Title: Buying peace,
ICHR chief opts for white paper
Author: Observer Political
Bureau
Publication: The Observer
Of Business And Politics
Date: February 23, 2000
Indian Council for Historical
Research (ICHR) chairman Prof. B R Grover announced on Tuesday that the
Council would be issuing a 'white paper' on the recent controversy dogging
the 'Towards Freedom Project' as also the relevant documents and the mounting
expenditure'.
He said the 'hue and
cry' raised by Prof. Sumit Sarkar and of K N Panikkar were 'unwarranted'
as as early as September, 1998 it was decided that future publications,
including those sent to the press, would be "examined" by an expert committee.
Prof. Grover, along with
two other members of the review committee, Prof. Satish Mittal and Prof.
I R Khan, also said the earlier' books published in the series had 'violated'
the norm, governing the series and it was consequent to complaints voiced
from certain scholars that decision was taken to re-call the books for
'streamlining' the series.
Briefing mediamen, Prof.
Grover said, "more than Rs 4 crore has been spent on the project which
has produced only 3 books. Other than that, the guidelines were changed
by the former chairman of the ICHR from the original guidelines' of "arranging
the documents in chronological order with a comprehensive index o the model
of transfer of power documents to a thematic arrangement" where "each editor
was given freedom to identify his own theme". "This change brought in an
element of subjectivity and bias", he said.
Moreover, Prof. Khan
argued that the volumes by P S Gupta covering the years, 1943-44, which
were published in September, 1997 was "contained 3,500 pages, way beyond
the 1,500 page stipulation and did not contain a name and subject index,
which were absolutely essential, nor did part two and three contain any
contents."
However, Prof. Khan said,
"the most important lacuna was that it was the biased and lop-sided approach
towards the selection of edited documents which was noticed by us".
In our view, Prof. Grover
said the decision was taken way back in September, 1998 that all future
volumes will be reviewed by an expert committee".
They cited a letter written
by former chairman of the ICHR Prof. S Settar to the general editor of
the 'Towards Freedom' series S Gopal on February 1, 1999, in which the
former chairman expressed his reservations about the quality of some of
the published volumes, saying, "there is some amount of concern among senior
scholars, whom I believe to be objective in their evaluation and constructive
in their criticism, about the volumes published so far".
"The volume of Prof.
P S Gupta has raised eyebrows of many for the major body of work has been
drawn form one source... even the volumes of Prof. Gupta are impressive
in terms of quantity, but its quality seems to have evoked some concern
already. I do not know the quality contents of the other volumes which
are in the press or nearing complaining", he had said.
Explaining the point
further, Prof. Grover said in one of the volumes on the Quit India Movement
while the "Communist Party has been accorded 150 pages, Mahatma Gandhi's
contribution has been reduced to a footnote, and thereby according a mere
49 pages". He said while the 'eminence' of Prof. Sarkar and Prof. Panikkar
"cannot be doubted the same cannot be said about their biases."
