At the Ragged Edges of Time: The Legend of Tilak and the Normalization of Historical Narratives

Abstract

This article questions our understanding of the construction of histories based on a variety of sources. It critiques the power of ‘the word’and the fetish of the archive in the construction of histories and alters the focus by placing the material remnants of the past at centre stage, with oral narratives and archival texts as supporting ‘illustrations’. It does this by focusing on Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s purported role in mobilizing a festival in tribute to the god Ganapati as part of the incipient anti-colonial struggle in the 1890s. It argues that colonial, nationalist and scholarly discourse converge to perpetuate the notion that Tilak was the pioneer of the public festival, when ethnographic work of material culture reveals that there were in fact other community leaders who pioneered the politicized festival. Tilak was more a publicist: he wrote about the festival in the press giving it his wholehearted support as well as helping to disseminate the phenomenon across the region. The article seeks to demonstrate how academic discussions in scholarly articles and books, however critical of hegemonic formations, have unwittingly perpetuated the views of not just colonial discourse, but also contemporary nationalists in India.