History depends on many factors - Dr B S Rao

History depends on many factors - Dr B S Rao

Mangalore Today News Network

Mangaluru :  Presiding over a seminar on ‘History and folklore’ held as part of a function to present the annual Rashtrakavi Govinda Pai Memorial Award on Sept 6.   The award was presented to Historian  Dr. B. Surendra Rao  in the post-seminar session.

Dr. Rao said that the more one read about history, the more one realised that it was difficult to give any judgement. A historian’s job was to tell what really happened in the past. Most people did not know about the structure of history.

Just as there was fundamentalism in religion and politics, so there was rigidity in academics. A volume on the relationship between history and folklore should be brought out. When history was not kept in a watertight compartment, its possibilities were numerous, he said.

History was being constructed and reconstructed again and again. Dr. Rao said history is historiography. Incompleteness in history was the wonderful thing about history. Some people thought that history was a dead subject. But even if history does not change, the knowledge of history does, he pointed out. History did not depend just on monuments, inscriptions and coins as its sources, Dr. Rao said.

Many other subjects including literature and folklore could contribute to it.  Social sensitivity can make one hear these voices.  But history was based on evidence. A historian has to demonstrate the evidence. The more complex history is, the more interesting it becomes.

Earlier, speaking on the topic of folklore, K. Chinnappa Gowda, Professor of Kannada, Department of Kannada, Mangalore University, said folklore or oral tradition could be a useful sources.