History Mid semester exam 2021

Chinmayee Shukla, Section A

Enrollment number- L20BALB008
Unit 1
1) F.H Lawson was a professor in Oxford University had written a book called ‘The
Rational Strength of English law’ & made a statement- “Historical explanations lead
to rational explanations”
A misconception about history is that it is made up of only facts of events in the past,
but history is about different historians & their subjective perceptions ,interpretations
ideas and concepts in different time periods. History is flexible not watertight, based
on logical reasoning.
Since it is logical, we try to understand events evolved in the first place and logically
see the historical facts which lead on to rational explanations since we connect the
facts to different aspects of history and come up with logical and rational
explanations.
For example- when we understand how the caste system has evolved overtime and its
historical reasons and causes for the evolution it helps us to logically put together the
facts and explain it by connecting it and linking it with other aspects of history (legal
power, social control are some aspects) which lead to logical and rational
explanations. Legal history is important since the evolution is connected with
reasoning and helps us understand the evolution of things.

(196 words)

2) Legal history is about how law and legal institutions operate , it is about how they
change overtime according to the changing economic, social and political conditions .
Legal history is liberating because it provides the evolvement of law in history as a
whole. After we analyse the social effects and psychological patterns, we come up
with better laws for the society as a whole and therefore legal history helps us in
shaping law and frees us from superstitions based on stereotypes and misconceptions
since legal history is very logical.
Legal history helps us with the better understanding of theories that will be applied to
contemporary problems in the present times as well. Therefore we can say that
history clears up the ground for the application of policies or theories as a solution to
contemporary problems. Law is not limited but law definitely understands different
perspectives and therefore represents pluralism which has existed in the society from
a very long time. Since people of different groups have different opinions, legal
history, being liberating represents the needs of the masses and creates a society
pluralist in nature in which different opinions can coexist .

(192 words)
Unit 2

A5)
Introduction

The writing of historical narrative or text in a critical manner is known as

historiography. A historian does not right about every past event, depending on his
conceptual framework, he may include and exclude some events and therefore is very
subjective. The word orientalism comes from ‘Orient’ which refers to Asian and
eastern culture. the writing of historians pointing towards advancement of Eastern and
Asian cultures refers to Orient historiography or orientalism.
Orientalism tells us about the knowledge western colonial powers had about their
possessions which later helped to justify their subjugation . It also involves the
various disciplines styles as well as institutions of thought by which the Europeans
had understood the term ‘Orient’ over several centuries.

Orientalist scholars- focus, aims, actions

These scholars who were called orientalists showed interest in the civilizations of the
East and encouraged and respected their past and history events as well . Their focus
was on Vedic culture and Sanskrit traditions and literature and also found a lot of
similarities between the European languages and Sanskrit which formed the basis of
their belief of ancient language being the mother of all indo-European languages.
France and Britain were European Imperial powers which had spent a lot of time and
money gaining knowledge and information about the colonies they had ruled. The
studies done by them were called orientalist studies which were developed to confirm
the inferior, primitive and degenerate nature of Oriental societies and languages.
Scholars of orientalism had certain boundaries in which they operated, for example
the notion that European civilization was the pinnacle of historical development was
just an assumption.

Emergence of Orientalism

Orientalism emerged in the late 18th century European centers of learning and
included the study of literature, laws, religion, languages and art of East Asian
societies became a major focus of scholarly attention and intellectual perspectives. In
that era, the number of Europeans doing research on East Asia increased a lot and new
forms of institutions in universities and scholarly associations did such studies. In
1765-1766, The East India company had been Bihar under them but the officers of the
company found it was difficult to translate the Manusmriti and even administer it. By
1804 there was a shift in the attitude of the British towards India. The defeat of
French forces was done by the British and had weakened the maratha power and
therefore the British were very sure of the rule over India. The British now aimed to
establish a distorted version of Indian history in order to prove their superiority. The
 Christian missionaries tried their best to preach their faith and specifically the
historians wanted to depict the flaws of Indian history and make Indian history the
victim of political and religious problems of Europe in order to be proven inferior.

About Orientalist Scholars

Some prominent historians were Monier Williams, Friedrich M, Sir William

Jones,Thomas Maurice and Colonel Boden. These historians and scholars did a lot of
work on Indian history during the 18th and 19th centuries, the basis was the
preconditions which were imposed by the belief in Christian Genesis in order to
counter all the writing that spoke about the great civilization of India and Indian
philosophy.

a) Monier Williams-
He had stated “When the walls of the mighty fortress of brahmanism are encircled,
undermined and finally stormed by the soldier, the victory of Christianity must he
single and complete“ . He was famous for his Sanskrit – English and English-
Sanskrit dictionaries.

a) Sir William Jones-

He was a part of the East India company as a civil servant and had set up the
asiatic Society of Bengal to understand ancient customs and laws . He had claimed
European languages words similar to Sanskrit in Iranian languages . This made
German, France, Russian and other European countries interested in these studies.
He very interested in discovery and romanticised as well as exaggerated the value
of new discoveries without confirming the sources. He had found the Sanskrit
language more perfect than Greek as well as latin.

b) Friedrich Max Muller-

He was born in Germany in 1823 and had passed away in 19 02. He had spent
most of his life living in England and after 1857, when British had realised that
they needed better knowledge of the social system of Indians in order to govern
them , Max under stood and took massive jobs of translating ancient Indian texts
in English in order to help the British. He published 50 volumes under the “Sacred
books of the East series “ and he was quite prejudiced. the 50 volumes were bias
by his political and religious beliefs. He made a lot of claims about India based on
assumptions and not facts such as the caste system was the most vicious form of
social discrimination , and Indians were a custom to despotic rule and were neither
experienced with the feeling of nationhood or any kind of self government . He
also felt that Indians were very concerned with the problems of spiritualism and
did not pay attention to the real problems taking place in the world and hence he
concluded that the Indians in olden times lacked the sense of history and
chronology.
 Conclusion

The orientalists school still a large extent considered India as an exotic civilization
which laptop all materialistic considerations and focused on aspects spiritualism
and other metaphysical concepts and it was claimed by many historians that,
Indians in the past did not focus on the realities of the world and instead focused
on God and other similar concepts.The prominent historians created stereotypes
and assumptions of the Indian society in the European social and academic
discourses.

A6)
Introduction

Scholars such as Antony Smith, Benedict Anderson and Gellner were The 3 main scholars
which had contributed to the field of nationalism and the 3 of them had claimed that nations
are a western construct. They also stated that if the history of human beings is looked at in the
last 150 years there is a strong tendency to notice the Imperial practices and cultures during
that time in the societies. They gave the example that in order to cultivate the field we need to
eradicate everything in the field then menu writ and plant your own seed if this process is not
completed then the wilderness will not take over and will not flourish, similarly nationalism
takes place as a process.

Theorists and scholars made views on nationalism

1. Benedict Anderson’s theory

He had written a book “Imagined Communities- Reflections on the origin and spread
of Nationalism” in 1983. This book was based on nation and nationalism and he has
stated the definition of nation , hat it is an imagined political community and
imagined as both inherently limited as well as sovereign.

2. Ernst Geller’s theory

He had stated that nations were basically the byproducts of industrialization. He had
made a division of nation the nationalism from agrarian societies and had placed the
former within the modern industrial societies. He believed that one language and one
culture was necessary to keep the nation together and homogenization in culture
perpetuates the nation.
3. Anthony Smith

He had claimed nations are simply modern phenomena and have an ethnic call. The 3
types of revolutions which are political, cultural and economic are needed to
transform these ethnic core values into nations. He had also claimed that nationalism
does not require the members of a nation to be similar but there should be a strong
bond of solidarity with the nation as well as the other people. He also believed that
nationalism bills belief systems which also include other aspects of the society such as
religion, kinship. He had also claimed that many types of nationalism theories are
based on flawed interpretations of historical events which took place in the past and
that's why there are many inaccurate parts of history and are fabricated to justify
different types of positions such as political and modern .

4. Partha Chatterjjee

Hard stated that India's nationalism had been given a privileged position by the
political leadership which was educated by the West and therefore was different and a
derivative discourse from the West

5. Ashis Nandy

She had often spoken about the illegitimacy of nationalism which was influenced by
rabindranath tagore and the self politics. She fell the Indian nationalism was a reply to
western imperialism and which shaped by what it was responding to.

6. Rabindranath Tagore and M.K Gandhi –

Spoke about the counter dash modernist critic of the imperialist West and had an
alternative vision which could Unite social value rather than on a political level .
Rabindranath tagore was a genius and great nationalist and an overall humanist and
reflected sympathetic man and great thinker . His perception of nationalism has relied
on ancient Indian philosophy where the world was accepted as a single nest. He has
thrived to study the general belief of nationalism and associated with ideas such as
peace, harmony and welfare . He argued that if anyway India decided to contribute to
the world it should only be in the form of humanity under sense of togetherness.