Can History be taught through Literature?

Dr. Naila Pervaiz

 What is History?
• It’s a story---If I say a king died and then the queen died, it’s the
sequence of events but if I say that king died of cholera and the queen
died grieving for him, it’s a story.
• It has two distinct meanings:
1. It is the sum-total of everything that has actually happened
in the past—every thought, every action, every event.
2. If ‘history’ is the past, it is also an account of the past
• David McCullough affirms that the most efficient way of teaching
history is “telling stories”
• Neil Postman (Professor and Chair at the Department of Culture and
Communication, New York University)---get rid of the text books which
are the enemies of education and merely the instruments of promoting
dogmatism and trivial learning.
 Historian & Historiography
• Historiography-act of creation rather recreation where the mind of the
historian is a catalyst; an intellectual activity so the historians
‘philosophize’ the past in order to explain it more satisfactorily.
• Mostly history is static and biased. It’s a dangerous tool in the hands of
those historians who use it to glorify the past.
• Good History is not about finding sources only but judiciously sifting,
choosing and arranging them
• History (the written records) are all about the life of powerful and the
imperial powers; on the other hand, history of the common people or
history from below or ‘the others’ is about the powerless. It is the history
of all women who have been suppressed throughout the ages; it’s the
history of those kids whose childhood has been stolen away; it’s the
history of sadness, consisting of wishes, dreams, aspirations and their
failures
 What is Popular Literature?
• ‘Literature’--Oral and Written Traditions
• Popular literature---literature of the people; that intended for the
masses; commonly liked; suitable to the majority
• Controversial and not generally accepted by the researchers
• Its focus---moved from political history of rulers and nobility to the
powerless & voiceless
• Oral history--- Allan Nevins (1948) Columbia University
• Aim---to seek those accounts which were never recorded or
appeared on paper and with its help the voiceless started getting a
voice
• Historians started talking about the common people as the later
could not write for themselves (Gayatri Spivak, Can the Subaltern
speak?)
 Folklore
• Folklore- social mirror; subset of oral history---a significant source to
explain and understand societies esp. the invisible & marginalized social
groups
• Help addressing many types of historiographical silences
• We cannot write social and cultural history by ignoring folk history
• Philosophy exists in language, common sense, popular religion, beliefs and
superstitions---parts of folklore (Antonio Gramsci, Selection from the
Prison Notebooks)
• Folklore---source of pride for the invisible (marginalized) groups, families
and regions. (Stuart Blackburn, Print, Folklore and Nationalism in
Colonial South India)
 Sufi Poetry
• Poetry---ancient & vital language deals with variety
of themes related to society & culture
• Fine piece of poetry provides quality raw material for
history
• an unconventional way of looking at the society
• Sufi poetry and folklore---felt-literature
• Sufi poets---rebel section of the society inspired by
the sufis and bhakti traditions
• Sufi poetry---an avant-garde movement (I.D.Gaur,
Female Voice in Punjabi Sufi Poetry)
 Waris Shah & his Qissā of Hīr Ranjha (1766- 67)
• Jandiala Sher Khan (Distt. Sheikhupura) in a Saiyyid family in 1720. A rebel
sufi poet who challenged many established ideas and norms of the social
order
• Damodar Gulati—16th century, Ahmed Gujjar & Shah Jahan Muqbal---
Contemporary
• Bible of the rural Punjabis (I.D.Gaur, Society, Religion and Patriarchy:
Exploring Medieval Punjab through Hir Waris)
• A romantic tragedy; mystical allegory; conventional morality; highlighted
stages of Sufism; try to improve the society through a tale by preserving
the old traditions of Punjab; fulfills all the need of the society (Najm
Hosain Syed, Seedhāṇ)
• Waris Shah’s Hīr emphasizes women or female agency that
represents Hīr as a confident, well-informed, candid, eloquent
and well aware of her rights under Islamic law and was a
rebellious young lady. She, in the form of agency, became an
object of attack who longs for her reunion with an outsider
who is not allowed to become the part of the existing social
set up
• It covers almost all the spheres of the Punjabi society
including political, economic, religious, cultural and social
 Woman-soul symbolism
• Its universal; Judaism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam and Sikhism (Tanvir Anjum,
Viarhinī Motif in Sufi Lyrics of Shah Husayn of Lahore)
• Punjabi Sufi poets idealize a society where there would be no gender
discrimination. Female voice of Punjabi Sufis---a revolutionary way of considering
themselves as female-lover of the He-beloved
• Submissive & humble women---demand of patriarchal Punjabi set up
• All the female characters of Hīr are very powerful as compared to their male
counterparts e.g., Hīr, Mālki, Sehti, wives of Luddan, Mithi nāīn, sisters-in-law of
Ranjha. Hīr outshines all the male characters of the qissa
• Hīr as virāhinī & bold lover; liberated soul (Kishan Singh, Azad Aurat)
• Women as symbol of evil
• Wife---symbol of loyalty, devotion & submission
• Mother---lifeline of Punjabi society, creator, nurturer, protector, generous, gentle,
kind and oppressed too… Champion of patriarchy
• Daughter---parāyā dhan & sister- symbol of ‘honor’
 Chūhṛetṛināmah
• ‘Doubly-marginalized’ status of chūhṛī
• Self-marginalization and abnegation
• He voiced the concerns of ‘polluted’ woman who was
marginalized due to her low caste
• Considering himself as the lowest of all and wishes to
meet the Beloved
• Rejection of birth-ascribed ranks of the social order
• It covers religious and social aspect of Punjab
 Conclusion
• Formal and state-oriented sources could not give us a holistic
view of the society (Ranajit Guha, On Some Aspects of the
Historiography of Colonial India)
• Vernacular literature…indispensible source of social & cultural
history of a region
• Shift of focus from formal to informal sources
• Surah Ibrahim, “And We sent not a messenger except with
the language of his people, in order that he might make (the
message) clear for them”