Historian par excellence

M Rajivlochan

This book is about Eric Hobsbawm as a person. Reading it one can form one's own estimation on how a young white man interested in jazz music, became enamoured, first of communism, and when communism showed itself to be a god that failed, of the left.  

The love for the left in Hobsbawm was merely a manifestation of his intense concern for the weak and downtrodden, their relative helplessness before the institutions of the state and his deep commitment to scientific ways of empowering the weak, restraining the arbitrariness of the state in the hope that all this will make the world a better place. 

A deep commitment to humanism and systematic scientific thinking was all that was there to his Marxism. Even when he sat down to pen down his own life story, he wrote an autobiography that was a history of his times rather than the history of Eric, the historian. That gap has now been filled by Richard Evans, himself a prolific and well-read historian.

In May 2004, when it seemed likely that the BJP would return to form the government after the general elections, Hobsbawm expressed his displeasure, in a meeting at Chicago, at the existence of a ‘Hindu’ government in India. However, a few weeks later the UPA came to power with Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister. This provided Hobsbawm a chance to visit India. "The most fascinating and the most miserable country imaginable", he described India as he participated in a large number of discussions in Delhi. Much of the hostility that Hobsbawm entertained towards Hinduism, came from his understanding that was filtered through the writings of the more popular Indian historians. Some were his students, others colleagues whose writings he admired. Historians are the monopoly suppliers of the past, Eric Hobsbawm used to say. 

He claimed that 'Historians are to nationalism what poppy growers in Pakistan are to heroin addicts.' His claim was that historians 'supply the essential material for the market'. There was a certain elitist claim here, of only the history written by historians being legitimate history. Hobsbawm, of course, had had little experience of social media and the ability of people, at least in India, to do their own research, reach their own conclusion and then dis professional historians for all their errors and biases. 

There was also a certain romanticism involved here, in believing that what was portrayed as a 'majority' religion being oppressive towards the minorities. Hobsbawm was merely trying to side with those who he was told were 'oppressed'. It was precisely this kind of romanticism which had led him to talk about 'social banditry' in the 1960s.

By the turn of the century, Hobsbawm had become widely respected, frequently heard. He would give out words of wisdom to anyone who cared to listen. His words were seldom rancorous or abrasive. His effort was always to show continuities with the past and changes over time, identify the efforts of the weak and downtrodden to fight oppression and create a more equitable space for themselves. 

Hobsbawm had grown up at a time when the European world suffered world wars and extreme oppression by fascists. Historians till then had been grand policy advisers to governments. Not a single one of them had foreseen the disasters that fascism and the world wars would cause. Under the circumstances, a Marxist turn to history seemed of utmost importance. It enabled the historian to look at social and economic currents that tempered public life. 

A Marxist analytical strategy only enabled Hobsbawm to foresee a dark future for the world because of the behaviour of the social and political elite. But, it did not enable him to foresee dramatic transformations like Brexit that would be driven by the non-elite, just like the Marxist historians of India could not foresee the electoral rebellion of the common people against the political elite. 'Turn towards Hindutva' is how they condemn present changes in India. Wonder how Hobsbawm would have explained Brexit.