Listening to Silence, Reading between the Lines and Creating Archives

This paper moves away from definitions of oral history as a purely research methodology or secondary source material for mainstream disciplines, by concentrating on the variables it offers as a pedagogical device, and more importantly, as study material for arts and activism. It argues that oral history needs to become an independent discipline in central/state universities, with a well-defined curriculum in place. India has a wide repertoire of oral forms in the domain of cultural practice, but what is missed out are the ways in which voices get silenced. The reformulation of oral history methods of perception and understanding have to come from within systems of education, which stretches from primary to higher levels.