“What is history but a fable agreed upon”

Theory Of Knowledge
“What is history but a fable agreed upon”
Did Hitler really kill himself? Was Gandhi really the most important piece in the jigsaw of India’s independence struggle? Are Nostradamus's prophecies really proven to be accurate in our history? Did the USA in reality have no idea about the Pearl Harbor attacks?
The precise answer to all these questions will in all likelihood always remain elusive to mankind. This is because there is no way foolproof method through which we can determine what really happened in our past. Maybe all the incidents that we do study in our textbooks are true. But we cannot be naïve enough to believe everything we study through these so-called “history” textbooks blindly. History is just like the passing of stories through the generations, either orally or in written accounts. But while it was passed from one generation to the next, it is inevitable that parts of these ‘stories’ may have been modified to suit the concerned parties. And since we have no other alternative than to believe these stories about crucial incidents in the past, we accept them as our history. Through out my school years, I always had reservations about the accuracy of all the incidents we studied in history. The authoritative tone adopted by these books only fueled my reservations. I just wondered that how could somebody recollect and retell tales of the past with such authority and command without any mention of evidences that would prove the same. For instance, “history” tells us that Gandhi tried hard to maintain the unity of India, is there any evidence to prove the same. But even he could have the desire to split the country into two (not necessarily a bad desire!) but just dint show the same and rather worked on it through a series of backroom dealings. These thoughts are ofcourse mere speculation with no concrete evidence, but we can see just how easy it is to manipulate what really happened in the past. Anyone with the authority and power can modify history to suit his/her propaganda and personal interests. A classic example of these ‘propaganda wars’ is the treatment of the issues of communism and capitalism in the history textbooks of the east and the west in the mid 1950s. While, the textbooks in Russia spoke of capitalism as the system for the rich, who had caused slavery and the massive differences in the standards of living between the rich and the poor in the west, it never mentioned anything about the evils of communism – Economic stagnation and government oppressions. Thus as a result the students grew up knowing only how Russia evaded the economic depression of 1929 through its communist structure but did not know anything about the large scale corruption and consumer slavery prevalent in Russia. The American textbooks too were biased to a similar extent. But in midst of all this, the world as a whole was deprived of the real truth. This case is true for almost every incident in history as textbook publishers’ main aim is profits and hence would not risk the government’s censure by going against the prevalent norm of the recollection of historical events. I hence agree completely with Bonaparte’s statement that history is merely a fable agreed upon