Barbara D. Metcalf, the president of the AHA, is a wonderful historian of Islam in South Asia. I recommend reading her short note, Historians and Chemical Engineers, in the February 2010 issue of Perspectives on History.
History may in some ways be primarily the purview of professionals, but it is also an intimate part of personal identity and a critical element in social belonging. It is learned in multiple dimensions of everyday life. Scholarly publications, and arguments communicated in a variety of settings by professional historians are, at best, only one source of anyone's convictions about the past. This is because arguments from history become justifications for, and explanations of, public policy and public life more generally.
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History does not tell us what to do about ethnic stereotypes or same-sex marriage or anything else. But an analytical examination of the past illuminates the frameworks of our perceptions, and helps us see the origins of present predicaments more clearly. Maybe, a clear exposition of documentary evidence will make my correspondent reflect and reexamine his views, if not change them.
Having just taught a class on public/popular consumption of historical narratives, I have renewed my faith in the belief that as historians we must reach beyond the academic market to make primary sources and credible secondary analysis available to as wide of an audience as possible.
Thanks, Metcalf's note is welcome indeed. The problem she identifies -- the inevitable implication of history (i.e. arguments about the past) with public policy (i.e. arguments about the present) -- seems to me insoluble, in that it presumably means that even the best intentioned historians must necessarily make political judgments. Thus, to take the Somnath (or broader medieval Delhi Sultanate) examples, one cannot avoid the squarely political decision of HOW to disturb the supremacy of dodgy narratives about the past: e.g. by rebutting the assumption/claim that there was a programmatic conversion agenda without more; or by squarely addressing the truly emotional charge carried by accounts and cultural memories (however constructed) of temple destruction, by not downplaying the latter but by explaining the contexts, interrogating the valence traditionally imparted to these accounts, etc. Progressive historians have utilized both approaches (among many others, of course), and I did find myself wondering about what approach Metcalf took with her interlocutor -- I feel the note would have illustrated the dilemma she was talking about better had we been provided some additional color. Absent such color I was forced to rely on my assumptions about how such exchanges "normally" go (the liberal historian; the right-wing interlocutor; etc.)...
Re: "Having just taught a class on public/popular consumption of historical narratives, I have renewed my faith in the belief that as historians we must reach beyond the academic market to make primary sources AND credible secondary analysis available to as wide of an audience as possible." Agreed, but I assume you intend the "and" I have capitalized seriously. i.e. I am not so convinced of the utility of primary sources divorced from the secondary analysis -- in fact the problem with much right-wing historiography in India IMO is the uncritical presentation of primary sources as if these often-complicated, always long-past texts, were self-explanatory. In fact contextualization -- i.e. the decision whether or not to even deploy contextualization (even apart from the basic issue of which source is selected) -- itself becomes a useful political tool: thus on medieval temple destruction the court history of this or that Tughluq is deemed self-explanatory, as ending any further discussion; whereas if the text is the Manusmriti then suddenly the right doesn't feel anything intelligent can be said about it absent immersion in the relevant contexts...
Metcalf says "Maybe, a clear exposition of documentary evidence will make my correspondent reflect and reexamine his views, if not change them." My impression is that many times this documentary evidence comes from those who have a stake in the system at that time; for example karnams or the writers of inscriptions.