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Sign the Petition requesting The Honble Minister of State for Environment
and Forests (I/C) to maintain the moratorium on issuing further
environmental clearances for mining activities in Goa
http://goanvoice.org.uk/miningpetition.php
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Indigenous scholars are taking on Goan and Indian history. And that is great.
Reviewing old accounts may not appear as simple at it sounds. Sometimes the
historian does not want to be a mere collator of published facts; but rather
provide their own interpretations of events, in an effort to sound original and
to give the writings a personal twist.
Challenge for historians is to seek answers to the right questions and place
facts in context in a forthright unbiased manner. For this, there needs to be
a balance and correlation between the narrative, analysis and the conclusions.
New opinion has to be backed by real facts. These need to cover the events on
the ground as well as political, social, economic and intellectual issues of
the time. History is evaluating how one event leads to another. Looking
at history (facts, successes and failures) in the present context is
simplistic. One needs to view events through the eyes, minds and environment of
those who lived it.
Those who go out on a limb and give their own judgment (interpretations) with
or without their bias and prejudice, stand the risk of being corrected by later
historians, including their students. Yet, such individuals have good company
of some famous peers like Edward Gibbon, (1737-94) historian and British Member
of Parliament who wrote "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire" in six volumes. He is dismissed the Byzantium period as "a tedious
and uniform tale of weakness and misery." Today most ascribe to the enduring
1000-year empire, the achievements of preserving and expanding ancient
Greco-Roman philosophy, legal concepts, and government practices; creating its
unique architecture and magnificent works of art; stabilizing early
Christianity and bringing it to the whole Slavic race of Eastern Europe;
protecting Europe during the Middle Ages (600-1500) from Muslim invasion; and
laying the intellectual groundwork for
European Renaissance.
Regards, GL
