ITS budget this year is a paltry Rs 2.24 crore, aptly described
by Jawaharlal Nehru University historian Harbans Mukhia as
"peanuts". It has Rs 30 lakh worth of bills pending. The Fifth
Pay Commission award has yet to be implemented. Its budding
doesn't seem to have had a lick of paint since its inception in
1964 and has a pipal tree growing into its third floor. Its work
consists primarily of doling out research project grants and
study cum travel grants by the all powerful .Research and
Publications committee. No textbook writing or syllabi-setting
ever appears on its agenda. Yet, to hear some historians talk
about it its "capture" by Right-wing forces will ;bean the end of
history as we know it.
At the heart of the controversy is the appointments to the Indian
Council of Historical Research (ICHR) by the BJP-led Government
among them Professors B B Lal, K S Lal and B R Grover, who are
inclined towards the BJP. "Of the 18 members of the council, a
majority are politically non-committal. The Leftists object that
some members are committed to VHP ideology while the Rightists
argue that over 25 years, the council has had several card-
holders," says ICHR chairman S Settar. He was appointed in
September 1996 by the H D Deve Gowda government.
Even he says ICHR can't determine the course of written history.
"Our role is limited. In fact we even meet only twice a year," he
insists. Mukhia couldn't agree more. "The scholarship of the
country is not determined by government patronage. The paradigm
shift towards socio-economic history in the 1950s and the new
change taking place now, towards a history of women, of
sexuality, of the emotions, was independent of ICHR. How do you
influence the discipline with Rs 30-40 lakh of grants every
year?" ,
But to hear it from the committed Leftist quarters, for the first
time in its 25-year-old history we are told, the council will be
politicised. Mukhia questions the historical competence of the
"BJP kind of historian" and their belief that if you invert the
Leftist domination of positions of patronage, all history will be
rendered true. But he also says it is demeaning on the part of
both the Left and the Right to history when they overestimate
ICHRs importance.
In any case, points out Professor M G S Narayanan, former head of
department of history of the University of Calicut and currently
member of the ICHR: "The council has been politicised from the
very beginning." The council, members to which are nominated
every three years, was established by former Leftists who made
common cause with Indira Gandhi in the wave of enthusiasm for her
proto-poor policies. Set up in 1972 to give history the due it
deserves rather than be lumped together with other social
sciences, it was designed to give a "national direction" to an
"objective and rational presentation and interpretation of
history".
The latter became controversial recently when some newspapers
went to town over what was a printing error - "rational
presentation" had become "national presentation" in the ICHR Aims
and Objects, raising doubts about the BJP's intentions.
Narayanan says he had always fought for representation of all
shades of political opinion. "Earlier it was the monopoly of the
Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Aligarh
Muslim University. Now that monopoly has been broken." Which is
why Settar dismisses the entire issue as the creation of half-a-
dozen historians in Delhi and says he has made regional
representation a must in the distribution of grants. Much work
under the Leftists has remained unaccomplished, the most famous
of which is the Rs 2 crore Towards Freedom project started in
1974, which is the documentation of sources between 1937 and
1947. Of this only 1937,1943 and 1944 are complete, 1938 is in
the press, 1940 and 1946 have been received. In the 19-volume
source documentation between 1857 and 1937, only three volumes
have been published: five manuscripts are in and one is in
publication. Of the 14-volume peasant movement study, only 4
manuscripts have been submitted. Although all 13 volumes of A R
Desai's work on trade union movements have been received, only
three parts have been published.
Which is why Settar says: "Several people ask me whether I have
planned any major project. My answer is that my major project is
to complete all major project." He will start with Desai's work
which he has salvaged, and sent to press. He hopes to instill
some amount of discipline in ICHR and prevent good money from
being wasted on bad projects. That will be half the work done.