The wrangle over the reconstitution of the Indian Council
of Historical Research (ICHR) is getting increasingly ugly.
The recent exchange between columnist Arun Shourie and
historian K N Panikkar in the pages of The Asian Age is
unlikely to lift the quality of public debate. Frequent
references to virginity and hymens, secular or Hindu, in
what ostensibly is a serious concern about the appropriation
of History, is not just politically incorrect, it is in rank bad
taste.
Howl of Protest
The BJP-led government's decision to replace the existing
nominated members of the ICHR by 18 'historians',
allegedly with strong saffron sympathies, has raised howls
of protest. The first salvo was fired by Prof Panikkar in
People's Democracy,. This was followed by a feature in
Outlook. The charge was not just that the newly appointed
members shared a common view on the Ayodhya
controversy, but that the basic memorandum of the ICHR
had been altered: the words 'rational' and 'scientific' in the
governing resolutions had been replaced by the term
'national'. The fear was that, as in the controversy
regarding NCERT textbooks in the '70s, secular
historiography would be replaced by a communal rendering
of our history.
It is not that this apprehension is without basis. The ruling
BJP combine has always held culture (including history) as
a vital resource for constructing its version of Indian
nationalism. It has consistently opposed the claims of its
secularist counterparts to a rational and scientific
historiography. Such, at least, is the message conveyed by
the texts used in the Saraswati Shishu Mandirs in the BJP-
ruled states of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.
The ICHR in many ways becomes central to this ongoing
battle to influence (if not control) the minds and memories
of our people. Barring the UGC, it is the sole official
agency to promote historical research. More than the
minuscule funds and patronage it doles out, inefficiently,
and increasingly irregularly, the ICHR seeks to confer the
stamp of authenticity and legitimacy on the output it
supports. It is this power to legitimise the reconstructions of
our past and present that marks this move as significant.
Dismissing it as a 'routine' turnover in official positions
which accompany regime changes would be an error.
Unfortunately our secularist historians went in for an
overkill, that too without verifying their facts. Mr Shourie,
by just making a few telephone calls, found out that the
charge that the memorandum of the ICHR had been altered
was a fabrication. He pointed out that for the past two
decades the memorandum had remained unaltered. The
replacement of 'rational' by 'national' had taken place as a
result of a typographical error in 1978. Incidentally, to date
there has been no refutation of Mr Shourie's charge.
We are all aware that there is no such thing as the true
history. Our reading of the past continuously changes, not
only because of fresh evidence or advances in methodology,
but because current concerns and fashions have a way of
impinging on the writing of history. Thus the proliferation
of national, subaltern, feminist, working class and what
have you, histories. Appelations like secular or communal
do not take us very far.
Given the centrality of history to modem myth making, the
'officialising' of history demands more attention than the
puerile secular-communal debate. It is the control over the
legitimation function of the ICHR, sanctioned by the
authority of the Indian state, that is at the heart of the
controversy. Let us not forget the infamous episode of the
time capsule whence historians close to Indira Gandhi, not
the currently stigmatised communal ones, were in the eye
of the storm. The fight over who will dispense patronage in
the form of research grants, fellowships, or foreign travel is
but a mere side show.
Sterile Debate
What the debate, to be purposive, should be focussing on is
the constitution and management of our official research
promotion agencies the ICHR, ICSSR and ICPR in the
social sciences and humanities. Can we not make a
distinction between state funding and state control? Why is
it that the professional, disciplinary associations do not
have a greater say in the running of these agencies? Even
more, why is generating non-official financial support ruled
out? Clearly, as long as these agencies are seen as a
handmaiden of the HRD ministry, they will seek to
appropriate the authority to confer legitimacy, and will be
stacked by the political masters.
If only our historians, more so those long associated with
the running of the ICHR, had turned their attention to these
deeper institutional questions of how to marry resources to
personnel with a view to enriching the discipline, they
might have enjoyed larger public support. Their inability to
be self-critical and to address the institutional malaise leads
them to be viewed as a 'cabal' anxious to retain their
privileged positions. Little wonder that the current debate
remains sterile, personalised and unaesthetic.