Yesterday more important than today

Aurangzeb’s tomb in Khuldabad, Maharashtra, which has been in the eye of a political storm recently. A lot of people tend to believe that obsessing over history is a waste of time. Pic/Instagram/@IndiaHistorypic

You have probably seen the memes by now, or the jokes on Twitter about how the world's countries tend to have priorities that are radically different from India's. I recall one in particular: an image of athletes at a starting block leaning into the track while the only one looking the other way happens to be Indian. I couldn't figure out why so many people loved it, until a friend helpfully informed me of riots in some parts of Maharashtra over the remains of an emperor who died a little over three centuries ago.

I don't want to discuss the emperor in question, because I am not a historian, have no interest in contributing to op-eds on the subject, and can't be bothered with propaganda. What I do want to highlight is that people laughing at the government for its obsession with the past are missing the point entirely. It is only a highly evolved group of people aware of exactly what they're doing who will gently nudge a nation towards what has already happened rather than what is going on. If you get angry about someone who died a century ago, for instance, you will have no time for the eight farmers who allegedly kill themselves daily, even if those suicides also occur in Maharashtra.

A lot of people tend to believe that obsessing over history is a waste of time, given that there are so many other things that ought to demand attention in our daily lives. I empathise with these critics, but don't accept the argument because it is only when a government spends more time drawing attention to what no one can control that they can be left alone to get on with what they can. If we spend years examining the legacy of Jawaharlal Nehru with a fine-toothed comb, we won't notice if any foreign country has been sneaking in and taking control of our land in, say, Arunachal Pradesh, will we?

Governments should be allowed to work without distraction, and one of the smartest things politicians can do is exploit a country's insecure, unemployed youth and give them something to channel their anger towards. I'm not saying this is happening in India, of course, but maybe someone ought to look at films that have been made tax-free over the past decade and ask a few questions about whether those decisions were prompted by filmmaking capabilities.

My theory is that obsessing over the past acts as a safety valve and is good for the overall mental well-being of a nation. It comes with undeniable benefits that are being ignored, and I'd like us all to accept that. Consider that emperor and how the recent riots arguably prevented so many young men from worrying about deteriorating standards of education, lack of employment opportunities, or the complete absence of any viable plan to generate jobs. At least this way, by setting fire to a few vehicles, they could sleep well in the knowledge that they had accomplished something, even if the act changed nothing about their everyday lives.

What sometimes surprises me is the fact that so many people don't seem to understand how history has always been more important to the government of India than, say, economics or healthcare. Sure, there are budgets announced each year, and schemes that are renamed to include the Prime Minister's name, but the real attention has always been paid to how the past can be re-examined, exploited, or rewritten in a way that makes the present more palatable. It's why so many Indians have died so often, and for so long, because of our collective obsession with things that may or may not have occurred a few centuries ago.

We should recognise and embrace the fact that we are proudly turning away from the rest of the world and choosing to dance to our own tunes. Let China focus on clean energy and AI, America on technology, and Europe on the environment. We should applaud our commitment to figuring out if cities should be renamed, or if religious structures that are 400 years old were really built on older structures that were constructed 400 years before them. We should let our children and grandchildren worry about the state of India in 2025.

Interestingly, I believe the only time we focus on people who are alive these days is when we are renaming a stadium, college, or museum in Gujarat. I'm sure that is just a coincidence or bureaucratic error, though.

When he isn't ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira

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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper