History is, by and large, written by the victor. It is a tale of kings and queens, of their loves and conquests. Sahir Ludhianvi, in his celebrated poem 'Taj Mahal', offers a corrective when he asks his beloved not to meet him at the Taj Mahal, as it conceals the stories of the workers whose blood, sweat and tears built it: 'My beloved, they too must have loved passionately / They, whose craft has gifted this monument its beautiful visage / Their loved ones lie in unmarked graves / Dark, forgotten, unvisited.'
Indeed, what of the workers? What of the people, 'dark, forgotten, unvisited'? What of their love? Where are their monuments? Where are their stories? Where are their historians? Should we not pay attention to these too? These were some of the thoughts sparked off recently after reading The Darker Nations, which takes the cue from Sahir, and offers us a people's history of the Third World. First published in 2007, Prashad's book is being published in Pakistan later this year.
What is a people's history? To quote its most famous exponent, the late Howard Zinn, who died earlier this year, a people's history would be a history that takes the 'lives and viewpoints of the common people as its point of departure', a history of how people shape their lives and surroundings. Zinn also suggests that it should offer 'new accounts of the struggles of common people to make their own history'.
While this is fairly straightforward, 'Third World' is an altogether trickier concept. For Prashad (also a Himal contributing editor), the Third World is a 'project' – one rooted in the anti-colonial struggles of Latin America, Africa and Asia, which lasted from the end of World War II to its demise in the 1980s. It is a project that articulated a vision of justice for these colonised continents as they were cast into the bipolar world of the Cold War. As the author explains, 'The Third World project included a demand for the redistribution of the world's resources, a more dignified rate of return for the labour power of their people, and a shared acknowledgement of the heritage of science, technology, and culture.'