Dr Sohail Ansari

"History is written by victors" saying argues that the victors overwhelmingly influence historical accounts. BJP, therefore, can be justified in saying that the (The  Mughal Emperors) , overwhelmingly influence historical accounts. "History is written by victors" may itself be an example of history written by the losers! While the quote is commonly misattributed to  Winston Churchill , it's origins are unknown and it might be inspired by  Hermann Göring's  quote: We will go down in history either as the world's greatest statesmen or its worst villains. On a (perhaps) more serious note, the aftermath of the  Fall of Constantinople (1453) is a prime example of history written by the losers. A wave of Greek scholars emigrated to the west after the event that essentially marked the end of the  Byzantine Empire , bringing with them extremely biased accounts of Ottoman brutality. The vilification of the Ottomans was the prevalent opin...

Note: Even God cannot change the past. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, sect. 2, 1139b. Variant translation: Not even the gods can change the past. Same idea in  John Milton ,  Paradise Lost , 9. 926.  Pindar ,  Olympia . 2. 17.  Pliny the Elder ,  Historia Naturalis , 2. 5. 10. Aristotle attributed these words to Agathon, an Athenian tragic poet who lived in the latter half of the fifth century B.C. In his column, "Today and Tomorrow", Walter Lippmann attributed the same idea to George Santayana: "He might meditate on Santayana's saying that not even God can change the past".  New York Herald Tribune  (June 11, 1951), p. 17. Reported as unverified in  Respectfully Quote Even God cannot change the past’   This quote is however wrong as God is omnipotent but He has imposed certain restrictions for not doing certain things as He Himself has decided not to change the past. Further this quote is to be understood in a ...

Agenda-Setting: A theory of media influence. Here are some thoughts on this theory of media influence and how public relations practitioners can deal with this influence. Source: Agenda-setting theory is associated with Maxwell McCombs & Donald Shaw (1972). Premise:  Media do not tell us  what  to think, but rather what to think  about . Evidence: Mass media have not been proven effective in determining how audiences will accept opinions and point of view in media reports. But mass media are effective in determining what audiences see as newsworthy. By the issues they cover, media can legitimize a story or marginalize either the entire story. Example: In political campaigns, the media may not be effective in swaying public support toward or against a particular issue or candidate. But by continually raising particular questions and issues, or simply by showing an interest in a particular political candidate or issue, the media can lead the discu...

Frame analysis is a broadly applied, relatively flexible label for a variety of approaches to studying social constructions of reality. The sociologist  Erving Goffman , who is credited with coining the term in his 1974 book  Frame Analysis , understood the idea of the frame to mean the culturally determined definitions of reality that allow people to make sense of objects and events. For example, a car advertisement might seek to frame driving as an essentially pleasurable activity by associating it with recognizable symbols of play and leisure (in the target culture) such as a beach. Plato's idealism  held that all things have such an "essence"—an  "idea" or "form" . In  Categories , Aristotle similarly proposed that all objects have a  substance that, as  George Lakoff  put it "make the thing what it is, and without which it would be not  that  kind of thing". West does not subscribe to the contrary view— non-essentialism —t...