Eminent Historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud

410 Pages·2014·1.51 MB·English

by  Aran Shourie

EMINENT HISTORIANS
Their technology, their line, their fraud
ARUN SHOURIE
HarperCollins Publishers India
For
Anita
Everything
Contents
Introduction
The Historians
1. A characteristic concoction
2. Eminent entrepreneurs!
3. How to do it!
4. A fitting tribute
5. When cornered, cry ‘Petty’,
‘Personal’, ‘Uncivilized’
6. ‘…after selling himself in the flesh market’
Their Line
7. A circular
8. Devices to further the circular
9. ‘Let us look forward to the positive aspects’
10. Insinuate falsehood, explain away the truth
11. Were all these authors also communalists?
12. The policy of ‘broad toleration’!
13. The litmus test
14. Erasure to parity to absolution
15. ‘Maybe perhaps, probably mostly… Therefore’
16. Gavah chust, muddayi sust!
Context and Consequences
17. The tug of intellectual fashions
18. The appeal of ‘The Theory’, and
the antidote to it
19. Programmed to self-destruct
20. The pattern of consequences
21. The changing balance
22. The insidious, the false
23. A few reasons, a few lessons
Index
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Arun Shourie with HarperCollins India
Copyright
Introduction
In June–July 1998, progressives kicked up quite a racket. The government has
packed the Indian Council of Historical Research with pro–Ram Mandir
historians, they shouted. It has surreptitiously altered the aims and objectives of
the Council, they shouted.
As is their wont, they had sparked the commotion by giving wind to a
concoction.
As is their wont too, they were charging others with planning to do in some
undefined future what they had themselves been actually doing for decades –
that is, write history to a purpose.
The commotion led me to look into their record – to look at what they had
made of an institution like the Indian Council of Historical Research, and to read
the textbooks they had authored.
Small scandals turned up too. So accustomed have we become to crores
being raked off that the amounts mentioned in this narrative will seem less than
the pilfering of pickpockets. That is so in part because our standards have
become so lax. And in part because the real crime of these eminences does not
lie in the loss they have inflicted in terms of money. It lies in the condition to
which they have reduced institutions. It lies in their dereliction – because of
which projects that were important for our country have languished. It lies even
more in the use to which they have put those institutions.
They have used them to have a comfortable time, of course. They have used
them to puff up each other’s reputations, of course. But the worst of it is that
they have used their control of these institutions to pervert public discourse, and
thereby derail public policy.
They have made India out to have been an empty land, filled by successive
invaders. They have made present-day India, and Hinduism even more so, out to
be a zoo – an agglomeration of assorted, disparate specimens. No such thing as
‘India’, just a geographical expression, just a construct of the British; no such
than as Hinduism, just a word used by Arabs to describe the assortment they
encountered, just an invention of the communalists to impose a uniformity – that
has been their stance. For this they have blackened the Hindu period of our
history, and, as we shall see, strained to whitewash the Islamic period. They
have denounced ancient India’s social system as the epitomy of oppression, and
made totalitarian ideologies out to be egalitarian and just.
They have belittled our ancient culture and exaggerated syncretistic elements
which survived and made them out to have been an entire ‘culture’, the
‘composite culture’ as they call it. Which culture isn’t? And all the while they
have taken care to hide the central facts about these common elements in the life
of our people: that they had survived in spite of the most strenuous efforts spread
over a thousand years of Islamic rulers and the ulema to erase them, that they
had survived in spite of the sustained efforts during the last one hundred and
fifty years of the missionaries and British rulers to make us forget and shed these
elements, that the elements had survived their efforts to instead inflame each
section to see its ‘identity’ and essence in factors which, if internalized, would
set it apart. Most of all, these intellectuals and the like have completely diverted
public view from the activities in our own day of organizations like the Tabhligi
jamaat and the Church which are exerting every nerve, and deploying uncounted
resources to get their adherents to discard every practice and belief which they
share with their Hindu neighbours.
These intellectuals and their patrons have worked a diabolic inversion: the
inclusive religion, the pluralist spiritual search of our people and land, they have
projected as intolerant, narrow-minded, obscurantist; and the exclusivist,
totalitarian, revelatory religions and ideologies – Islam, Christianity, Marxism-
Leninism – they have made out to be the epitomes of tolerance, open-
mindedness, democracy, secularism!
This has been their real crime. It has also been a bit of a feat. For they have
been just a few: during the Ayodhya controversy, for instance, every other week
a press statement would appear in favour of the stand of the Babri Masjid Action
Committee – one week over the names of ‘eminent historians’, the next over the
signatures of ‘distinguished social scientists’, and the week after that in the name
of ‘leading intellectuals’! But they would always be the same lot. Always the
same small lot: six in one statement, eight in the next; their high was forty-two
once. But what commotion they have been able to create, and what mischief.
They have been able to do so because of what they were advancing – for
instance, the Marxist ‘thesis’ they were parroting in their textbooks – was in
accord with the temper of the times. Because their kinds were in critical
positions in professions like journalism and universities. And because the rulers
reckoned that to garner votes it would be politic to dress up in progressive
plumes; patronizing persons who had taken out a copyright, so to say, on the
progressive hue was accordingly useful.
Most of all, they were able to work their mischief because of the control they
came to acquire over institutions.
Times have changed: the committed progressive of yesterday is the
unthinking conservative today.
The needs of the rulers have changed: who can fool the masses today by
nationalizing banks and parading certificates from progressives?
The theory in which progressives preened about had been shown decades ago
to be without basis. At that time no one listened. But today no one invokes it!
For it has floundered on the one test the progressives had said alone mattered:
the test of practice. Whatever the theoretical imperfections, whatever the
empirical evidence, the one thing that counts is that it has worked in practice – in
the Soviet Union, in eastern Europe, in China: that was their argument. And as
only those facts about these countries were facts which they certified, the
argument could scarcely be countered. Today that very argument works to the
opposite effect: whatever the logical coherence you claim for it, whatever scraps
of empirical evidence you adduce in its favour, the one thing that counts is that it
has failed in practice!
So, the fashions are changing, the patronage of rulers is evaporating, their
holy books have been repudiated in their Meccas.
All that remains is their hold over governmental institutions. The remedy is
twofold. First, enable a multitude of other institutions to come up: for this, a few
changes in laws, some marginal incentives for setting up and running
foundations, and faith in others – that persons outside the state also are eager to
do good by the country – are all we need. Second, loosen the hold over existing
institutions of eminences of the kind surveyed here: for this all that is needed is
to document what they have made of these institutions.
The Historians
1
A characteristic concoction
‘Rational vs National,’ screamed the headline of the new pall-bearer of
secularism, the magazine Outlook. ‘Fresh evidence available with Outlook
reveals that not only has the ICHR [the Indian Council of Historical Research]
been packed with “sympathizers,”’ the story announced, ‘but a new statement of
objectives or resolution [sic] has been added, changing certain key words from
the original Memorandum of Association of 1972, legitimized by an Act of
Parliament. While the original Memorandum of Association states that ICHR’s
aims would be to give “rational” direction to historical research and foster “an
objective and scientific writing of history,” the new resolution, which will be
included in the Gazette of India, states that ICHR now seeks to give a “national”
direction to an “objective and national presentation of history.” So, “rational”
has been changed to “national”, and “scientific” too has been changed to
“national” …’
‘Tampering with history,’ proclaimed the old pall-bearer, The Hindu.
‘Apprehensions of this kind [that the fabled “Sangh parivar” is out to rewrite
history] have been substantiated by a related decision. The resolution by the
Ministry of Human Resources Development – nodal Ministry under which the
ICHR comes – that details the new nominations carries with it an amendment to
the Memorandum of Association by which the ICHR was set up; while the
institution was set up “to foster objective and scientific writing of history such as
will inculcate an informed appreciation of the country’s national and cultural
heritage,” the new government’s mandate is that the ICHR will give a “national
direction” to an “objective and national presentation and interpretation of
history.” This amendment is certainly not just a matter of semantics. Instead, one
can clearly see in this an intention on the part of the BJP-led government to
rewrite history….’
The next issue of the CPI(M) mouthpiece, Peoples Democracy, reproduced
this editorial! And carried with it an article by one of the ringleaders, K.N.
Panikkar. ‘Saffronisation of historical research,’ proclaimed the heading.
Panikkar repeated the charge of the word ‘rational’ having been replaced by