Where does the common man feature in our history books and biographies of famous men? Nowhere, it seems
FINALLY, the autobiography of former US president Bill Clinton, My Life, has reached the newsstands all over the world and is proving to be interesting to read, exploring many aspects of a president marked by some topsy-turvy events.
Perhaps one of the most the bulkiest autobiographies (957 pages) ever, My Life may be quite revealing. It has already drawn a huge number of readers and is bound to stir all sections of the US population and abroad.
Autobiographies are considered important source of history, because they explore various facets of public life through the eyes of a man at the centrestage. History would not have been in a distorted shape as it is today if people, other than the rulers, had written autobiographies. The lies and missing links we find in history are mainly due to the official chroniclers who recorded less truth and concealed many significant factors.
American history is more interesting since as a nation the Americans are comparatively ‘young’ and they had to struggle to reach where they are today. Rising from a few scattered groups of migrants to the present most powerful nation, the American nation witnessed some of the happiest as well grim periods of its existence. It failed in many regards and achieved successes in other fields. Against this background. autobiographies of the elite of the American society make a difference and leave impressions in formulating various policies for the future.
At the same time they also make colourful reading for the general public. For instance, the autobiography of Rosalyn Carter takes the reader to every corner of the White House, even to the kitchen. The budget for the living of the first couple of the United States, visitors, the gifts presented to the president or the first lady and other facets of the White House, which otherwise could not be known by any other source, make the autobiography a great source of information on the contemporary history of the US.
Similarly, Kennedy took a different approach in The Profiles in Courage, though it is not an autobiography but reflects the angles with which he saw the world and his compatriots.
CONTRAST: The high-profile autobiographies have been written in almost all parts of the world, but the tragedy with our history is that we have seen some of the worst eras of our existence where plunder, loot and state terrorism have overshadowed the factual aspects of history writing. This aspect is so deeply marked that our history has become a jumble of lies and inconsistencies, misrepresenting every figure that shapes society.
The lamentable fact of our history is that there is no record of what happened before Mohammad bin Qasim arrived in this region. Take the example of Sindh and let’s analyze what happened here during the Arghun rule (1499) and afterwards. The Arghun, Tarkhan, Kalhora, Talpur families feature between 1499 to 1843, and there is no mention of what happened to the life of the average people, trade, industry, foreign policy and welfare works at the time. The only record one finds is of the armed invasions, treacheries, defeats and condemnation of anti-government people who sought social justice and welfare.
During the days of Mughal subedars, Mir Yousuf Mirak, a waqaye-i-nigar (reporter) of Delhi in Thatta’s court recorded the atrocities of subedar Mirza Ahmed Beg and his brother Mirza Yousuf to secretively inform king Shahjehan Delhi. These subedars fleeced people, forcing many to migrate and others to die in abject poverty. It was during this period that Sindh witnessed droughts, famines, epidemics and civil strifes. Being closely related to the queen, nobody dare raise the voice against the injustices meted out to the ordinary people or the loot they resorted to. It was Mir Yousuf Mirak, who in protest left the mansabdari and tried to spend life on Madad-i-ma’ash or the subsistence allowance paid by the royal court so that he could collect and write the details of cruel acts of the rulers.
The moment the Mughal Nawab came to know about Mirak’s ‘adventure’ he ordered his assassination, which Mirak apprehended and fled. He was chased up to Multan, but by then Mirak had crossed Indus and reached Delhi. The report known as Mazhar Shahjehani was completed in 1634. The action did not match the brutalities but the report went in hiding till it was traced in Iran, translated and edited in the 20th century. Today, one of its copies lies in the Punjab University, Lahore and forms one of the most important pieces of history, specially the details in which the Mughal rulers behaved with their subjects, inflicted miseries over them and acted in the most anti-people way.
There were many other chronologies written on behalf of the kings, rulers, rajas and nawabs but truth was not made part of them.
This kind of approach towards history did not change even after attaining Independence in 1947, and ironically continues till now. This kind of apathy can be imagined from the fact that to date we have not been able to produce an authentic biography of the founder of the nation; a documented history of the Pakistan movement; an accurate record of the political developments leading to the creation of the nation; collect speeches and writings of the Quaid; and above all the documents which the political parties produced during the historic movement.
The independence struggle was not a movement launched by an individual or a group of people, but it was shared by innumerable people who, though, have not been mentioned in documents. This gigantic objective was inconceivable to attain without their participation. Poets, writers, newsmen, average party workers, sympathizers, financiers, even children took part in the movement that created history.
If the scattered writings of some individuals, collections of memoirs of the Quaid’s compatriots, reports of newsmen and various commentaries are put together, many will find a number of dissimilarities which demand an in-depth and sincere research. Even the question of the Quaid’s place of birth remains disputed.
Let us take the accounts recorded by his sister, Ms Fatima Jinnah. They went missing for decades and after seeing a number of hands and alterations made by every individual claiming to be close associates of the Quaid, have made the biography dubious after it was finally published by the Quaid-i-Azam Academy in the late 1980s, entitled My Brother.
It is said that many facts were distorted only on the misconception that some remarks referred to the Quaid were inappropriate for the Quaid’s personality. Similar is the case with Allama Iqbal. When the letters written by the Allama to his German teacher first appeared in the press, a hue and cry was raised, saying they would tarnish the image of the Allama. Identical is the approach with the lives of other leaders and celebrities. Writing facts about poets, writers, intellectuals, spiritual and political leaders and even businessmen is considered a sin.
In defining history, facts cannot be simply deleted or even changed, and if this is done, history gets distorted. Let us forget the era of alien rulers who had their own objectives of recording history in the name of glory and attainment; but now they are no more and there seems to be no reason to continue the same approach anymore.
History must be corrected, as it is the collective record of not only the conquerors, but also the conditions of the peace-loving citizens, tillers, educationists, traders, farmers, etc, who form the core of a society. Without their mention, cognition of history cannot be achieved.
It is this exigency that from the beginning of the 20th century almost all nations attained a new awareness to find traces of their lost history and re-write the facts that had gone into oblivion at the hands of exploiters, plunderers and usurpers. Today even India is making efforts to re-record the events of significant as well as less important nature. They have shunned the concept that celebrities can’t make wrong decisions. This has proved to be helpful in correcting many misconceptions and a new account of events is emerging. If facts are excluded from the narrations of Marx, Lenin, Brezhnev, Stalin, Gandhi, Ambedkar, Malina Mercury, Errol Flynn, etc, or are reworded, there would have been disfigured personalities before us facing more intricate questions than today. Whatever has been written in the name of autobiographies, such as From memory (Firoz Khan Noon), Friends not masters (Ayub Khan), Shahabnama (Qudratullah Shahab), Witness to surrender (Siddiq Salik) etc, does not reveal much except speaking about the personal moves and decisions of these famous personalities. None has ever spoken about the people in the street or their social conditions.
In fact, we are indoctrinated with centuries-old perception of history that nations cannot exist without kings, knights, rulers, battles, victories and defeats. The irony is that we too have accepted it and never tried to establish that it is the people — the ordinary peasant, growers, labourer, teacher and herdsman — that turn a people into a nation. Without their mention, history will be a fallacy.
Today when we try to trace back some important events, it becomes difficult to find the truth. And if there is any sincere effort made, the researcher faces a lot of lies, half-told truths, fantasies and myths. And above all, the political taboos that hound every scholar. At different stages he finds himself amid an array of horrendous narrations that do not quantify the outcome of history. The role of the common man — the maker of the real history and master of the nation — has still not been discerned. The tradition of autobiographies can make the historians’ job easier and reveal much than conceal.
Where does the common man feature in our history books and biographies of famous men? Nowhere, it seems 
