We have traditionally split history into two eras, BC and AD. Don’t ask me about the 32 years in between. I have no clue. But one thing’s clear: AD overrides BC as it’s much better chronicled. Civilisation and history go together. The Guttenberg press in 1450 was such a powerful instrument of change because it allowed us to preserve history through printed books. If one copy got lost, others survived. Earlier books, hand written, lost us an irreplaceable part of history every time they were stolen, vandalised or lost. That’s the reason why burning or destroying books, a la the Nazis, is still considered such a heinous crime. Those who destroy books and libraries destroy history.
But history’s no longer easy to destroy. Two technological marvels have changed everything. Digital is one. The other is the internet. It’s my belief that future generations will see the world not as BC and AD but as BI and AI, the internet dividing the two eras. I should know. My own life has been sliced into two and I can see the impact of this change. No, I’m not talking about how useful the net is, or digital technology. I’m talking about how the future will remember us, about the making of history, what will be part of it, what will quietly disappear. Technology has become the new arbiter.
An easy way to explain this is to give my own example; then extrapolate from it. But that’s dreadfully boring. So let me just point out that my life’s been a series of journeys, as a poet, photographer, journalist, editor, TV host, painter, member of parliament, maker of films. My friend Vijay Mukhi and I started the first cybercafé in India at a time no one knew what the internet was. Since it arrived right in the midst of my life, half my life remains in the Dark Ages. The other half has been so well illuminated that it distorts any understanding of who I am, what I do, what I want to be remembered for. If the net can do this to one life, imagine what it can do to our collective history. Everything AI would be incandescent, memorable. Everything BI would be faded, remembered only in bits and pieces, based on whatever survives on crumbling newsprint and scratched, grainy celluloid.
This means even the worst film makers of today will be remembered more than the greatest film makers of the BI era whose works were not preserved. James Cameron will look more important to future generations than Satyajit Ray and Vittorio De Sica. Justin Bieber will appear more popular than Elvis and the Rolling Stones. R-Patz will be remembered as a bigger star than Errol Flynn and Cary Grant put together. Borat will be bigger than Chaplin. Alice in Wonderland will stay alive as a Johnny Depp film. People of the future may be forgiven for thinking Lewis Carroll wrote its screenplay. Just as millions of Indians will remember Aamir Khan as the actor, not as the last century’s greatest classical singer. The net, I fear, will distort history, perspectives, our understanding of things.
Will the future remember Balasaraswati or Birju Maharaj, even though digital archives and the net will not give them half the space devoted to Dance India Dance? Satyajit Ray’s cinematic tribute to Balasaraswati has disintegrated and even its restoration in California has stopped owing to lack of funds. I tried to once put together an album of music by Allauddin Khan, the greatest exponent of the Maihar gharana, who created over 42 original ragas, father of Ali Akbar and Annapurna, Ravi Shankar’s wife. But archives are in such sorry state, I abandoned the idea.
So will Rahujan Mahajan be remembered, not Balraj Sahni? Rakhi Sawant, not Madhubala? Will anyone read Nirad C Chaudhuri? Can future generations find access to copies of Harijan? Will they forget Dr Ambedkar and remember Mayavati as the great benefactor of the lower castes? Will we think of the Mahatma as Ben Kingsley? Will 3 Idiots outlast Dostoevsky’s Idiot? Will we remember Hafeez Contractor as a bigger architect than the guy who built Humayun’s tomb? Will future generations remember Amir Khusru when no one even knows what he looked like? Will Mika outlive Kishore Kumar?
I will certainly be disappointed if I’m remembered only for the films we made, not for the sixty odd books I wrote, all out of print, the magazines and newspapers I edited for which I wrote hundreds of articles, none alas preserved, the thousands of photographs I have taken, of people, landscapes, historic events, all lost forever, my many award winning calendars, the tiny poetry magazine I published and edited in my teens which featured India’s greatest writers, poets, intellectuals. Not a single copy of that magazine remains in my library. How do you expect the net to keep track of it? So, given the way we have archived our past, won't the net distort our entire understanding of history, music, literature, movies and the arts by keeping alive only pop history in the AI era?
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