Who is a historian?

Are the demands of the present times wherein geographical boundaries are of little consequence and the emphasis must be on universal harmony, being met by such historical knowledge?

Today, the historian must rediscover not ‘the’ past but a choice of events in the context of either the students and their needs or the global currents. No one can claim that history books contain all that has occurred in the past.

Our political mentors must comprehend that those who have authored a few books on history or are dons in history departments of universities or colleges are not the real historians. We shall have to search for the real historians who may know what the teaching and learning of history really means. I dare to call Jawaharlal Nehru and A.P.J. Abdul Kalam as the historians worth emulating.

The self styled or academically certified historians have actually not adhered to the standards of the discipline of history. They have put down whatever suited their ideology or that of their masters. The historian must be someone with a knowledge of many disciplines, someone with the imagination to weave together their many strands.

What is history? Narratives that divide and pollute susceptible minds or accounts that further students’ knowledge about themselves and their environment? Must it be a set of skills to make sense of the world or a saga that must be learnt by rote? Above the school level, there may be a need to read texts of historians who have conducted exhaustive documentary research. But historians have been failing history in our country in failing to fully record oral accounts. A historian must not be an advocate nor a professor. He must be the guide enabling the child to walk the road that links the past with the present and the future.