History repeats itself

I am passionate about history. I like reading and knowing more and more I can at every given opportunity to know history. I clearly remember that I hated the subject of ‘History’ when I was in school. The dates and names were so scary to remember that I always fumbled. The only option was mugging them up to somehow pass my exams. I am sure, the intend of the creators of this subject was not to force kids into mugging up something that make no sense to them and something that they may possibly never use in their life at any point of time. I had no idea where Makrana was from where the marble for Taj Mahal was brought. I had no interest either, but had little choice to mug it up by punning Makrana with ‘Mar Jana’ that means ‘To Die’ in my mother tongue Hindi. It was an apt analogy as History was so dreaded to me.

history-repeats-itself-gun-control-posterlYears rolled by and as I grew up, my father and we two brothers developed a great bonding. Just because his job was of a different kind, it required him to know more about the past and present of the place and incidents. In early eighties when I was old enough to understand many things, he used to tell me stories of the division of India and what was India before that. More interestingly he told me specific incidents of the 1971 war that started creating a sense of curiosity in me. He used to spend a lot of his time reading several newspapers. Once he would finish them and if we were free from our studies, he would pick up some topic of history and talk about it and answered our questions. Eventually, I started reading books that I found in libraries that would help me douse my curiosity about the partial stories my father told me. Each book ended up igniting more such queries and I became an avid reader. A habit that I carry till date and continue to douse my curiosity that seems to be never ending. My father also told me on many occasions that most of the history as we know today is written by those who were the rulers and the victors. In most cases, true history was suppressed and rewritten, only to be revisited when societies were destroyed as a consequence.

Contrary to the childhood believe that history is a wasteful subject I realized later that it is probably one of the most important subject that every person should know more and more about. The subject is extremely interesting and fun once you get addicted to it and helps broaden one’s knowledge beyond boundaries.  I realized later that those individuals and societies who lack knowledge of history continue to commit same mistakes that harmed their forefathers. I have seen nations and societies disintegrating because their law makers did not learn anything from history. One such example that comes in my book ‘Spy from Unaula’ has been the India Pakistan division and subsequent wars. History has always taught that spreading and teaching hatred would only multiply the negative consequence that would only get doused with huge destruction. The Pakistani government did not learn when they created hatred between Punjabis and Bengalis of Pakistan. A third party India took advantage by dividing them and reducing the threat to India. Pakistan government did not learn even after that and continued to support terrorists and continues to suppress other ethnic groups. While this all will certainly lead to further division and destruction, the ultimate sufferers will be the people who choose to remain silent. My book ‘Spy from Unaula’ took such leaves out of history to illustrate how we suffer just because we choose to remain ignorant.

It is a famous proverb ‘History repeats itself’. If it repeats for good cause, it is most welcome, but we must ensure that this repetition of history does not bring miseries and destruction to the mankind.

My book finally has been converted to a Kindle friendly eBook that is available on Amazon, Google and Newshunt.

Do not allow history to repeat itself for bad. Try to repeat the history for good.


Alok Kumar


You may also like...

1 Response

  1. Nevertheless, while it is often remarked that “History repeats itself,” in cycles of less than cosmological duration this cannot be strictly true.

Leave a Reply

