How History Changes When Language Changes
History is often thought of as fixed—dates in textbooks, events arranged neatly along a timeline. Yet it is far less stable than it appears. Each iteration of history being translated into another language results a subtle shift in the narrative, a new rendition of reality. Empires rise and fall, borders are redrawn, but the most enduring transformation is linguistic. When language changes, so does history.
Translation is often viewed as a technical exercise, a simple act of conversion. One word replaced by another, one sentence changed to its equivalent. But translation is never neutral. The powerful statement “Translation is an act of betrayal,” quoted from the novel Babel by R. F. Kuang, is a sentiment I agree with as translation demands choices—about tone, emphasis, and meaning. Some words cross linguistic borders intact, while others fracture under the weight of context. In India, ancient Sanskrit hymns, Persian court chronicles, and Prakrit narratives often reach Western audiences filtered through English. What survives is seldom the original voice. What actually survives is what the translator allows to survive. So then where did the original story go? It tragically got lost in languages.
Colonial rule transformed India’s political structure and its historical memory. English became the language of administration and education. Indian resistance was renamed “rebellion,” governance was reframed as a “civilizing mission,” and entire communities were reduced to the vague label of “natives.” Once embedded into records and textbooks, such words began to sound factual. Language was used to justify the empire's subordination.
Power decides which languages are preserved and which are neglected. Court languages were archived, studied, and revered. Meanwhile, histories carried in regional dialects, tribal tongues, and oral traditions were dismissed as folklore or myth. The stories of marginalized groups such as Dalit narratives, Adivasi histories, and women’s voices often existed outside elite linguistic systems. When their languages were excluded from archives, their histories were excluded from the nation’s memory. Silence, too, can be institutional.
When a language disappears, it does not vanish dramatically. There is no official announcement, no closing ceremony. It fades in kitchens and courtyards, in songs no longer sung and stories no longer told. In India, dozens of indigenous languages are endangered, each holding unique understandings of land, kinship, ecology, and time. With them disappear histories that were never written down. No archive records the moment a grandmother forgets the last word of a lullaby her ancestors sang for generations.
Oral history has long been treated with suspicion. Colonial historians privileged written documents because they could be catalogued, translated, and controlled. Oral traditions were considered unreliable, too emotional, too fluid. Yet emotion is not the enemy of truth. Folk songs, epics, and myths often preserve trauma and resistance more faithfully than official records ever could.
Even today, much of Indian history is accessed through layers of translation of ancient texts rendered into Persian, Persian into English, English into modern textbooks. With each transition, meaning shifts slightly, then over time, significantly. What students inherit as “objective history” is often a linguistic inheritance altered by centuries of power. Language determines not only how history is told, but whose version is believed.
History, then, is not only written by the victors but also spoken in their language. We should study history critically to question its words, to listen for what was omitted, mistranslated, or silenced. The past survives, but rarely does it survive untouched.
