Personal and Political : Collingwood at a Historical Juncture
Sometime in 2015, I started a private expedition into a close friend’s long-lost history which eventually became the basic framework of my personal and professional life. Had I known then that the historical inquiry into my friend’s life would become one of the most exciting projects of my life, I would have been more punctual and genuine in my “historical imagination” and in the process could have ruined all the hot and cold chills it offered me in the past few years. I am glad that it was as personal and silly as the giant snowman he made with English music.
In 2017, Ms. Sengupta walked into our classroom with the ‘compulsory reading material’ for the Post Graduate class and introduced us to Mr. Collingwood. Thanks to Lilliput for the exciting conversations on Collingwood and many other things, I will forever cherish our conversations in those late evenings at Palaj. To me, she was the best thing about Vandan.
Collingwood in his The Idea of History (1946) explains that history cannot be studied or for that matter equated to the study on natural science as historical events cannot be directly observed like in natural science. There is a process of “reconstruction” of history using “historical imagination” to “re-enact” the past event. To me, the realisation at that moment was quick, some kind of validation to the methodology that I unconsciously practiced. Collingwood encouraged me to recognise and acknowledge the profound importance of the human imagination in learning and observing patterns. By the beginning of 2018, I found my answers to the private expedition, every time I think about it I get a little high somewhere with some weird sense of accomplishment.
..imagining is simply a process we use to construct or reconstruct pictures, ideas or concepts in our minds and he points out that this process should not necessarily be correlated with either the fictitious or the real. The historian's picture must be localised in a space and time that has actually existed and it must be related to the evidence which the historian gathers from sources. If the historian cannot demonstrate any link between the picture that she constructs and this evidence, then it will be assumed that the picture is merely fantasy. The key difference, then, is that historians must use sources as evidence in their imaginative process (Lemisco, 2004)
July 2018, I started working in a political firm where research and profiling became an important part of my everyday life. There are moments where I stand still with contemporary Indian history close enough for me to not believe in history anymore. The political has become personal.
Recently I read an article titled A Point of Collision, 2018 by Satish Deshpande where he states that “set in stone” cannot be something permanent, it gets negotiated according to the present, like how the Gateway of India was a British war-memorial but also it is a place for Delhites to lick ice cream on Sunday evenings. Has Collingwood’s historical imagination been conveniently twisted? I do not like warnings, but for political history, this could be far more serious. Historical Imagination could not just be a threat to the history but also to history as a discipline which already faces the trouble of not being convincing enough because unlike natural science, history does not have ‘observable real things’ and substance in the present. Do not let anybody tell you their historical imaginations. It becomes important that people like Lilliput exist so that more conversations happen, it has become even more important to document life, events, people. There is an ongoing war against history, where historical imagination is being used as a pigment to write-rewrite history. Let us remember Collingwood at this historical juncture.
In 2017, Ms. Sengupta walked into our classroom with the ‘compulsory reading material’ for the Post Graduate class and introduced us to Mr. Collingwood. Thanks to Lilliput for the exciting conversations on Collingwood and many other things, I will forever cherish our conversations in those late evenings at Palaj. To me, she was the best thing about Vandan.
Collingwood in his The Idea of History (1946) explains that history cannot be studied or for that matter equated to the study on natural science as historical events cannot be directly observed like in natural science. There is a process of “reconstruction” of history using “historical imagination” to “re-enact” the past event. To me, the realisation at that moment was quick, some kind of validation to the methodology that I unconsciously practiced. Collingwood encouraged me to recognise and acknowledge the profound importance of the human imagination in learning and observing patterns. By the beginning of 2018, I found my answers to the private expedition, every time I think about it I get a little high somewhere with some weird sense of accomplishment.
..imagining is simply a process we use to construct or reconstruct pictures, ideas or concepts in our minds and he points out that this process should not necessarily be correlated with either the fictitious or the real. The historian's picture must be localised in a space and time that has actually existed and it must be related to the evidence which the historian gathers from sources. If the historian cannot demonstrate any link between the picture that she constructs and this evidence, then it will be assumed that the picture is merely fantasy. The key difference, then, is that historians must use sources as evidence in their imaginative process (Lemisco, 2004)
July 2018, I started working in a political firm where research and profiling became an important part of my everyday life. There are moments where I stand still with contemporary Indian history close enough for me to not believe in history anymore. The political has become personal.
Recently I read an article titled A Point of Collision, 2018 by Satish Deshpande where he states that “set in stone” cannot be something permanent, it gets negotiated according to the present, like how the Gateway of India was a British war-memorial but also it is a place for Delhites to lick ice cream on Sunday evenings. Has Collingwood’s historical imagination been conveniently twisted? I do not like warnings, but for political history, this could be far more serious. Historical Imagination could not just be a threat to the history but also to history as a discipline which already faces the trouble of not being convincing enough because unlike natural science, history does not have ‘observable real things’ and substance in the present. Do not let anybody tell you their historical imaginations. It becomes important that people like Lilliput exist so that more conversations happen, it has become even more important to document life, events, people. There is an ongoing war against history, where historical imagination is being used as a pigment to write-rewrite history. Let us remember Collingwood at this historical juncture.