What
prompted me to write this post were two recent articles in KR Dinakar’s blog Mysorean Musings. The first one
is Earliest
memories of watching a movie. This
gives details about the cinema theatres in Mysore city during the 1960s and the movies
that were being shown during that period.
The second one is about what I think was India’s first sports
magazine, A
magazine called Sport and Pastime. I
used to be fan of this well brought out publication from The Hindu Group. On
the cricketing side they used to have correspondents like Neville Cardus, Jack
Fingleton and Norman Yardly. Apart from their deep knowledge of the game, the
English that they wrote was beautiful. They could nearly match the famous
American sportswriters Grantland Rice and Red Smith. Unfortunately, the
publishers discontinued Sport and Pastime.
The point I am trying to
establish is that the observations and memories of a person form part of
history. If someone wants to do a study of the history of cinema houses in Mysore, Dinakar’s article
would be an invaluable document. But not many people record their experiences.
The regular excuse is “I can’t write”. That is not correct. Anyone can write if
he has a pen and paper.
Unfortunately, even what is
recorded is not always carefully preserved. I have seen moth eaten pieces of
ancient olas (dry palm leaves on
which documents were written before paper became common). That was so sad. Only
recently people are becoming aware of the importance of conserving old writings
and drawings.
Details of historical events
are often passed on from generation to generation verbally. These are known as
oral traditions. They have an important part in history. But the problem is
that as generations pass by, some parts of the original story might be
forgotten, or the narrator would add something new to suit his views. An
incident which is unpleasant may be dropped. Therefore historians are very
careful in accepting oral traditions.
It would be a good practice
to note down the oral traditions that we hear. And that should be done without
any bias or slant. I am not a historian but have great interest in the subject.
I have done quite a bit of study about Kerala Church
history. Initially there was only the Malabar
Church consisting of people converted
by St. Thomas
the Apostle and about 400 Syrians who migrated under the leadership of Thomas
of Cana.
The Portuguese domination of
the Malabar Church changed that. The locals rebelled
against the Westerners and there were divisions and subsequent divisions in the
ancient Church. Now each denomination has its own history books – or rather
books which murder history. Details are twisted and coloured and modified to
establish the views of each group.
Coming back to oral
tradition – Appan. (my
father) used to tell me during my young days that Portuguese ships used to come
to our place to load spices and that there was a shipping channel in our Olavipe Lake.
This also connected to the inland water pirate Lebba Moosa story. (See A unique
prayer.) No historian would take it. That tradition would have died a
natural death. But recently, quite by accident I came across a quoted
Portuguese writing about their ships moving from Cochin into interior locations like ours. Also
a well-known historian has confirmed that Lebba Moosa is mentioned at least
thrice in Dutch documents. This is one occasion when an oral tradition is in
the process of becoming credible.
I
feel that each of us should realize our own importance to history. If I had not
started this blog the things that I know or have heard of would have gone along
with me. It is my requests that everyone, whenever they have the time, note
down their memories and observations and events they participate. The
importance of such records would be judged by future historians.
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