Mohammad Ismayeel
Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes or transcriptions of panned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people who participated in or observed past events and whose memories and perceptions of these are to be preserved as an aural record for future generations.
Oral history in the modern form of audio recordings had its origins in the Allan Nevins at the University of Columbia in the U.S.A. He began to record the memories of “persons signified in American life” in 1948. By contrast to this “great man” approach, the pioneer of oral history in England. George Evart Evans collected memories of life and work in Suffolk villages, where “the old survivors were books; These were first published in Ask the fellows who cut the Hay in 1956. Since the 1970’s oral history in Britain has grown from being a method in folklore studies to become a key component in community histories. Oral history continues to be an important means by which non-academics can actively participate in making history. However practitioners across a range of academic disciplines have also developed the method in to a way of recordings, understandings and archiving narrated memories. In Britain the oral History society has played a key role in facilitating and developing the use of oral history. Internationally oral historians are represented by the international oral history Association ( IOHA). According to Paul Thompson, in the voice of the past, oral history was the first kind of history.
Oral history can tell us shortly what has happened to an individual while narrating his story. At the heart of oral history is the interview. Oral historians have argued that in interviewing living witnesses the establish a different relationship with the past in contrast to other historians: so the greater consideration is being given to interviewers and interwees, researchers who are beginning their geneanologies or family histories . oral history gives history back to the people in their own words. And in giving a past, it also helps them towards a future of their own making.
Oral history and life stories help to create a truer picture of the past and the changing present, documenting the lives and feelings of all kinds of people, many otherwise hidden from history. Without it the history and sociology of our
time would be poor and narrow. There are both folklore and historical approaches for conducting oral history. With the folklorists, often it is not what is said, but how it is said, that is important. Often the interview focuses on individual characteristics. Folklorists consider the audio recording as a primary source document. The value we place on oral history will depend on our own perceptions of what are whom history is about, and what it is for. But arguably, it can offer unique opportunities and insights .
Since its inception as a craft, oral history changed its focus several times in order to reapply itself to new criticisms and concerns over its usefulness and effectiveness, changing from a “ fact – finding” to a history shaping process. The oral historians wanted not only to account for the important historical figures, but to “ employ oral history techniques to describe and empower the non literate and the historically disenfranchised”. Very scant research is going on Kashmir’s oral history. Oral history can provide us plate form to listen to our fellow Kashmiries who went through this vicious violence, who have suffered social estrangement, moral predicament, political manipulation, tribulation, heinous crimes, the people who have gone through the disentitlement of basic civil rights and economic ostracization, and marginalization. When you decide to create your own oral history, be sure to take the time to prepare for the interview and decide on the most important questions you want to ask. It reminds me the twentieth century celebrated historian E.H.Carr who says “ history can not be written unless the historian can achieve some kind of contact with the mind of those about whom he is writing”.
Author is a student of Department of History, University of Kashmir and can be reached at mohammadismayeel123@gmail.com
