Designing proper hypotheses of ancient India.
Designing proper hypotheses of ancient India.
How to develop proper hypotheses about possible realities of ancient India so that we arrive at the truth and not feed into any bias.
You may have seen the public debate about the dating of the Mahabharata and the mix-up between the Western concept of “caste” vs the Indian concept of “Jaati-Varna”. We are going to have more such debates, and popular narratives will either be proven or busted as we unearth the real history of India. But if we are to reach such a state, we need to understand how to develop hypotheses.
What are hypotheses, and why are they important?
A hypothesis is essentially a proposition or an idea that we want to verify through research.
But it is not pulled out of hat. It is based on the scientific process. In simple terms, the existence of the proposition is “suggested” either logically or because some bits of evidence discovered hint at it. The proposition is often a combination of logical deduction, data, inference, idea or even imagination.
It is not necessary that the proposition is always true. But it always leads us to a better understanding of the subject. For a few centuries, scientists had the hypothesis that there existed a planet between Mercury and the Sun. They even named this planet Vulcan. This hypothesis was founded upon the abnormal behaviour of Mercury. When Einstein came, we realised that there was no Vulcan, and the hypothesis pointed to shortcomings of Newtonian physics. It led us to Quantum Physics and the theory of relativity.
For the best research, you spend a lot of time formulating your hypotheses. It takes a lot of research, understanding, debate, experimentation, data collection JUST to arrive at good hypotheses.
What Werner Heisenberg, a scholar of Vedanta, said is actually true. If we don’t formulate the hypotheses properly all our research effort can confuse and confound rather than clarify and explain.
What we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
Wener Heisenberg
Lack of proper hypotheses in Indian historical research.
Indian research into its own past was scuttled and Marxist historians were gatekeeping the scientific inquiry and analysis. Indic historians were denied access and scholarship for decades. This reality started changing after a non-interfering government finally came to power in 2014. With the availability of information, access to sources, the power of the internet, and the audience reach of social media, it was as if Indic research scholarship was finally unleashed.
However, not all well-intentioned scholars understand the scientific research process. Most conflate between the following:
the reality of Bharat at a particular point in time
the forward-looking aspirations of Bharat at THAT point in time
the observations of Bharat at a particular time.
the reasons (WHY) given by then ancestors for why Bharat was how it was at THAT point in time.
how should Bharat be now
How should Bharat be in the future.
The result is that we have a debate as to what should be our opinion on historical events, culture, and personalities even before the analysis is complete. We readers see it as a clash between two personalities vehemently debating two positions without resolutions. But all (dare I say) such debates can be resolved.
Debates can be resolved by designing proper hypotheses.
When we apply scientific clarity to our study of Bharat, we will be able to unravel our history dispassionately and factually. It appears some scientific coordination is required between Indic research scholars. Sadly, the research institutes that usually lay this foundation are infiltrated by Leftist distortians.
Thankfully, some Indic historians are taking steps in the right direction. These are, as yet, baby steps but salutary nevertheless. I hope historians like Sandeep Balakrishna of The Dharma Dispatch are able to create these institutions.
Till then
Let us be kind to Indic scholars. After all, it is only now, after centuries, that we are learning and telling our own history.