Guard freedom to dispute: Prez
Nothing should lie outside realm of argument, says President
President Pranab Mukherjee has said that the freedom to doubt, disagree and dispute intellectually must be protected as an essential pillar of democracy. Nothing should lie outside the realm of reason and, therefore, of discussion and argument. Such freedom is vital for the progress in any field,” Mr Mukherjee said.
Inaugurating the Indian History Congress on the Kerala University Campus at Karyavattom here on Thursday, Mr Mukherjee said, “we must keep our eyes open for unfamiliar ideas and be ready to consider a range of different inferences and assumptions.”
He also warned historians against the intrusion of personal prejudice into historical interpretation.
“In my view, every branch of knowledge prospers only when clinical objectivity is maintained,” he said.
“It is often the case in history that evidence is either so scare that the room for speculation is extremely wide or is so massive that the historian is unable to explore more than a small part of the available data,” he said.
“It is natural to love one’s country and see as much glory in its past as one can detect. However, patriotism should not result in blinkered approaches to interpreting history or a compromise with truth to justify an argument of choice,” he said.
“There is no conflict or contradiction between the promotion of regional history and the pursuit of the history of the country as a whole. Indeed, the more we enrich the history of the whole country,” he said. “No society is perfect and history must be also seen as a guide on what went wrong and what were the contradictions and weaknesses of the past,” he said.
“An objective pursuit of history, such as our best historians have attempted, requires an impartial mind of a judge and not the mind of an advocate,” the President told the reporters here.
Governor P. Sathasivam, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, ministers Kadakampally Surendran, C. Raveendranath, Opposition Leader Ramesh Chennithala, Kerala University vice-chancellor Dr P. K. Radhakrishnan, Indian History Congress president Prof Shireen Moosvi and several others attended the function on Thursday.