Inking India’s history for posterity

The team of India Ink talk about bringing their dream project — a social platform to make history accurately accessible — to life
Inking India’s history for posterity
Inking India’s history for posterity

 In a country where history is being redefined to suit the current political narrative, media houses — to whatever extent — find themselves rooting for the populist discourse, where education is often reduced to remembering dates and its various casualties, there is an ever-present need to rework the information mechanism. Even as select journalism houses, a few institutions and many like-minded citizens are stepping up towards this goal, doing their part in this ecosystem is the trio — Thomas Manuel, Shireen Azam and Visvak Ponnavolu — behind India Ink. The digital platform was brought to life with one simple objective: to simplify history and make it accessible for the common people. A year since its inception, the mission has only grown bigger.

Making history digital

For Visvak, it was personal encounters with the real state of history and its education that had him taking up the cause. “I was in journalism for four-five years and went to London to do my Masters (in History). There, I was reading about Indian history and politics. The kind of stuff that was basic reading for a Masters student was blowing my mind on a regular basis; because it was so different from what is popularly understood as Indian history (what more do school textbooks offer on caste beyond the cursory mention of the abolishment of untouchability post Independence?). I was also frustrated that this basic reading was so inaccessible to ordinary people. First, academic texts are hard to access because they are usually behind a paywall. Secondly, even when you get copies, they are very hard to read because they are so long and dense. So came the thought that why not make this more accessible?” recounts Visvak, explaining the genesis of the project. 

The team decided to leverage the strengths of the Internet to democratise these learnings, gathered from different sources of academia. Information is presented in the form of easy-to-consume articles that break down research papers, and digital whiteboard videos to present historic concepts that still remain relevant. What’s more, they present all this content on every one of their social media — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp and email, ensuring that you get to reach the information in the form most convenient to you.

And so we have abridged versions of Lata Mani’s 1987 paper on why Sati being abolished had nothing to do with protecting women and AR Venkatachalapathy’s research (written in 2002) on the contentious history of Tamil Brahmins and coffee. The six videos they produced in the past year touches upon several aspects of colonialism (the creation of a Hindu majority to how the British rule left India poor but some Indians crazy rich) and dives into issues of the present day (questioning the presence of an Indian middle class and the tussle between religious politics and caste politics) as well. 

Tapping on strengths

India Ink has been delivering on their other promise just as rigorously — ‘We *always* give references!’. “We link (the articles) to the research paper so people know who the author is; if they want to read more, they can. Even for our videos, we rely only on academic papers and cite sources,” notes Thomas. They bring creativity in its presentation, finding means to make the subject more palatable. “We put a lot of effort into making the videos funny and casual, and relevant to issues that are generally being talked about. We try to connect (present-day) political issues with historical events and tell a story,” he says. 

And this is where training in journalism has come in handy for all three. Visvak and Thomas have had stints as reporters, with Visvak having worked for The Hindu and Buzzfeed, and Thomas’s work having featured in The Nib, The Wire and the likes. Shireen, currently a DPhil researcher at the University of Oxford, was previously at the Economic & Political Weekly, where she founded the digital initiative EPW Engage, a project which explored new grounds in making Indian academic research accessible and exciting for scholars and non-scholars alike. Visvak suggests that the entire enterprise rests on journalistic instincts. “The fundamental lens through which I look at anything is how do I communicate this in a way in which the reader can easily grasp and understand.”

“The most important thing that we do is thinking about why an audience will care about something, what they will be interested in. That is where our journalism fits in. Academics can write and not think about the general audience whereas journalists are constantly thinking about that. If a reader doesn’t get any value from your article, why did you even write it? That comes in,” elaborates Thomas. For Shireen, this rigour has defined how everything on the platform is crafted – from each headline to every tweet. “Public-facing material is very different and academia is not used to that,” she points out. 

Breaking big

For all this effort, the results have been overwhelmingly positive so far. Anecdotal feedback from teachers/professors making use of their videos in classrooms (from India to Yale) or about people managing to explain concepts such as reservation with the help of their material has been encouraging, they say. This has motivated them to collaborate with those in need – NGOs looking to make videos of the work they do or professors and academicians wanting to turn their research papers into public information capsules. 

Yet, their ability to keep up this work relies on how much funding the platform continues to bring in, they say. “We’re trying to work with universities, for, at the end of the day, they produce so much work. There’s a potential in using the Internet and social media and most academics don’t bridge that gap. We’re hoping to bridge that,” says Shireen. Such collaborations and grants would also allow them to expand their work and produce and lot more in the coming year. But it all remains to be seen. Until then, there’s always another paper to break down or a concept to explain.

To know more or make donations, visit: indiaink.org

Related Stories

No stories found.
Indulgexpress
www.indulgexpress.com