded it as a “crime” and on the 12th of February, the Non-Cooperation Movement was brought to a halt at national level. Gandhi’s leading position in the nationalist movement can be examined in the backdrop of the events of 4th February. What is important here is to take on board this event and in decoding and recoding it, recognize voices which went unheard. This event requires to be considered, analyzed, and understood beyond the story of crime which has been judicially stamped as – “this tale of murder”. A willed suspension of memory must be avoided by historiographers; after all, Chauri Chaura had its existence and identity even before 4th February 1922. It is in the light of how constructed facts are manipulated to further ideological interests, and the construction of the event of Chauri Chaura as a criminal act and its placement in the national memory, that the paper will attempt to tackle the following questions: Why see Chauri Chaura only as a scene of crime and why label its people as criminals when it also stands for much more than that? Why recollect Chauri Chaura only as the unfortunate incident which brought the non-cooperation movement to a grinding halt? And most of all, why simply see Chauri Chaura as

 6 If one can talk about “products” of memory one can equally question as to how these products are “consumed” by the masses. Different opposing memories constitute national memory. Despite these oppositions and the socio- political differences, the overarching national memory overcomes them and symbolically creates an imagined community. So this interaction between various memories cannot and shouldn’t be ignored. 

5HIHUHHG 3HHU5HYLHZHG -RXUQDO KWWSZZZLMHOOKFRP  9ROXPH,,,,VVXH,9-XQH,661   “fact” and not unearth what has gone into its chronicling? Also important is to see the impact of this self-effacement which Gandhi attempted. Was history obscured as a result of this? Was it an over-reaction? Or was it an over-simplification? Or was it a complete mis-characterization.

The significance of the National narrative lies in the fact that they are no competing narratives from that period which could challenge any of the aspects of the former. No doubt there are personal accounts but they being ambiguous, and many a times eccentric, fail to hold their own against the authoritative historiographical texts. So, 4th February 1922 was documented and commemorated by means of a marble column enumerating the nineteen hanged. There is an engraved stone tablet at the site where the incident happened. These stand as artifices of post-colonial history attempting to memorialize the event. It “succeeds” undoubtedly but without mentioning the name of any individual from Dumri or Chauri Chaura. Chauri Chaura, the place where the Non-cooperation Movement terminated and the event which exemplified the difficulty of sustaining Gandhian ideals amongst the peasant imaginary has lost its prominence in today’s India. A superfast train called “Shaheed Express” to honour the Chauri Chaura Martyrs was inaugurated on 2nd October, started between Delhi and but ironically does not stop at Chauri Chaura. What a wonderful gift indeed! Chauri Chaura memorial next to railway station seeks to honour those burnt down in the incident. The memorial has been nationalized and it’s interesting to see how! The words “” are inscribed, which express national sentiment. The names of dead policeman are inscribed but that is not where the story ends. These inscriptions underline the difference between Hindu and Muslim citizens of India which is reflected in the fact that the Muslim names were written in Urdu (inscribed) and Hindu names in Hindi (only painted). The question which needs to be asked is this really a memorialization of Chauri Chaura and the dead policemen or is it a superstitious rather notorious process of highlighting something else – the “essential” difference between the Hindus and Muslims of Post-Independence India. Halbwachs explains this selective memorialization in terms of the interaction between memory and history and explicates that history always suspects memory and aims at suppressing and destroying it. He then explains how power plays its part in framing memory. It is the most powerful group which ultimately determines how the past is to be recalled because it has the necessary tools at its disposal to weed out competing traditions or to reshape them so as to ensure

5HIHUHHG 3HHU5HYLHZHG -RXUQDO KWWSZZZLMHOOKFRP  9ROXPH,,,,VVXH,9-XQH,661   that they conform to its own perceptions. The result is that the winning stories come from people who have power backing them. Politicians and people in authority have the capacity to manipulate memories which serve their purpose and meet their ends.7 If we analyze the present day recollections of Chauri Chaura, in the collective memory one can clearly detect the power, influence, reach and impact of judicial and nationalist discourses. Many a times, the distortion of events by wicked and cunning means and their subsequent presentation ultimately find their place in the historical records. This should put us at guard as far as the authenticity of narratives and documents is concerned. Chauri Chaura is not just 4th February 1922 but that has now been metaphorically used and abused; understood and misunderstood; represented and misrepresented.

Memory serves the way in which the narratives circulate in people’s everyday life. The Indian popular memory is that the perpetrators were not nationalists, but criminals with no relationship to the non-cooperation movement, and later the nationalist movement that Gandhi led which eventually forced the British to leave the country. The event was used as a metaphor of what not to do by the Nationalist movement and later history. The primary question which deserves to be addressed is how the event can be labeled as criminal and non-nationalist in the face of so much seemingly political and nationalist activity. An important factor in the debate which needs to be fore-grounded is the relationship between the peasants and Gandhi. Mahatma’s image was constructed differently from what he was, in the minds of peasants. Gandhi’s visit to Gorakhpur lasted more in their locality not in terms of his physicality, but as an idea of Mahatma which was made to work on a popular imagination. The only role allotted and expected to be followed by these so called “ordinary people” was to become his devotees; the burden of forming an organized movement was imparted to the urban intelligentsia and the party activists. Thus a political mediation can be traced between the relationship between the peasants and their Mahatma, which was engendered by the economically

 7 It is interesting to take note of the version that was subsequently accepted in court about the events that preceded the Chauri Chaura incident. One view brought before the judges was that the picketing of fish and meat was employed to demonstrate abstinence, and Hindu-Muslim unity. It was not just about lowering of the prices but harmonizing religion and politics. The judges however rejected this piece of evidence against Shikari’s7 which had an economist flavor. The judges saw picketing as a means of attaining Swaraj7 and enhancing material prosperity of those who took part in the demonstrations. To Amin, Shirkari’s testimony is “transactional”, i.e. produced literally in exchange for his life. Amin wonders whether his testimony to be understood as delivered by Shikari qua subaltern, or Shikari quaapprover pleading-for-his-life, though he favours the latter. 

5HIHUHHG 3HHU5HYLHZHG -RXUQDO KWWSZZZLMHOOKFRP  9ROXPH,,,,VVXH,9-XQH,661   powerful followers.8 Gandhi’s speech focused not on the idea of “social boycott” but self- abstinence which will help in attaining Swaraj9 straightaway. It might be this message which has got misinterpreted by the local people of Gorakhpur who externalized into action Gandhi’s internal idea of boycott. The event had a lineage in the violence directed by state against the peasantry and did not emerge from a vacuum. In going over the record meticulously, Amin reveals how the approver’s10 “episodic” and “segmented” testimony of the event, in order to construct “meaningful totalities” acceptable to the judicial discourse, is emplotted into a coherent narrative. What is required here in the light of the above argument is to question what can be the true account of the riot like Chauri Chaura, where an estimated 6000 people were involved, 1000 suspects listed and 225 people put on trial.” (Amin, 95) Though Amin’s direct point of reference is Chauri Chaura, but the consequences of such an argument are valid for the argument and critique of history. 11 Amin accepts the difficulty of his effort to generate an alternative narrative of the event, in presence of the overarching hegemonic power of the judicial and nationalist discourse. Though the facts of the event can be reinterpreted, but the impossibility of retrieving the local from the colonial and the national leads us to the critique of the very notion of truth or evidence, for no source or text can be considered pure or untainted. But to Amin, every story he “collected” is valid “as an account of Chauri Chaura”(197). Amin while stitching these stories, keeps their seams visible, and doesn’t pass them as transparent representations. Thus, the local cannot be seen as untainted by the national. 12 Amin’s failure to write an alternative narrative of Chauri Chaura and to write history is self- consciously staged. Amin had enough material to weave a conventional account of the event; he could have vacuumed the singular and improbable accounts absent from the record and produced the local truth.13 Had he deemed one interpretation or one story as the most persuasive, this would

 8 Some of the rumors were intentionally brought into circulation by the local leaders who misused Gandhi’s charismatic appeal to give momentum to their agitation. One can perhaps agree on how the mightiness of rumour lies in its capacity to deform collective memory. 9self-rule. 10Mir Shikari, the approver. 11Such an attempt makes us question the possibility of how a true account of any event can be constituted? Is information retrieval really possible? To a postcolonial Indian historian, should the nationalist interpretation be more persuasive by definition? Can the subalternist - whose project is predicated on a critique of nationalism - accept this position? 12 However subaltern an account may be, the voice and consciousness of the subaltern cannot be accessed transparently, untouched by the discourses of colonialism and nationalism, and for that matter by disciplines (anthropology and history) that makes Amin possible. 13But Amin is aware of the fact that writing subaltern history is only possible at the cost of representing the subaltern.

5HIHUHHG 3HHU5HYLHZHG -RXUQDO KWWSZZZLMHOOKFRP  9ROXPH,,,,VVXH,9-XQH,661   have not only denied value to the others, but would also have repressed them. Thus Amin displays the problem of history writing while at the same time refusing to anthropologize them. This is to deem history as being incapable to narrate synchronic diversity. Amin’s narrative respects the specificity, heterogeneity, and singularity of the accounts related to the event, and at the same time, foregrounds a refusal to privilege or marginalize any account by excluding that which may be otherwise dismissed as inconvenient and trivial. This is not only a subversive stance on the part of Amin, but rather a genuine critique of writing history. Amin is aware of the impossibility of writing history without falling prey to the accounts presented by judicial and national discourses and without repressing differences. Amin’s text in staging its own failure in presenting an “absolute” account of a historical event drives home for us the myriad problematic channels one has to traverse through in the “creation” of any historical account.

5HIHUHHG 3HHU5HYLHZHG -RXUQDO KWWSZZZLMHOOKFRP  9ROXPH,,,,VVXH,9-XQH,661   Works Cited  Amin, S. Event, Metaphor, Memory- Chauri Chaura 1922-1992. Delhi: Oxford University Press.1995. Print. Amin, S. (n.d.). Gandhi as Mahatma: , Eastern UP, 1921-22.Print. Archibald, R. R. Memory and the Process of Public History. The Public Historian. 19.2 (1997) : 61-64. Web. 29 Nov. 2012. Butler,Judith.“TortureandEthicsofPhotography,"Verso,London.2009.Print. Carlo Ginzburg, J. T. "Microhisotry: Two or Three Things That I Know About It." Critical Inquiry, 20.1 (1993) : 10-35. Web. 29 Nov. 2012. Crane, S. A. "Writing the Individual Back into Collective Memory." The American Historical Review. 102.5 (1997) : 1372 - 1385. Web. 29 Nov. 2012. Eyerman, R. "The Past in the Present: Culture and Transmission of Memory." Acta Sociologica.47.2 (2004) : 99 - 126. Web. 29 Nov. 2012. Guha, R. "Review: Subaltern and Bhadralok Studies." Economical and Political Weekly , 2056- 2058. 1995.Print. Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory. University of Chicago Press, 1992.Print. Klein, K. L. "On The Emergence of Memory in Historical Discourse." Grounds For Remembering , pp. 127.2000.Print. Steinberg, M. W. Tilting the Frame: Considerations on Collective Action Framing from a Discursive Turn. Theory and Society.27 (1998) : 845 - 872. Web. 27 Nov. 2012. White,Hayden.TheValueofNarrativityintheRepresentationofReality.UniversityofChicagoPress,  1987.Print. http://depts.washington.edu/chid/intersections_Autumn_2009/Nishant_Batsha_A_Lacanian_Reinterpr  etation_of_Gandhi.pdf

 

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