3 September 2024 : Daily Answer Writing
Q1) “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” Do you agree? Illustrate with the help of examples.
(150 Words/10 Marks)
ANS
The adage “those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it” signifies the importance of learning from history. History provides a key to manage the present problems by understanding similar problems faced in the past, adopting successful historical approaches, while taking care to avoid the mistakes of the past.
Incidents when lessons were learnt from history:
- During the framing of Indian Constitution, lessons learned from the experience of various countries about electoral franchise helped adopt universal electoral franchise from the inception of the Republic.
- In countries such as US and UK, electoral rights had been given to women, native tribes, or former slaves, only incrementally as a result of various social movements, including war and violence.
- Success of Gandhian strategy of non-violence/satyagraha for Indian struggle has been replicated by various African and Asian nations and protest movements against authoritarianism.
For example, Nelson Mandela’s struggle against apartheid.
- The historical experience of national emergency in 1975 provided a check against future authoritarianism and judicial capitulation. The system of PILs and judicial activism flowed from it. Governments’ attitude towards protest movements also became more accommodative.
Incidents when lessons of history were neglected:
- Climate change is said to have played critical role in end of old civilizations such as Sindhu- Saraswati, Mesopotamia and Egypt. But today, the Climate Change issue is not being given sufficient attention by the world despite increasing frequency of adverse weather events.
- The management of recent Covid-19 pandemic, especially the management of 2nd wave of pandemic in India, apparently ignored important historical lesson about the resurgence capability of a pandemic, which was known from the experience of the Spanish Flu of 1918. Similarly, people ignored the sufferings from the first wave and lockdown, and breached social distancing norms with impunity, which eventually brought about the second wave of the pandemic.
- The experience of a bloody partition and need for national fraternity seem to be lost as we see continuing incidents of mob violence and riots on matters ranging across religion, caste, region etc.
Therefore, as it is clear from the above examples, we have two choices: either learn from history and change the present for the betterment or neglect the mistakes of the past and be doomed to repeat the history.
