The past which has been changed

"The one who controls the present, controls the past, and the one who controls the past, controls the future" - 1984, George Orwell.

This statement has captured my attention of late, because a lot of events in history are closely associated with the above statement. It’s just not about history alone. A lot of concepts which has deeply embedded in the innermost minds of most Indians are in one way or the other connected to this statement.

While I was reading the book "The Argumentative Indian" by Amartya Sen, a couple of days ago, there was a strong correlation between an essay and this sentence quoted from the book 1984 written by George Orwell. The essay was about the BJP reign during 1998 and the efforts by BJP to alter the material written in history books to make sure that the agenda of Hindutva and the history had a correlation. And for those who are reading history, what they read is the past for them. So if a certain information source conveys a certain version of history and in the case that no other source of information is available, the information conveyed appears to be the truth.

This is the same about a lot of stories which keep circulating in India about our history and culture and beliefs. Very few of us do even question the authenticity of the stories which are told to us. May be we were not aware about the fact that the past is something which can be doctored or twisted at will. What is most relevant in this discussion is the fact that whatever the reason may be, we believe in something which is absolutely not the truth.

We do not have evidence of existence of any of the characters in Ramayana or Mahabharata. Yet people believe and fight on those topics. We do not have evidence of Prophet Mohammad or Jesus. But we have strong movements based on these ideas. And object of these movements are just power and nothing else. That’s the thing which we fail to realize. Kings wanted to stay in power - hence they brought forward caste system. Church wanted to stay in power and make sure people never questioned its power. Hence they tortured people like Copernicus for bringing out scientific truths which can weaken the power of Church. When someone proves what Church had been saying is wrong - Then this will destroy the whole confidence people had on Church and hence the power would be weakened. This has been the case with every propagator of religion. Religion and God has only been used for making sure that the powerful remained powerful.

Whenever we hear about some historical figure related to religion we tend to believe that they were good human beings who always told the truth. We never understand the fact that they too were human beings having similar desires like us - greed, lust etc.