Said by the Supreme Court, This Quote Means: ‘A country cannot remain a prisoner of the past’

Replying to this, the petitioner said that the benevolent nature of Hinduism had resulted in it being wiped out from places like Afghanistan and Pakistan and Hindus being reduced to a minority in seven states even in India. Later, he also added that the names of cities as mentioned in ancient scriptures and epics like the Upanishads, Vedas and Bhagavad Gita don’t exist anymore. “We too have the right to religion,” he said.

The UPSC has often asked questions related to history and how we navigate it. For example in 2021, in the UPSC-CSE Mains Essay paper, Karl Marx’s quote “History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, second as a farce” was used as a question. Similarly, in the 2010 paper, “Geography may remain the same; history need not” came as a question and in 2022, “History is a series of victories won by the scientific man over the romantic man”.

Apart from the essay paper, the quote can also be of importance in the ethics (GS-IV) paper and history (GS-I) paper, along with the history optional papers.

What is the full quote? In what context was it said?

The bench disapproved of Upadhyay’s petition and said that “a country cannot remain a prisoner of the past. India is wedded to the rule of law, secularism, constitutionalism, of which Article 14 stands out as guaranteeing both equality and fairness in State actions”.

Adding to this, the Court said that the “history of any nation cannot haunt the present and future generations…to the point that succeeding generations become prisoners of the past.” Underlining that only fraternity, meaning a sense of brotherhood, will lead to unity, the court said “the golden principle of fraternity, again enshrined in Preamble, is of greatest importance”.

The apex court also cited the ‘divide and rule’ policy of the British, with Justice Nagarathna saying divide and rule policy of the British brought about schism in our society… let us not bring that back”.

Justice Nagarathna also said that invasions were a historical fact that cannot be wished away. “Yes, we have been ruled by foreign invaders. We have been invaded several times and history has taken its part…Can you wish away invasions from history?… What are you trying to achieve? Don’t we have other problems in our country?” she asked.

Justice Joseph said, “Hinduism is the greatest religion in terms of metaphysics. The heights which Hinduism have in Upanishads, Vedas, Bhagavad Gita is unequal in any system. We should be proud of that. Please don’t belittle it”.

What does the quote mean?

In its simplest reading, the quote says that a country cannot stay stuck in what happened in the past, and needs to move on for its own betterment. An obsession with history has the potential to dominate public thought and opinions, leading to diminished discussions on the betterment of modern-day citizens.

This is of course not to say that history must be neglected – understanding how our past shapes us is necessary to both avoid old mistakes and to inculcate a sense of pride in who we are as a country. However, continuously picking at old wounds and manufacturing narratives out of them, when the focus should be on improving the present and future, can lead to widespread social harm. This is especially true when the past is used to drive a wedge between communities, hence the judges referring to the British colonisation of India through the ‘divide and rule’ policy, where foreign powers aided and promoted conflict among groups here for their own political and commercial gain.

After the Supreme Court’s dismissal of the petition, Kaushik Das Gupta wrote in The Indian Express: “The past is, however, a different kind of artefact in some of today’s contests over identity. It is invoked to provide material for hagiography, and its corollary – demonisation. The villains have to be put in their place. In India, of late, one way to do that is to remove them from public memory by changing the names of places.”

The focus on renaming places has been described by various politicians and public figures as “a way of correcting history”. However, as the Court pointed out, one cannot wish away history. It is better to understand it in its proper context, instead of forcing contemporary debates and ideas on it. An objective analysis with room for healthy debate is the need of the hour and not force-fitting contemporary political narratives into what happened centuries ago.

Similar quotes

Such sentiments on interpreting complicated histories have been expressed often by prominent personalities time and again. In his book The Discovery of India (1946), the country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru wrote, “We have become prisoners of the past and some part of its immobility sticks to us”. This is complementary to what the Supreme Court said. According to Nehru, being stuck in history can lead us to become rigid with increasingly little space for flexibility and room for perspectives different from ours.

British novelist L P Hartley’s landmark work The Go-Between (1953) begins with the line “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there”. This highlights the importance of contextualising historical events and not assuming that contemporary moral, social and political understandings were relevant earlier as well.

The Father of the Indian Constitution, Dr B R Ambedkar, in his book Maharashtra as a Linguistic Province (1948), said “Geography seems to be a better witness than history”. This refers to how historical narratives are constantly evolving, and their relevance (or lack thereof) seems to depend more on contemporary debates than anything else.