The past is mostly an invention that the present uses to secure an illusion that keeps lies in power.

To the British novelist George Orwell, “Those who control the present, control the past, and those who control the past, control the future.” The present, thus, becomes eternal — unending. As the saying goes, “The more things change, the more they remain the same.”

So, are all the struggles for change illusions as well? Most conflicts in this regard are conflicts between competing sets of the past. They are battles between histories. Those fighting the battles want their particular version of history to dominate a present in which they alone want to be in power. The future never arrives as such. The present is stuck in a vicious cycle, teeming with battles between varied tellings of history. Histories that never were. Imagined pasts weaponised in the present to cultivate power in the name of a ‘better future.’

Shaping denials and silences around past atrocities, too, are an aspect of invented histories. The memory of 19th century massacres of indigenous Native Americans in the United States was consciously suppressed by most American historians serving the ‘national interest.’ The American state has largely remained silent on the subject.

In his 2017 book An American Genocide, the historian Benjamin Madley wrote that even historians who have spoken about the killings avoided using the word ‘genocide’. Instead, they framed the massacres as ‘wars’.

Imagined pasts and invented histories have long been used by states to propound a certain narrative while denying the existence of opposing views. In recent times, the proliferation of falsehoods and half-truths has only grown

In the........

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