Practicing Success

Target Exam

CUET

Subject

History

Chapter

Modern India: Understanding Partition

Question:

Why are historians sceptical about oral history while documenting information regarding the partition of India?

Options:

To them, the oral data seem to lack concreteness and the chronology they yield may be imprecise.

The uniqueness of personal experience makes generalisation difficult.

Both options, 1 and 2

Neither 1 nor 2

Correct Answer:

Both options, 1 and 2

Explanation:

Many historians still remain sceptical of oral history. They dismiss it because oral data seem to lack concreteness and the chronology they yield may be imprecise. Historians argue that the uniqueness of personal experience makes generalisation difficult: a large picture cannot be built from such micro-evidence, and one witness is no witness. They also think oral accounts are concerned with tangential issues, and that the small individual experiences which remain in memory are irrelevant to the unfolding of larger processes of history.