The forgotten heroes: Rewrite history to include those who shaped it

Speakers at the seminar lament people behind big achievements find no mention in narratives.

KARACHI:

History is painted with politics, literature, civilisation and every other aspect of human life. It conveniently forgets, however, the mention of the common men and women who are the main force behind all the achievements.

“It is the job of the historian to find out the common man’s role in making history,” said renowned historian Dr Mubarak Ali.

He was delivering a lecture on the ‘Forgotten People in History’ at a conference, titled ‘History and People’, on Thursday. The event was jointly organised by the SM Suhail Trust, Pakistan Institute for Labour, Education and Research (Piler) and the Pakistan Study Centre at the Jinnah Medical and Dental College to mark International Labour Day.

In his lecture, Dr Ali said that conventional historical accounts showed that individuals made history, rather than the people who were living at that time. Citing Bertolt Brecht’s poem, ‘A Worker Reads History’, Dr Ali repeated the same questions that the poet had raised.

History showed that the industrial revolution came through machines and technology, said Dr Ali. He, however, lamented that it was the labourers behind the machines, their 18-hour-long shifts with no weekly holidays and miserable work and living conditions had never been made a part of the history.

Dr Ali was of the view that history would stay incomplete until these forgotten people and their roles were recognised. At the end of his speech, Dr Ali underlined the need to establish a separate institute to study the communities and groups that have been forgotten. He said that poor and marginalised communities, despite their deprivations, were playing their role and it was up to historians and academia to give them a proper place in books.

Following the lecture, Dr Ali was awarded the Sobho Gianchandani Excellence Award for his work on the history of people and working class.

Sobho Gianchandani, a 94-year-old politician and intellectual, said that the work started by Dr Mubarak Ali and other historians should be taken forward by youth to explore the life, background and current status of the forgotten people such as gypsies and Dalits.

He said that Dalit communities were the real makers of history but there was no mention of their lives and contribution in our history books. “Youth, especially girls, should come forward to explore the background and current status of these poor people.”

Mr Gianchandani, who will turn 95 in two days, appealed to the audience to concentrate on education and work hard to make Pakistan a better place to live. “Please don’t destroy this country. Make it a civilised place,” he said.

Justice (retd) Rasheed A Rizvi, who presided over the first session, said that no pro-worker legislation could be approved without the Army’s consent. Justice Rizvi said that things could not get better until the fourth pillar of the state was brought under the ambit of the law.

Piler’s head Karamat Ali said that the majority of books on history in Pakistan were written by retired military and civil bureaucrats, who depicted their memoirs, which ironically became ‘history.’ He gave credit to Dr Ali for writing the ‘real history in the people’s context’, portraying people’s perspective.

Ahmed Salim, an author of several books, said that the main obstacle in writing people’s history was the lack of data and record of smaller movements and struggles. Salim said it was unfortunate that the authentic record and documents of political and labour movements were either burnt or dumped in raids by law enforcers, adding that some communist party leaders and intellectuals had deliberately manipulated the history in their publications afterwards.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 2^nd, 2014.