During the session, Philip A Lutgendorf, American indologist, stated that ideology of the writer has to be taken into consideration while reading or analysing a text on history.
The final day of Jaipur Literature Festival began with a discussion on ‘History, Myth and the Spaces in Between’, and was concluded beautifully by author Gurucharan Das, who underlined that humility lies in accepting that there is truth to both history and mythology.
“The line between fiction and non fiction is very thin. We can learn about the human condition, both from mythology, as well as from history,” Das said.
During the session, Philip A Lutgendorf, American indologist, stated that ideology of the writer has to be taken into consideration while reading or analysing a text on history.
“Itihaas is a telling of a story that happened in the past. When we study any history, we should also study the historians, and the context in which they lived, and the context in which they wrote,” Lutgendorf said.
He added that it is always the teller who is telling the story.
“No history is free of ideology or point of view of the writer. The past doesn’t exist, except as we recreate it through narrative. In that sense, history, legend, and mythology are on the same ground, but one is based on certain evidence while other is based on different culturally-felt evidence,” he said.
Lutgendorf, who is also a professor of Hindi and Modern Indian Studies at the University of Iowa, began the session by drawing a comparison between British History and Indian History.
“The British had a culture and religion based on ‘history’, evidence-based, text-based, where as Indians only had myth. They had these fantasies, fabrications. This incited a pushback among Indian intellectuals and they started looking for evidences,” he said.
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 "Samhita Arni, Mala Shri Lal, Gurucharan Das and Philip A Lutgendorf")
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