From History 1

"The freedom fighters were known as terrorists before ultimately being remembered as patriots" - Ed Harris in 'The Rock'.

History as taught in school is not the most thought provocative subject. It is taught with only the view of the author in mind. As young souls this view is imparted to us and we readily accept it.

The reason for acceptance is very simple. History has always been described as a fight between good and evil. What is good and what is evil is decided by the author. Which view is made to sound more courageous and brave is decided by the author. How to describe the winner and the vanquished is decided by the author. How to make our hero sound valiant even in defeat and how to make our enemies infliction as a death-knoll is in the hands of the author (yeah this sounds like the media of today too).

There have been crazy despots in every generation (not century). So we had Chengiz Khan earlier on, and Herr Hitler and so on... If the destruction of humankind is taken as a measure then we can add many world leaders. Hence I believe that the policy that defined this destruction should be an important aspect of classification of heroes and villians. Hence Herr Hitler because of Mein Kampf fits into the villian category. But then what about hidden agendas.
Thus in a country like India which had numerous rulers uptil the 19th century has many versions to the same story. Thus Hyderabad could be talking of the greatness ofthe Adilshahi kingdom and denouncing the Marathas, but if you are in Maharashtra you learn the vice versa.

But then sometimes there is no information of the other side. With this aspect only one view is propagated and hence accepted. Isnt that dangerous? Yes it is. And frankly it is more in place today than anytime else.

But aren't we in the golden age of communications and information technology. Here lies the pitfall and the oxymoron to our age. We have learnt in history about how our countrymen stood up against the occupying powers. Let it be the british in India or in the USA. We had our identity and we would not give it up or adapt forcefully. Numerous examples exist as we may have seen in "Once upon a time in China", "Gandhi" etc. But we still cannot relate history to our present conditions. There was an occupation then and so is today. Rights were taken away then and so are today. So it comes down to identifying ourself with the hero or the villian. Humans will never ever consider themselves to be villians. Hence it is left to the method how we give the information so that we identify ourselves not always with the hero, but deciding on the basis of the gravity of the situation.

The fourth estate has done a utterly miserable job in this aspect. They did this job by adopting one simple principle. Give only one aspect and make that aspect sound like the more glorious, glamorous and heroic. Hey isnt that what all humans want !!!! Thus a critical media is absent. Sorry lets reword the last statement. A critical media exists only to criticize the critics of the presented aspect. Thus we can have criticism for two teams on the NFL etc but for real life there is only one opinion. Independent media exist but who searches for a needle in the haystack.

On final thoughts, yesterday is history, but history was not yesterday. History is today. History repeats itself, though we never live to see the repetition always. Each generation identifies with itself to be unique, though we are same for most of it. But we never learn from old generations positively. Leaders find the holes that led to failures and plug them to portray a better decision and leadership, but I would challenge that everytime.

PS: As Indian I know what occupation by a foreign power is and i dont limit this thought to India but to all those experiencing it even today.