Eshan Sharma Of Karwaan: History Is Riddled By Male Gaze, But Times Are Changing

To unshackle history from its inaccessibility roots and take it straight to the masses, Karwaan: The Heritage Exploration Initiative began its journey from a college at Delhi University. This student-led initiative uses social media to create an alternative space for discourses around history. It takes participants through the back alleys of the past with prominent historians such as Romila Thapar, Manu Pillai, Rana Safvi and many more.

"The idea was born during the end of my first year at Dayal Singh College, where I was doing a Major in history. The main objective was to take history away from classrooms to monuments, enabling students to get a hands-on experience. Studying history through textbooks is one thing, but seeing it through your eyes, is a different game altogether, a different experience. One cannot confine history within four walls. Fortunately, our college was in the vicinity of so many historical sites, monuments, and parks that gave us the push to take this initiative," said Eshan Sharma, its founder in an interview with SheThePeopleTV.

With volunteers, speakers and audience members from all over the world, Karwaan has achieved most of its aims in a very short span of time. They work to document lectures on mainstream political and economic history but have also found special fans of cultural history around the whole spectrum, from food to films and more.

In an interview with SheThePeopleTV, Eshan Sharma opened up on Karwaan's journey, their initiative on heritage walks, women's role in history and more.

We are witnessing a surge of women's protests all over the world right now. At one end, while Iran is seeing women take over the streets to protest hijab laws, close home here in India young girls are protesting for their rights to wear headscarves. Tell us a bit about women’s roles in protests throughout history.

Women have also been at the forefront of our independence struggle as well for instance Sarojini Naidu, Vijaylakshmi Pandit, and Kasturba Gandhi. Kasturba was a comrade to her husband Mahatama Gandhi, he wouldn’t have achieved what he has without her contribution. She was an integral part of his journey. The protests that are happening today, internationally or in India, are also a part of history, be it on headscarves or any other issue.

Women have always stood up for their rights and they will continue to do so for several causes of society. I think they play a big role in shaping history, often a significant role that we unfortunately sometimes ignore.

So do you think there has been an erasure when it comes to women’s roles in history? Have we been unkind while covering them?

I think at places their contribution was not highlighted as significantly as it should have been. And that was why we had a feminist movement in India led by prolific women like Uma Chakravarti, Urvashi Butalia and many more. Butalia is probably one of the most important scholars when it comes to historical writings. Her book The Other Side of Silence talks about women’s participation in the India-Pakistan partition, and their memories. Whenever we hear about partition, it is often about the men but there were millions of women who lost as much and probably more. Women were abducted, killed, raped during the partition. It took so many years for the writer to come out with the book which changed so many perspectives on participation.

There have been several instances like these, but I feel we can’t say history was unkind to anybody, though it was at times. But it’s the way history is written, ours is really riddled with the male gaze, though times are changing. I have been reading some great books, and some great accounts which talk about women, LGBTQIA+ and other ‘marginalised’ communities. We always say there is one kind of history, but there are multiple histories which we ignore. About time we start unravelling those different layers of our history and women form the one layer.

Karwaan recently conducted a heritage walk on Tawaifnama. Tell us a bit about it.

The walk on Tawaifnama is developed by our walk leader Gaurav Sharma. One of the oldest professions, Tawaifs at one point in history were the most educated and read people in our society. They played a big role in shaping our culture, these classical dance forms and songs are the results of those processes in which courtesans were a big part. We very fondly remember Begum Akhtar, who was a part of the Faizabad (now Ayodhya) courtesan family. Nargis’ mother Jaddan Bai was also a renowned courtesan of her time. However, Tawaif culture vanished after independence, and slowly deteriorated after the disappearance of Indian royalty. It changed into prostitution and sex work. Once the most prosperous profession is now considered as the lowest quarters of society.

Hence, through our work, we recall this transformation and nudge on how can we ignore this huge part of history. The role of Tawaifs is really underappreciated. The walk attempts to create awareness, helping people to look at history through a different perspective, look at people through a different lens.

In this age when everything is so readily available, how important do you think is to authenticate the documentation of history?

Historians play a big part in the authentication process. The inquiry of the path that he/she/they create, and how critical they remain of their sources, all form a part of their process. Many of us have forgotten that historians are trained craftsmen. One part of their training is to critically analyse and conduct the inquiry of the sources. It is true that we are living in a fast-moving, very forward society where there are shortcuts to everything, we can find various sources on the internet for any given topic. Though these sites help topics to be discoverable, they can also spread fake news. As an audience member, reader, a historian, one must reach out to scholars who have researched and studied it for years. Read them, read the interpretations, make up your mind and don’t rely on WhatsApp forwards.

To authenticate sources, we have to take so many things into account such as the context, timeframe and understand the politics of the time it was written. So many challenges. But that’s the beauty of history to have different angles to a past. History can’t be absolute, we can’t reconstruct it.

How do you take Karwaan forward from here? What are your plans for it?

Social media has enabled greatly all these historical platforms. At Karwaan, we are trying to create a repository of historical lectures, and academic conversations online which should be, must be and will be available for free for everybody to read, look at, understand and critically analyse. It is important to make history accessible which would in turn very positively affect the sense of public history in India. This repository will be open, engaging, inclusive and will include all sorts of themes. We have made history very boring with our classrooms, but in reality, it should be interactive and open. That is our mission to make history more conversational, inclusive and accessible.

Suggested Reading: Historian & Filmmaker Uma Chakravarti On Why It Is Important To Visually Show History