CLIOMETRICS IS A PARADIGM SHIFT IN HISTORIOGRAPHY

Subodh Dhawan
Associate Professor
Applied & Regional Economics
MJP Rohilkhand University
e-mail: subodhdhawan1960@yahoo.com

Paradigm is a set of theories that explain the way a particular subject is understood at a
particular time.1 Kuhn (1970) has argued that evolution of scientific theory does not emerge from
the straight forward accumulation of facts but rather from a set of changing intellectual
circumstances and possibilities. (Kuhn, 1970: Pp. 64, 78 and 104.) In other words, scientific
revolutions are paradigm driven instead of proceeding linearly from an objective, unbiased
accumulation of all available data. When the framework of explanations or the hypothesis is
altered or a new set of questions are posed only then there be a breakthrough in scientific
knowledge. This applies not only to science stream but also social science and much to history.

According to Thapar (2002) histories of Indian sub-continent have subscribed to three

major changes of paradigm. (Thapar, 2002: Pp. 89) The first comprehensive history was J S
Mill’s ‘History of British India’ where he set out his theory of Indian history evolving out of
three civilizations, the Hindu, the Muslim and the British. [Mill, 1826] The first two he described
as backward, stagnant and ahistoric. His theory became axiomatic to the periodization of Indian
history which is still followed though in a disguised form. Mill’s philosophy of history linked
cultural (civilisational) development with the form of government. He classified four broad
stages of cultural development – savagism, slavery, barbarism and civilisation – which later on
were reduced to two: barbarians and civilised nations. He identified the force which drives this
development, namely the mode of government. Since development along cultural lines is not
automatic, human beings have to strive for the next level of development by establishing the
appropriate form of government for this purpose. [Jahn, 2005: Pp.604] Mill’s stance is rooted in
the experience and practice of colonialism. Firstly, he directly links different stages of
development to different forms of government. Secondly, the principle of liberty is not universal
but only valid for modern civilisation.

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 Mill’s philosophy of history is the result of the attempt to provide a moral justification for
the empirical experience of unequal power relations between Britain and India, and European
and non-European cultures in general. Mill provides a moral justification for the general ordering
of international affairs based on the rule of civilised over barbarian peoples. The influence of this
Millian paradigm, however, is not restricted to his time but exerts its influence even in the
present time. So Mill’s approach is first paradigm shift in Indian historiography.

Vincent Smith’s ‘The Oxford History of India’ published in 1919 comes several decades
after James Mill's seminal work. By the time Smith wrote his hegemonic text, enormous source
material in the form of inscriptions, archaeology, numismatics, and monuments had been made
accessible. Smith understood the immense progress that had been made in this regard for
connected systematic history of early India to be now written. With his great fascination towards
classical Greek and Roman civilization, he took their achievements to be the yardstick to write
about Indian history. Hence, he used such concepts like the 'age of heroes' and the 'age of
empires' that became the subject matter of his history. Thus, in this interpretation of Indian
history, it was the age of Asoka and Chandra Gupta II that became glorious periods for ancient
India. The intervening periods that witnessed the rise of small kingdoms were considered by
Smith as "dark ages" as these periods represented chaos and lawlessness and failed to produce
emperors. Further, Smith's long narrative of Indian political history was largely organized around
the trope of invasion and empire -- beginning with Alexander the Great and ending with the
British. In such an account of history based on wars and battles, there was naturally an
overemphasis on political and administrative matters than on other aspects like social, cultural or
economic history.

With regard to the periodization, we find that both these scholars took into account the
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major shifts in the dynasties and religion as the criteria to demarcate Indian history. Thus, we
find Mill's periodization of Indian history was categorized into Hindu, Muslim and British.
However, in the 150 years since Mill's History, the definitive chronologies of India before the
Muslim conquests have been constructed largely on the basis of the interpretation of stone and
copper-plate inscriptions. Hence, we find in Smith's writings a periodization of Ancient,
Medieval and Modern. However, even in his writings ancient was equated with the Hindu period
and Medieval with the Muslim period. Smith also tried to justify the British rule in India. Later
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on, with the rise of nationalist historians perspective changed but style remained the same. In
other words, Indian nationalists also adhered to the paradigm of dynastic and chronological order
in providing perspective from home. So, Smith’s approach became second paradigm shift in
Indian historiography.

D D Kosambi’s book ‘An Introduction to the Study of Indian History’ published in 1956
was third paradigm shift in Indian historiography. Through this book Kosambi changed the
narrative of history writing. Instead of following the conventional trend of chronology overview
and dynastic concerns he focused on the means of production and on production relations
between its factors. So focus now changed to society instead of personalities. How people are
living? Their economic, social and political aspects became chief concern of a historian. He used
inter disciplinary and multi-dimensional approach to analyse the problem, an approach which
was not common till then among Indian historians. As Kosambi was a mathematician by
profession he gave utmost importance to authenticity of data, technique used and on the
methodological content of history writing.3 He tried to make historiography more scientific like
any other subject of science discipline.

Indian historiography has undergone a commendable change in last two hundred years.
On its long journey it has passed through the shades of civilisational (cultural) development,
periodisation, chronological order, colonial bias, nationalistic chauvinism and then reached to
social groups with scientific methodology. It appears that history writing in the country has
reached a level which can be compared to that of any other part of the world. But this is not the
case. See what Alberuni has said about Indian society, about one millennium back, in1017 AD.

“… the so called scientific theorems of the Hindus are in a state of utter

confusion, devoid of any logical order, and in the last instance always mixed up
with the silly notions of the crowd, e.g. immense numbers, enormous spaces of
time, and all kinds of religious dogmas, which the vulgar belief does not admit of
being called into question. Therefore it is prevailing practice among Hindu to mix
pearl shells and sour dates, or pearls and dung, or costly crystals and common
pebbles. Both kinds of things are equal in their eyes, since they cannot raise
themselves to the methods of a strictly scientific deduction.” Alberuni in
(Sachau,2002:Pp. 6 and 8)

To some the above statement of Alberuni will not appear one millennium back, in fact, it
may appear that he is talking in a conference in the present India. Why is it so that Alberuni of
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one thousand years back is appealing so fresh and so relevant even today? It is clear from the
observations of author that one, Indian society appears to be a closed one which is neither ready
to share its own knowledge with others nor it is ready to accept knowledge from others. Second,
data used by Indians in their scriptures and researches is unreliable and vague. Third, there is an
overlapping of mythological discourse with science. This undermines the inferences drawn
through experiments. Nobel laureate, Amartya Sen (2007) has given support to Alberuni’s
arguments but by giving different dimension to history writings in India,

“In an often-quoted remark, Henry Ford, the great captain of industry, said,
"History is more or less bunk." As a general statement about history, this is
perhaps not an assessment of compelling delicacy. And yet Henry Ford would
have been right to think, if that is what he meant, that history could easily become
"bunk" through motivated manipulation. This is especially so if the writing of
history is manoeuvred to suit a slanted agenda in contemporary politics. There
are organized attempts in India, at this time, to do just that, with arbitrary
augmentation of a narrowly sectarian view of India's past, along with
undermining its magnificently multireligious and heterodox history.”

Since the writing of Indian history from the biased perspective of sectarian orthodoxy
undermines historical objectivity, it also militates against the spirit of scientific skepticism and
intellectual heterodoxy. It is important to emphasize the role of unbiased historical perspective in
the pursuit of scientific knowledge. Here cliometrics can help to approach the economic history
in an unbiased perspective. Cliometrics analysis is foremost a theoretical approach. Great
emphasis is placed on developing a coherent and consistent theoretical model that will provide
the basis for interpreting historical economic and social phenomena. Cliometrics models enable a
better understanding of real world. Because economic and social processes are complex, a
thorough understanding of the underlying forces and inter-relationship is generally impossible.
Models break up phenomena into more manageable portions by abstracting those variable that
are believed to be of a significant influence on choice and subjecting them to deductive
reasoning based on a set of accepted axioms. Logical conclusions are then derived which must be
translated into propositions about the real world. These propositions or predictions must then be
compared to actual behaviour and experience, either by observation or statistical methods.

Alberuni in (Sachau, 2002: Pp. 8) had described perceptive of Hindu society

approximately a thousand years earlier.

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 “The heathen Greeks, before the rise of Christianity, held much the same
opinions as the Hindus; their common people held the same idolatrous views as
those of Hindus. Therefore I liked to confront the theories of the one nation with
those of the other simply on account of their close relationship, not in order to
correct them. For that which is not the truth does not admit any correction, and
all heathenism, whether Greek or Indian, is in its pith and marrow one and the
same belief, because it is only a deviation from the truth. The Greeks, however,
had philosophers who, living in their country, discovered and worked out for them
the elements of science, not of popular superstition, for it is the object of upper
classes to be guided by the results of science, whilst the crowd will always be
inclined to plunge into wrong-headed wrangling, as long as they are not kept
down for the fear of punishment.
Think of Socrates when he opposed the crowd of his nation as to their idolatry
and did not want to call the stars gods! At once eleven of the twelve judges of the
Athenians agreed on a sentence of death, and Socrates died faithfully to the truth.
The Hindus had no men of this stamp both capable and willing to bring sciences
to a classical perfection.”

There is no doubt that vested interest in the society never allow rationality
to prevail. 4 But it is the duty of academia to move towards rationality not only in
the interest of present generation but also in the interest of future generations;
children will never forgive the silence of intellectuals. Time has come; Historical
Association will have to intervene before it is late; everyone has a Socrates in
him. To start with, two implications may take place with the use of cliometrics in
history and that will be definitely a paradigm shift for Indian historiography –

a) A new stream in history may come up as ‘rational history’ in which

scientific methods of methodology will be used and it will focus on social issues.
But this new will confine to a small closed group of serious academia.

b) Another stream in history may retain cultural aspects which has soul,
mind and conscience of the land. One cannot ignore aspirations of the masses.
This should be open to all interested persons from different fields of life along
with historians. Here group will a large one but it will have less creditability than
that of the previous group.

(Published in University News, 21-27.01.2019, AIU, New Delhi).

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Bibliography:

Carr E H (1987), ‘What is History’, downloaded on (25.05.2018).

http://www.trfa.org.uk/sixthform/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/HISTORY-What-is-history-
E.H-Carr.pdf
Jahn, Beate, “Barbarian thoughts: Imperialism in the philosophy of John Stuart Mill” Review of
International Studies, Vol. 31, Issue 03, July (2005), Pp.604 https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/pdf
downloaded on 04.06.2018.
Kosambi, D D, “An Introduction to Indian History” , Bombay (1956)..
Mill, J S “The History of British India” Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, London (1826)
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/mill-the-history-of-british-india-vol-1 downloaded on 03.06.2018
Sachau, Edward C, ‘Alberuni’s India’, Rupa & Co, (2002), New Delhi.
Smith, Vincent, “Oxford History of India”, Oxford University Press, London, (1919).
http://scans.library.utoronto.ca/oxfordhistoryofsmitu.pdf downloaded on 04.06.2018
Thapar, Romila (2002), “History and Beyond”, Oxford University Press, New Delhi.
Pp.70.
References:

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Take an example of economics. The Keynesian revolution is typically viewed as a major paradigm shift in
macroeconomics. According to John Kenneth Galbraith, Say’s law dominated economic thought prior to Keynes for
over a century. Economists who contradicted the Say’s law risked losing their careers. Later the movement for
monetarism over Keynesians marked a second decisive paradigm shift. Monetarists held that fiscal policy was not
effective for stabilising the inflation, that it was solely a monetary phenomenon; in contrast to Keynesians view of
the time was that both fiscal and monetary policies were important. Keynesian later adopted much of the monetarist
view of the quantity theory of money and shifting Phillip’s curve, theories they initially rejected. So, Keynesian
revolution is a paradigm shift over Classicals. Then Monetarism is second paradigm shift over Keynesians.
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“The purpose of this book is to provide in one volume of moderate bulk and price a compendious up-to-date
History of India as a whole, based on the results of modern research and extending from the earliest times to the end
of 1911. It has been designed with the desire to preserve due proportion throughout in the Ancient, Hindu,
Muhammadan, and British Periods alike, the space being carefully allotted so as to give prominence to the more
significant sections.” Smith (1919), Preface.
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“Going over to the common people is not easy work. Psychological barriers raised by many generations of the
grimmest poverty and exploitation are strengthened by the heat, dust or mud, and unhygienic conditions. But,
properly done, the task can nevertheless be exhilarating even for one whose patience has worn thin and whose joints
have stiffened painfully with age. Such field-work has to be performed with critical insight, taking nothing for
granted, or on faith, but without the attitude of superiority, sentimental reformism, or spurious leadership which
prevents most of us from learning anything except from bad textbooks.” Kosambi, D D, “An Introduction to Indian
History” , Bombay (1956). Pp. 3.
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There are still instances where myth is being camouflaged with history to create euphoria in the society to meet
political agenda. Statements come from politicians that Sita is an test tube baby; Darwin is not right in stating that
ancestors of Indians were monkeys, we are children of Manu, however, Darwin theory is true for Europeans;
aeroplanes, television and missiles were used in Mahabharata and so on.

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