WHA Annual Meeting: Korea 2026

Oral history is a traditional, informal method of conserving, remembering, citing and glorifying
or sometimes criticizing the past events by a community through the generations by just telling
the stories or events in a simple or in an exaggerated manner to the new generations. On the
On the other hand it is a tool of historical research in which a researcher systematically gathers,
interprets, preserves, analyzes and presents the primary historical information often from a
marginalized or subaltern community through the oral conversation, recorded interviews,
narratives, memories, and sometimes by observations of particular objects available with a
community.
Nevertheless, the traditional society and caste-based communities in Rajasthan are highly
dependent on the oral traditional methods of preserving their caste, race, language, geographical
area, religion, profession or livelihood, and rulers’ history through old generations. These old
Generations of grandparents usually tell these historical or sometimes mythological stories to the
new generations before going to bed and after having dinner, by folk-cultural ways, music,
poems, songs, proverbs, and general narrations of the past events. This practice of record keeping was started by King Akbar in the 16th century, and the first mardumshumari (census) was conducted by Akbar.
These pundits are the main record keeper of each Hindu family of northern India who
approaches to them and provides data. These pundits often come to the villages and correct their
family history sheets. They are called ‘jaga’ because they explain old events in nights.
The serious concern is that the traditional method of preserving history is vanishing very fast due
to overuse of ICT gadgets by the present generations and showing any interest in the past events
of family, caste, area, religion or the state.