Ironies of history

History, with all its vagaries, can be unkind. Marxists tenaciously clung to the belief that "history is behind us.

- UDDALOK BHATTACHARYA

We are destined to win". Competing world views, and also overlapping ones, were seen to be at lower stages of historical progress. One reason for Hitler's coming to power was the stubbornly irreconcilable positions taken by the Social Democrats and communists. But was it history that took revenge on the communists in 1991, when Leningrad was renamed St Petersburg? As we know from EH Carr (What is History?), history is a dialogue between the present and the past. In India too, it is being dredged up in a manner that makes the present seem substantially unflattering. At the current moment, two historical matters, neatly overlaid, are abroad.

On the one hand it is being said, even at the cost of repetition and with reference to the educational minutes of Thomas Babington Macaulay in 1835, the nation must come out of the "slave mentality" brought about by British rule (Business Standard, November 26). What has come with the territory are the celebrations of 150 years of the composition of Vandemataram, which Parliament is expected to "debate" next week.