Vision Statement

The macro-level historiography in India has become very contentious and divisive. The battles between the Left-Wing Vs Right Wing historians have become truly unmanageable. The battle lines are ideologically driven. Therefore, they cannot even agree on basic facts of our history.

History is witness to the fact that people without a sense of their past have a difficult time negotiating their future. This is not meant as an exercise in mindlessly glorifying the past or trashing it in order to prove our “progressive” credentials, but to understand our history through our own eyes—with all its strengths and weaknesses.

Sadly, most of today’s youngsters are growing up without roots in or knowledge of their ancestral and civilizational history. Culturally rootless people and groups lack self-esteem and confidence. They can be easily manipulated into imbibing fake and malicious narratives about their own ancestral history and thus become victims of intellectual slavery self-hatred.

Our aim is to catalyse the process of gathering authentic knowledge regarding the lives of various jatis, biradaris, diverse linguistic and ethnic groups who follow a myriad of faith traditions and cultural practices in different regions of India. This is not meant as an exercise in mindlessly glorifying the past but to understand our history through our own eyes—in all its complexities–including its strengths and weaknesses.

Through this project we hope to engage young and old, professional academics as well as non-academics, in re-crafting India’s history through documenting family histories of a large cross section of India’s population using the Indic lens. The participants will need to collect oral histories as well as available primary data.

The ‘Bottom-Up’ approach to writing micro histories proposed by the Kishwar Memorial Trust has the potential to overcome the Left Vs Right binary, especially if the exercise is carried out without resorting to ideological grand standing.

Expected Outcomes:

A Bottom-Up Approach to understanding our society through our own lens ( instead of borrowed paradigms) has the potential to provide us a new way to write history and sociological studies.
These micro-histories have the potential to move beyond the polarized narratives being offered by ideologically committed historians who are hostile to any alternative version of history, even while their own accounts are highly partisan.
Connecting to one’s own family, community and village histories may strengthen self-esteem and help youngsters stay culturally rooted.
Those who have chosen to distance themselves from their family history and culture, might provide us insights into why family/community/village ties are getting eroded.