Dr. Avinash Kumar conducted this workshop on the 25th March examining the relationship between history and literature and how they reflect and shape each other.

The session began with an introduction to the methodology followed by historians and the importance of reading and distinguishing between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ histories. Dr. Kumar spoke of his teacher, esteemed historian K.N. Pannikar, how he taught him not to just read but understand and, in so doing, think independently. He then referred to nineteenth-century writers like Oscar Wilde and Hayden White to explain how stories and texts tell us about their storytellers. Stories about contemporary times such as Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities tell us about the human motives and sociocultural realities of the immediate post-French Revolution period. Different literary genres and tropes are used to promote different types of narratives. Dr. Kumar gave a recent example, referring to how Dhurandhar: The Revenge (2026) inserts demonetization into its plot in a bid to justify the policy. He also spoke about the writings of E.H. Carr, John Reed and Boris Pasternak to refer to how one event, the Russian Revolution, was perceived and communicated differently depending on the writer. 

Thus, the key questions to keep in mind whilst reading historical literature are: what is the text trying to say? Why is it saying that (keeping in mind the context)? And how is it received? Literature in history reveals gender identities, challenges accepted norms and gives insight into their social reception. It articulates a sense of multiculturalism through the experiences of the writers, the times and places they write about and the audience who read their works.  

In India, literature emerged as a discipline in the late nineteenth-century in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. The British Raj considered education to be essential for imperial consolidation, but educated Indians also harboured strong feelings of anti-colonial nationalism. Initially seen as an unproductive subject compared to maths, science and economics, women and workers treated it as entertainment. In the colonies, literature was meant to be a cultural tool of colonization but native resistance movements successfully converted it into a strong tool to articulate power. History as a discipline provides us with facts and material remains in order to have a nuanced understanding of the lived experiences and thoughts of people, literature is essential. 

Dr. Kumar then referred to the early 20th century as an era of important developments for Hindi literature in India. He referred to how linguistic changes in Radheshyam Kathavachak’s rendition of the Ramayana, among other works, reflected changes on the ground, such as the increasing communalism in the 1930s-40s. He also used Premchand’s critique of historical novels to speak of the significance of writing about one’s own times, to record their own struggles. This tied into questions of who is part of the struggle and who is not and larger themes of nationhood, social reconstruction and the story of ordinary people within these grand narratives.

After the session, questions were taken from the audience who raised queries on how to catch and rectify propaganda and how to identify biased narratives in texts presented to them as ‘correct’ versions. The workshop helped the audience understand the complex interplay between history as literary narrative and literature as historical source material.

This article has been written by Pinju Sanjay, an undergraduate student pursuing history at the University of Delhi.