Readers will find this Essay useful in their preparations for Civil Services Exam and other similar UPSC and SSC exams.
Like a triangle whose three angles are inextricably interlinked, so are the three periods of time—present, past and future—closely inter-connected. Events and eventualities, causes and consequences take place in the context or ambit of time and space, people and places. It may be a normal or natural activity to sift chaff from grain, but in case of time, past and future, the exercise may not prove fruitful because past is no predictor of future as we presume or understand it to be.
Since no opinion or conclusion is final in nature and nuance, it is equally true that past is not the mirror that always reflects the future course of events, as some historians, sociologists or even scientists would like us to believe. Each age unfolds certain unforeseen eruptions of national, regional or even global dimensions, that makes all our calculations based on past go awfully awry.
Making predictions about future is a risky business. Even an astute astrologer couches his 'so-called' predictions in a bag-full of 'ifs and buts'. If human intelligence and intuition fail to predict in exact terms the future course of happenings in an individual's life, how can an entity like 'past' make accurate or infallible forebodings about future that is always shrouded in uncertainties. Since the role of the past as a predictor of future cannot be ruled out outrightly, it is always prudent to take predictions with a pinch of salt. When natural calamities strike some part of a country or region, there may have been no indications or warnings in the past. The occurrence of earthquakes, their intensity, timing and location can seldom be predicted even though we may have a plethora of records, analyses and other scientific details about them.
The way societies are undergoing transformations at neck-break speed is, however, a rebuttal of the assertion that past always foretells such varied choices and visible changes in social mores and modes of life and living. In the best or worst of times, past stands for memories, sour and sweet, and future for hopes and ambiguities, with the present acting as catalyst or bridge.
The world over the majority holds the opinion that past is no soothsayer. Had it been so it would have predicted the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the subsequent developments affecting both the developed as well as the developing nations. No doubt, some broad hints of changes to come are always present in the layers of the past, but no definite shape of things to emerge in future is ever possible to forecast.
The question that stares in the face of each generation is: Does the past predict the future? The answer may be both Yes and No. Since all the three periods of time chase one another, there is every reason to agree (with quite a few reservations, of course) with the assumption that events of the past have a bearing on developments in future. Despite our claim and conviction that science and technology have nearly conquered and controlled the forces of nature, there still remains the element of surprise and shock that time delivers when we least expect it. The unfolding of some unforeseen events in future upholds the argument that 'past is no predictor of future'.
There is always some loose link between past and future but to invest the past with the powers of prediction is like misreading the significance of past viz-a-viz its relationship with future.
Many a time, if not always, past proves to be the forerunner or precursor
of future. That the League of Nations (after the World War I) was doomed to die was aptly—rather accurately—predicted by the past through its knowledgeable persons and credible critics. The prediction came true and thus past acquired the
distinction of being a predictor of future, though for a brief period only. It goes
to the credit of past that it contains enough evidence to help write and interpret history in an unbiased manner. In order to judge events in the right perspective, past is a reliable guide to take corrective, steps, if need be, to prepare the roadmap for future planning and programming. Through the warnings emanating from past, the contours of future can be set right. Although we resist the attempt (with sound reason) to label past as the predictor of future, yet we can learn a few useful lessons from the past and adjust our mental antennas for the future.
There goes a saying that 'history repeats itself', sometimes as a farce and sometimes as a dark tragedy. When reason yields to rhetoric and discretion discards discourse or discussion, follies overwhelm and give undeserved credence to the belief that past repeats or predicts. In fact, the genesis of future happenings, like the outbreak of an armed conflict, some epidemic, drought or floods, and similar situation, lies somewhere between past and present. If future too is affected by the lengthening shadows of past acts of commission and omission, no one can help coming to the conclusion that past does shape and sharpen the events in future.
It hardly matters, though, whether we call 'past' the predictor of 'future' or not, the future shape of things is generally cast in the womb of past.
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