History is everywhere - but whose history is it?

I will take my daughter to the British Museum and I know I will feel angry that so much on show was stolen by this country

Sitting in the beautiful Edmund Safra courtyard of Somerset House this Saturday I watched frisky Londoners dance, run and shriek with pleasure under the fountains, sharing space and their city in ways that are all too rare elsewhere in the world. The young and old, athletic white men with their black partners, dancers and jugglers from Jaipur, actresses in 18th-century costumes, Somali families dressed in their best, Very Important People from the establishment, famous actors, tramps – all cavorting while the great walls of heritage, naval buildings in particular, looked down on us from all four sides, probably with disapproval.

It was yet another example of how the city states of this nation have changed and challenged the essence of Britishness by encouraging such incursions into sacred spaces. These unexpected entrants move Britishness away from old imperial meanings; they join and disorient traditional marchers and drummers, subvert the old stories about long white histories and unremitting greatness that have lingered over these isles for far too long. I guess this is why we have a sudden and determined revival of heritage. History as heritage, as an entitlement to rights others may not claim is the latest ploy by those who still resent the fact that Britain changed the way it did when black and Asian Britons arrived and then presumed to stay.

We, the modernisers, the radicals and anti-racists, must watch out for the motives and the effects of this latest craze. We must be wary when Heritage History is flouted as the new gardening or the new cookery. We should worry that David Starkey – brilliant purveyor of royalist tales – has become as big a star as John Thaw was and can command millions, even out of the financially challenged Channel 4 (not that I mind you getting really rich David). The revisionists have been in full cry ever since thousands of punters turned out to show their love for the Queen Mother and all that she stood for. Remember what Orwell said: "Who controls the past controls the future; but who controls the present controls the past". It would a mistake to ignore the implications of this explosion of interest in certain versions of the past, particularly as the public lust for it is only increasing.

On the BBC the mellifluous Simon Schama enthrals millions who are drawn in by his stories of this island and the way we came to be. Books by Schama and others are enormously popular, as are novels that dwell on the two wars or old Britain. The concept behind Trenches, 1940 House, Victorian House and Edwardian House – reality television meets nostalgia – captivated nearly everyone who watched the programmes, including intellectual snobs who thought the idea derisory.

We now have more history lecturers than ever – 3,000 of these history men and women are having to turn away students who are flooding in to study the past. History is more popular than ever in the media, and during the past week I have learnt about intense medieval nuns, the Raj (through white eyes, again) and, this being golden jubilee year, endless feverish reminiscing about the Fifties. Sleepless one night, I came upon Schama on BBC4. He made me understand, even admire, Churchill, to see him as a man with a massive belief in the independent soul of his nation which would never accept domination by outsiders. Pity he didn't understand that same passion in those who were ruled by Great Britain.

That is the problem. In a complex, multifarious country such as ours (and. yes. it is mine, too), it is plain wrong and highly dangerous to tell simplistic stories about the past that exaggerate the heroism and deny the duplicity, the crimes and losses. Hard though it is, surely we are now grown up enough to deal with the complexities of history?

I will be taking my daughter and her friends to the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum this summer. I will talk them through the various stories that are evoked by what we see in both places and, yes, I will, I know, feel angry that so much on display was taken or stolen by this country, which was once so unspeakably powerful and greedy.

It upsets other people in these places when they hear me tell my daughter this. Sometimes I feel a little guilty too, but I can't help how I feel. Is this just too ungrateful? Am I right to burden my children with an inherited fury which actually they don't feel? I am not sure. But what I do know is that unless they get this other side, they will be swept away by the tide of resurrected heritage history, which will give them a calamitously incomplete view of their country.

As Sisodia in Rushdie's Satanic Verses stutters: "The trouble with the Engenglish is that their hiss-hiss-history happened overseas so they do-do-don't know what it means." I grant you that historical amnesia and partiality are evident in most other countries, and through the internet lies are easier to propagate. Look around the world and you see how politicians use these to create discord and promote injustice, sometimes to send people into a frenzy of hatred. Hindu fundamentalists who are trying to rid India of its Muslim past burn places down that don't fit their nationalistic stories. The Taliban blow up statues of Buddha to destroy a valuable history. Hardline Zionists support the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians because they are sure that they made an empty desert bloom with the creation of Israel. And Muslim hotheads who have bought into Holocaust-denial feel positively righteous about their anti-Semitism, and who knows what crimes they then go on to commit?

Compared to these abuses of history, British traditionalists are pussycats, but it still matters what they do, because their versions of history threaten all that we can build for the future.

What is at stake is our collective national identity. How are we finally going to confront the past that brought us together, black and white? How can we make children into proper citizens without looking back honestly at the various historical streams that entered at various points over the centuries? Not through whitewashed tales but tough interrogations, hard truths and debates.

If only our historical museums had the guts to raise these controversies. They could have them running as commentaries with the exhibits, or create interactive debates, or empower people to question heritage hogwash. If only they were prepared to take these risks. If only they understood how much is at stake. Ten years ago almost only white Britons (and diverse tourists) would have dared to venture into Somerset House and other public spaces. Today most of us feel we have the right to be there. This makes it even more important to change the stories in these places in order to make us all reconsider who we are and who we think we are – to see one another as joint custodians of the past and the future.

As Ben Okri once wrote: "When victims stop seeing themselves as victims, forces are born on this planet. The possibilities of a new history depend on it... Ultimately we are bound in fate with whoever the other may be. We are bound in the fact that we have to deal with one another." There is no way around that. The way we see the other is connected with the way we see ourselves.

y.alibhai-brown@independent.co.uk