You have heard from your friend, or You also say this “I have no interest in History” or “History is so boring because learning dates is such a boring work to do in this subject.” All the students somewhere do not like history because of dates. As we all know, History has many dates to learn. But the question is Dates are important or not? So, Let’s know.
There was a time when history was synonymous with dates. But History is all about comparison. Everything has a history such as Tea, Railways, Newspaper, Mobile Phone on which you are seeing this now. Then Everything must have a time period because people did not learn to make tea in a day, there is a process that has a time period not a single day is just needed for such a huge process. But it is actually incorrect to fix a single date to processes. There can be no one clear date for any type of process. Such as take an example of a newspaper.
Nowadays every morning newspaper comes into your house and you read the news for knowing what is going on in the world. Now just think about the past times; From where do the people get news of anything. So it is like that uses of newspaper in the world or our Indian state has a time period. We can not define that process in date only.
Why do we associate History with dates?
Earlier, there was a time when History was an account of battles and huge events. History was all about the leaders and their strategies.
There were two ways of recording History. First was dates in History was recorded, such as when the king was crowned, when did he marry, when did he died and many other events which the king wants. And the second one did not date-centric; it was based on events. For eg: How people earned their livelihood And How society developed and changed etc.
Which Dates?
Dates were dependent on the battles and events of that time. In India, History which was written by British Historians would consider the rule of the Governor-General as important. Starts with Warren Hasting (First Governor General of India) and ends with Lord Mountbatten (Last Viceroy of India).
Their categorization will revolve around the Governor Generals of British. Indians and their activities will not be considered at all. Because History was being written by British historians, they will write about themselves only; why would they consider Indians in that. But when we will see History from an Indian perspective, a new set of dates will become more important for us to know.
Conclusion – If we change our focus on events, the dates will automatically change. Dates are important in History but not dates only; events also matter.