Jayeeta Sharma: History’s daughter

Guwahati, July 9: “Let us bring our heroes back,” she says, and you instinctively start believing in her mission.

Jayeeta Sharma, an assistant professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University in the US, has been researching the inspirational lives of three great historical characters for a book with which she hopes to revive interest in “our glorious past”.

Jayeeta’s three “heroes” are saint-reformer Srimanta Sankardev, Ahom military general Lachit Barphukan and Joymati, the Ahom princess who is acknowledged as the supreme symbol of sacrifice. “Being a historian, I believe we should use the past to understand the present more aptly,” the research scholar, who is on a brief vacation in her home state, said.

Based in Pittsburgh, Jayeeta became interested in history after she left Guwahati for higher studies. An alumnus of St Mary’s School and Cotton College, she studied in Delhi University before doing her PhD from the University of Cambridge on “The making of modern Assam: 1826-1935”. She later moved to the US.

“For me, one of the most important objectives is to induce people to look at history and its heroes from a new perspective and convince them not to take everything at face value. They have to realise that these heroes are an integral part of our lives indeed,” Jayeeta said.

Citing an instance, she said it was unfair to associate Joymati merely with the act of Sati, which historians had been doing all along. “Joymati was more than that. She was the ideal woman, the perfect picture of patriotism and sacrifice,” she added.

Using a novel technique of writing history, the NRI hopes to not only make reading about the past a pleasurable experience, but also bust a few myths. “We, as a general trend, follow just the printed history texts that are available. But for a historian, an autobiography of a personality is just as important.”

At a seminar here this week, Jayeeta impressed the expert and the layman alike with her lucid analysis of history. She said exploring a nation’s ideas of “heroic history” through writings in a “valorised mothertongue” was the best way to bring the past back to the people.

She presented a paper, “Writing heroes, writing nation, for Asom and Asomiya”, at the seminar, which was organised by the Centre for Northeast India, South and Southeast Asia Studies.

“The seminar was a part of our efforts to popularise and bring to the fore the history of our region,” Sanjib Baruah, who heads the centre, said.

“We want the people, especially young blood, to know more about the place they live in, and understand their own history and culture,” he added.