History: To Think About

So while hanging out today, I found some interesting topic to think about. May I will give more thought/search about it. But, it’s already 1:30am and a world cup game between Germany and Ghana going on. So I just want to put this post on the wall and go back to football.

Now, if one reads the history of Bengal during the rule of Mughal one would definitely come across the name Shaista Khan.

Photo: Wikipedia

He is well-known for the prosperity of the region during his Tenure and we have him in our history books as a creditor of making things available to people of Bengal. Like people could buy 320 kilograms of rice with 1 Taka only, cows were 2.5 Taka and many more.

The question raised was-whether it would have been possible? I mean think about it. It was 1600 and the amount of paddy you need to get that amount of rice and the amount of land you need to produce that amount of paddy. Considering 1600, there were no fertilizers like now and also no way to save the crops in case of disease or bug attacks. Also, there would have been much more wastage during the collection of rice from paddy. Now, considering all this-how much could have a farmer cultivated in one season in a specific amount of land? Also, would they gotten the full One Taka? They would all depend on this price as the rest of the year they could grow another harvest.

The point being though  we think Bengal was prosperous, may not be the case actually. There were peace and harmony-written by people who used to come and travel. Who used to become state guests and take gifts from the state as well.

History can be changed, as we have seen again and again, over time. But facts can’t. The discussion may have taken place among others as well. But to me it is important that we know there can be other sides of history as well. One such thought provoking book is about USA by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick.

Hope to work on this in future. Let’s see if I can get the time or not.


3 thoughts on “History: To Think About

  1. very true. facts can’t be changed; history is different from differing vantage points…can history be repeated do you think? Is there an order to it all, or is history just chaotic?

    1. No two things can be same in this world, I belief so do two different time frame/history. The pattern may be similar.

      Chaotic or ordered, depends on perspective. It’s like a scatter plot, where you try to make meaning of the dots. Some do find a meaning, some don’t, some does not care. 🙂

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