Our History, Our Neglect
   Date :19-Jan-2023

Our History

 
 
 
By Vijay Phanshikar
History has many habits. One, it repeats itself. In Nagpur, a negative history is repeating itself all the time, for long, long decades. In our city, history also has another habit -- of getting forgotten. That is what this city of ours has done all along, for endless decades.
This is not a judgement; this is an observation of how we the sovereign Nagpurians have made a grand mess of our past that is absolutely and unquestionably glorious. But how much of that history is known to us? How much effort have we put in to reveal to ourselves our own past in which kings and scholars and artists and warriors have made signal contribution to sculpt a wonderful story of the city and the region? Or, in other words, how much effort have we made to erase our own past -- thanks to our neglect, to our disinterest in our forefathers, in our legacy?
A seasoned historian or a curious researcher or a lay student or a common man in the street has actually no answers to all these questions. Nagpur, thus, can be described as a place in which people made effort to forget their own past. And this is happening repeatedly -- over generations.
That is how history is repeating itself -- of neglect of history in our beloved city.
The city has had the privilege of having at least two dynasties that ruled the region -- the Gond dynasty; the Bhonsla dynasty. The city also had the privilege of having a large political aristocracy -- like Gurjar, Chitnavis, Buti, Nagarnaik, to name a few. This community of rulers and their cohorts dominated Central India’s history for at least two centuries.
Yet, the city, as a whole, knows very little of this community and the history it sculpted.
Why?
The reasons are simple:
One, the iconic lethargy of the Indian society not to keep records safe and straight.
Two, the terrible cultural apathy towards ancestors. Three, the willing concessions we granted to ourselves to partner with the British rulers who made conscious efforts to destroy much of evidence in which history expressed itself. So, when ‘The Hitavada’ Reporters scan archives, pore over records, meet possible sources to know more about the city’s past, they run into walls -- of ignorance, of incompetence, of indifference.
For decades on end, ‘The Hitavada’ has been trying its best to bring to fore, bring alive the city’s and the region’s history and ancestry, but all that effort has ended only in mystery.
On countless occasions, ‘The Hitavada’ suggested creation of museums on the city’s two royal dynasties, its aristocracy. It also harked upon launching conducted tours like the ones in multiple cities across the world.
Yet, the city’s frigid minds refuse to be awakened. They refuse even to give a scant thought to the idea of reviving our memory of our own past.
Possibly, the city’s teaching community never taught to its pupils that a society that ignores its history often becomes a candidate to be ignored by future. This simple wisdom the city has missed.
But travel into any corporate office, and you will find an effort underway to create meaningful archives of how the company arrived at that point. Ask a sports journalist how much runs were made by whom and where and when. Pat will come the response in accurate detail. For, every move on the sports fields is recorded for posterity.
This simple wisdom also our good old city lacks.
A good evidence of this criminal neglect of history has come to fore through the painstaking work of a ‘Hitavada’ Reporter -- by way of a little probing into the royal estate of the Gond dynasty. We present it for the readers’ benefit -- again in the fond (and maybe futile) hope of creating one more page of record.