History: Subjective or Objective?

In Bhagat-Kennedy’s Imagining Bharat (p. 66), Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay is quoted with a revealing idea: that history is not merely an objective study, but a tool to energize people’s identities and self-worth. Manu Pillai, in his book Gods, Guns and Missionaries, Chapter Four, “An Indian Renaissance” (Notes no. 162, p. 451), citing Monika Rani Bhagat-Kennedy’s unpublished PhD dissertation (Imagining Bharat: Romance, Heroism, and Hindu Nationalism in the Bengali Novel, 1880–1920, University of Pennsylvania, 2016), highlights this point. What exactly is being said here?

The question arises: Should we study history purely objectively, without connecting it to our present needs—especially when it comes to our identity?

In my understanding, historical narratives or records, whatever their form, were never composed purely with an “objective” mindset. Whether recording past events or current happenings, historians inevitably bring their own subjective interpretation to what they see.

When we now read any historical record, are we doing so purely with an objective lens, “just for its own sake”? Or is it driven by a subjective need—a curiosity about the past: what happened, why, when, by whom—approaching it almost like reading a novel, for intellectual entertainment, or for personal enrichment? No human activity ever ends with mere objectivism, without a touch of subjectivity. Even those who read a book, watch a program, or review a product can only do so with some degree of subjectivity. The same holds true for history.

Even academic historians like Manu Pillai—do they engage with history purely objectively? If so, why bother compiling such exhaustive works? Why not leave history where it belongs? Instead, he painstakingly researches, writes, and presents history precisely because it serves present needs—specifically, the need to understand identity today or perhaps in service to his vocation as a historian.

Take Manu’s Gods, Guns and Missionaries, for example. If I understood him correctly, all the records he unearthed and presented—no doubt with scholarly rigor—are still filtered through his own subjective choices. He selects material (while keeping the context intact) based on what he believes is meaningful today or to this book. His selection, interpretation, and presentation are subjective—even though he insists on objectivity.

He himself notes (through quoting Bhagat-Kennedy) that Hindu nationalism today still uses history “as a means to energize people’s identities and self-worth.” (p. 66) And in that observation, he is 200% correct.

But even while criticizing Hindutva for its “subjective” use of history, Manu Pillai also offers his own perspective on what India’s identity ought to be. While not explicitly stated in the title, the book consistently highlights a Brahminical influence on Indian Hindu identity—a point I discussed in another article, Brahminical Hinduism: A Multi-Edged Sword.

Naturally, his narrative begins with the influence of Brahmins, citing the Maharaja of Jaipur’s efforts in the summer of 1902 (Introduction, p. XIII), and ends with Savarkar, who, notably, was also a Brahmin. This thematic arc reinforces the sense of a Brahmin-centric narrative.

Similarly, in my article The True Image of India, I noted:

“Of course, any reading of history is subjective. To draw out a theme from historical material is always a matter of interpretation. So my reading—that the book is about a Brahmin-centric identity—may not be the only valid one. But I think it’s fair.”

I return to this line of thought in my another paper, History is to Visit—Not to Stay, where I similarly examine Shashi Tharoor’s Why I Am a Hindu (Aleph Book Company, 2018), and find that he too presents two contrasting approaches to history. [See:https://dayanandbharati.in/history-is-to-visit-not-to-stay-there/]

It would be both interesting and highly instructive to study what a historian like Manu Pillai says about history—not only in this particular book but across his body of work. Out of curiosity, I checked the index to see what categories of history are listed in this book. To my surprise, the word “history” itself is not included. Of course, this is understandable: the entire book deals with history and historical research, so it would be nearly impossible to offer either an exhaustive or concise index entry under that term.

In Why I Am a Hindu, Shashi Tharoor engages deeply with the role of history — not as a fixed, objective record of the past, but as a dynamic, contested space that shapes both personal identity and collective consciousness. He acknowledges at the outset that even the statement “I am a Hindu” is not an eternal or abstract declaration, but a self-description grounded in a specific historical context (p. xiv). For Tharoor, history is not neutral; “it is not a web woven with innocent hands” (p. 207). Instead, it is often written and rewritten in service of ideology. He highlights how Hindutva, as formulated by Savarkar and later adopted politically, treats history not merely as religious heritage but as the totality of the Hindu identity — encompassing every department of thought and action of the “Hindu race” (p. 145).

Tharoor urges readers not to weaponize history. He emphasizes that survival and reconciliation — not reprisal — should guide our response to past injustices (p. 207). He calls for the past to be used as “a springboard, not as a battlefield” (p. 219), so that we can rise above it and imagine a future worthy of our pluralistic heritage. Even while acknowledging the complexity of figures like Aurangzeb, who was neither the hero of syncretism nor the icon of villainy many claim (p. 221), Tharoor brings in scholars like Audrey Truschke to show how present-day political agendas distort historical memory (pp. 222–223). He even echoes Nehru’s insight that the mingling of fact and fiction in history may not tell us what actually happened, but it reveals what people believed about themselves — what ideals moved them, and what myths inspired them (p. 246). In the end, Tharoor writes, “one can appreciate history and leave it where it belongs” (p. 276). Yet he himself does not entirely follow this advice. He revisits the history of Hindutva from 1925 to the present, not to bury the past, but to illuminate the ideological struggles of contemporary India. He critiques the present government for invoking the language of development while simultaneously empowering sectarian narratives (p. 231). For Tharoor, history must be faced, but not lived in. The real challenge is not whether history is subjective or objective — but how wisely we choose to carry its burden into the future. For full excerpts from Tharoor, see Appendix

Conclusion:

Reading Tharoor and Pillai didn’t just teach me history. They reminded me that every telling of history, including theirs, carries a viewpoint. And so, as a layperson, I don’t pretend to know more than they do. But I do hope to follow the spirit of their writing: to think deeply, to question freely, and to engage honestly.

Because in the end, history is not just about what happened. It’s about how we choose to remember — and why.

Ashram May 2, 2025

Appendix

• “To say ‘I am Hindu’ without acknowledging that what one means is not some eternal category of belief but a set of self-descriptors that is contingent on history.” (Why I Am a Hindu, p. xiv)
• “Hindutva is not a word but a history. Not only the spiritual or religious history of our people, as at times it is mistaken to be by being confounded with the other cognate term Hinduism, but a history in full… Hindutva embraces all the departments of thought and activity of the whole Being of our Hindu race.” (V.D. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 3; cited by Tharoor, p. 145)

• “History is not a web woven with innocent hands.” (Why I Am a Hindu, p. 207)
• “Survival is the best revenge, rather than reprisal; undoing the wrongs of a different era through new wrongs in a different context only compounds the original sin (‘an eye for an eye,’ as Mahatma Gandhi famously said, ‘makes the whole world blind’).” (p. 207)
• “We need to use the past as a springboard, not as a battlefield. Only then can we rise above it to create for ourselves a future worthy of our remarkable past.” (p. 219)

• “Aurangzeb was undoubtedly an illiberal Islamist unlike his ancestors or his brother Dara Shikoh (whom he decapitated), but he was not the genocidal mass-murderer and iconoclast many Hindus depict him as.” (p. 221)

• “Aurangzeb is controversial not so much because of India’s past but because of India’s present. The narrative of Aurangzeb the Bigot, which crops up largely in polarizing debates about Indian national identity, has more to do with modern politics than premodern history and is a byproduct and catalyst of growing intolerance in India.”
  (Audrey Truschke, “Some of the hate mail is chilling”: Historian Audrey Truschke on the backlash to her Aurangzeb book, Scroll.in, 25 May 2017; cited in Tharoor, pp. 222–223)

And Tharoor concedes, echoing Nehru:

“No less an ardent secularist than India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had written seven decades earlier:

‘Facts and fiction are so interwoven together as to be inseparable, and this amalgam becomes an imagined history, which may not tell us exactly what happened but does tell us something equally important—what people believed had taken place, what they thought their heroic ancestors were capable of, and what ideals inspired them… Thus, this imagined history, mixture of fact and fiction, or sometimes only fiction, becomes symbolically true and tells us of the minds and hearts and purposes of the people…’”
(The Discovery of India, Calcutta: The Signet Press, 1946, cited in Tharoor, p. 246)

However, even a towering figure like Nehru was not immune to shaping history through a subjective lens. As Chaturvedi Badrinath observed, Nehru was ultimately a romanticist, not a critical historian. In his review of The Discovery of India, D.D. Kosambi noted Nehru’s failure to ask the most fundamental historical question: “Why?” This omission, Badrinath argues, reveals the limits of Nehru’s analytical method and reminds us that even noble historical narratives are shaped by personal vision and interpretive choices. Should we not, then, approach all modern historians—even our favorites—with similar caution and awareness of their inherent biases?
—Chaturvedi Badrinath, Dharma, India and the World Order, Saint Andrew Press / Pahl-Rugenstein, 1993, p. 334.

• “One can appreciate history and leave it where it belongs.” (p. 276)

But does he follow that advice? Even while saying that, he retraces the history of Hindutva, from 1925 to the present, not “leaving it where it belongs”—but using it to analyze modern India.

• “It is ironic that Prime Minister Modi keeps on emphasizing the message of development and economic transformation, while his aides persist in raising bogeys that their leader has been attempting to lay to rest.” (p. 231)