Changes in the composition of the Indian Council
for Historical Research, an autonomous body
under the Union human resources development
ministry, have provoked the country's Marxist
historians. They have opposed the nomination of
the new appointees, questioning their ideological
integrity by dubbing them "communal". The
controversy has reignited debates on Indian
historiography and the role of various educational
and research institutes in the country.
The ICHR was founded in 1972 with a declared
objective to "bring historians together and provide
a forum for the exchange of views between them"
and "give a national direction to an objective and
rational presentation and interpretation of history".
Unfortunately the ICHR - along with other
research and policy institutes like the Indian
Council of Social Science Research, the National
Council of Educational Research and Training, the
Indian Council of Philosophical Research and the
Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Museum have been
dominated by a combination of Marxist and
Islamic scholars. Collectively they are called the
"red green clubs".
There was a complete exclusion of nationalist
historians and scholars from these institutions. The
history writings and textbooks produced by these
bodies reflect Marxist theology rather than an
"objective and rational presentation".
After the adventurism of the Telengana movement,
Indian Marxists realized the futility of class
struggle. They also found solace in camaraderie
with Nehru. The many Cambridge and Oxford
University educated Marxist scholars who
returned to India played a significant role in
bringing these two schools of thought together.
As a consequence of this marriage, a new
privileged intellectual class, a hybrid intellectual
tradition, was born. This tradition has dominated
the Indian mindset since the mid-Fifties. Nehru and
his successors were given legitimacy by this new
hybrid class while the latter, in return, enjoyed
state patronage and privilege. Nehru's sympathetic
outlook on Marxists is well known. Another facet
is the leftwing, Nehruvian tilt of many Islamic
scholars. This intellectual alliance between Indian
Marxists and Indian Islamic scholars can be traced
to pie-independence days.
But the cathedral of this hybrid culture is
Jawaharlal Nehru University. Along with all
academic and research institutions, it was overrun
with Marxist appointees. Other strongholds of
hybrid thinking are Aligarh Muslim University,
Delhi University and Jamia Milia University Those
opposed to their line were ridiculed, their works
rejected. Independent and objective study was
shown the door An academic caste system was
introduced, with non-Marxist schools of thought
accorded untouchability.
It is a matter of open debate as to what should be
the approach for writing history or interpreting an
event. There will always be different opinions on
particular modes of study. But all alternative
approaches and writings, including the very need
for debate, were denounced by Indian Marxists as
reactionary and distracted.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Hindu
Mahasabha and other Hindu national leaders who
propagated a concept of cultural nationalism were
dubbed communal. Even leaders like Bal
Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai and Bipin
Chandra Pal were dubbed as unacceptable faces of
Indian nationalism. The Tilak school of thought,
recognized inside the Congress movement,
received biased treatment. Subhash Chandra Bose
found no adequate place in history books. Swami
Vivekananda and Aurobindo Ghosh were
relegated to marginal status, dismissed as
revivalists.
This pattern was repeated even with the ancient
past. National heroes like Shivaji and Rana Pratap
were denounced or ambiguously characterized.
Russians, Britons and Greeks derive pride from
their history For some reson Indians cannot. In
particular, Hindu history and Hindu movements
were treated by Marxists as enemy ground. In
1982, the NCERT issued a directive on the
rewriting of schoolbooks. Among its stipulations:
"Characterization of the mediaeval period as a
time of conflict between Hindu and Muslims is
forbidden."
Marxist historians were successfully challenged in
the early Nineties by nationalist scholars on the
Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid controversy The
findings of many historians and, in particular,
archaeologists, went in favour of the Vishwa
Hindu Parishad. Many academics presented the
VHP's case in the two rounds of talks between the
VHP and the all India Babri Masjid action
committee.
Marxist historians denounced academic arguments
in favour of the VHP as the "communal abuse of
history". Those who pleaded the masjid's cause
were hailed as secular. The action committee
named 22 historians as witnesses on its behalf in
the high court case. But it is a sign of the
weakness of the left's case that they eventually
shifted the debate from "temple or no temple" to
the question of Rain's existence.
Of the academics who substantiated the VHP's
claim, not one was groomed m an RSS shakha.
Often, failing to counter the evidence collected by
nationalist historians and archaeologists, Marxists
simply took to slandering them personally. In
February 1991, the noted Marxist historian, Irfan
Habib, made a speech at Aligarh Muslim
University in which he personally attacked scholars
who defended the Hindu claim in the Ayodhya
dispute.
Those who accuse Murli Manohar Joshi of giving
a "saffron tilt" to the ICHR protest too much.
Though the ICHR has eight councils with 18 seats
per council, only 60 historians have been made
members in the last 25 years. Why was
membership confined to a handful of academics, all
of whom are diehard red green hybrids? It also
should be asked why the funds of a nonpartisan
body like the ICHR were spent in translating the
works of E.M.S. Namboodiripad and other card
carrying communists.
Bodies like the ICHR have little to show for the
public money they spend. Towards Freedom, a
projected 10 volume history of the freedom
movement, was launched in 1972. It was to have
been done in five years at the cost of a few
hundred thousand rupees. After 25 years, only one
volume has been printed and costs have run into
the tens of millions. The quality is also suspect: no
non-Marxist historian is attached to the project.
This pattern of patronage and spoils is repeated in
academic centres and projects throughout the
country. It would not be an exaggeration to say
various social science institutes were turned into
employment exchanges for former cadres of the
leftwing Students Federation of India and the All
India Students Federation. Definitely nothing even
remotely positive about Hindutva has ever been
sponsored by these institutions.
The degree of state sponsorship for leftwing
scholars and institutions has been remarkable. For
instance, the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust was
given grants of millions of rupees when Arjun
Singh and S.R. Bommai held the human resources
development portfolios. In essence, government
money was used to wage ideological war with the
RSS behind a facade of "unbiased, objective and
secular" history.
The war has been waged in media other than the
printed word. What impression of the RSS did
Bhishma Sahani's Tamas serial give? In the partly
state sponsored movie Gandhi there is a scene
where a man resembling M.S. Golwalkar leads
demonstrators in khaki shorts protesting against
M.K. Gandhi. This reflects history texts which
claim RSS volunteers showed black flags to
Gandhi in September 1944 during his talks with
Mohammed Ali Jinnah. This is factually wrong.
The RSS held no such demonstration. They were
held by the Hindu Rashtra Dal, an organ of the
Hindu Mahasabha.
Joshi faces a major challenge. The educational
sytem needs bold reform. He has to liberate
academic institutions from the grip of the hybrid
intelligentsia. The ministry should issue a white
paper on all the 403 academic and research
institutions funded by the human resources
development ministry. Reform is about
confronting pseudo-secularism. It is about doing
something with the abysmal state of NCERT
textbooks. It is about asking why Kalahandi
remains mired in poverty while hundreds of
millions of rupees are spent studying why it is
poor.