ABSTRACT
Historians like Paul Thompson are pioneers of oral history and emphasize its importance to working class histories. They also point out the oral content in the written sources to demolish the strict division between the two which guides the detractors of oral history. The attention oral history has received from Indian historians can be gauged by the negligible number of papers published on the subject in the Indian journals. In the 19th century positivism converted professional history into a rigorous exact national record of the past. This trend has continued despite developments in the humanities which have got the better of positivism. The technology for executing oral history is affordable but the political conditions in India inveigh against critical history. Oral history readers have been produced in the West where the financial and institutional conditions for research are more favourable than in India. Indian historians, in comparison, have not written a single oral history reader suited to Indian conditions.
