History in the present

What is history? It is reading the past not the present.

The United States of America changed all that on November 5, 2008. The inherently progressive imagination of the founding fathers of the United States found sublime expression. Nationhood found present expression. No tired or nostalgic reading of the past but an empowered and inclusive writing of future possibilities.

Inclusiveness is a choice- Barack Obama chose to rise beyond race and spoke for the people of the nation rather than of particular people. The people legitimized that choice. History can only be created from such a process.

Perhaps that is why the history of India stops with our independence in 1947. We celebrate that moment and simultaneously lament the partition that followed-nationhood with a price. We constantly read our identity into that moment and craft our present by reliving or revising that past. We are past imperfect.

That is why we shed a tear on November 5, 2008. Not because we were a part of history but because we were a part of someone else’s history. We witnessed the creation of history that we did not help write. As Indians, perhaps we never will.