274. identity
the progress of human endeavor through time. The actual time events take place
also makes them “real” and “factual.” To start the chronology, a “beginning” or
time of “discovery” has to be established.
Possession of a chronology allows one to go backwards and explain how and why
things happened in the past. Societies are believed to move forward through time in
stages, developing much as an infant grows into a fully developed adult being. As
societies develop, they become less primitive, more civilized, more rational, and
their social structures become more complex and bureaucratic. History is similarly
deemed to be about human moral development, moving in stages through the ful-
fillment of basic needs, the development of emotions and the intellect, and culmi-
nating in morality. Just as the individual moves through these stages, so do societies.
The story of history therefore can be told in a coherent narrative.^7
A skilled historian can assemble all the facts in an ordered way so that they reveal
to the reader the truth, or at least a good idea of what really happened in the past.
History as a discipline is held to be innocent, since the “facts” speak for themselves.
A good historian simply marshals the facts and weaves them into a coherent, con-
cise, and cogent narrative. Once all the known facts are assembled, they tell their
own story, without any need of a theoretical explanation or interpretation by the
historian. History therefore is a pure discipline, unsullied by ideology, interests, or
agenda. All history has a definite beginning; and there are clear criteria for deter-
mining when history begins: literacy, rationality, scientific spirit, social and politi-
cal formations, and so on.^8
In the context of Indology, the upshot of the above view and understanding of
history is the argument that only a historian trained in historiography can write a
“true” and accurate history of Hinduism and Hindu culture and society. The disci-
plines of history and anthropology, accordingly, were implicated from the begin-
ning in the construction of totalizing master discourses to control the Indian as the
Other and to deny the Indian’s view of what happened and what the significance of
historical “facts” may be to the colonized.^9 “If history is written by the victor,” ar-
gues Janet Abu-Lughod, “then it must, almost by definition, ‘deform’ the history of
the others.”^10
Research using Western paradigms assumes that Western ideas about the most
fundamental things are the only ideas possible to hold, certainly the only rational
ideas, and the only ideas that can make sense of the world, of reality, of social life,
and of human beings. This line of thinking has been carried over into Hindu stud-
ies and conveys a sense of innate superiority and a desire to overwhelm research in
Hinduism spiritually, intellectually, socially, and politically.