Author: S. Chandrasekhar
Publication: The Organiser
Date: October 14, 2001
The Marxists are seething with rage.
The reason is the disbanding of Kerala Council of Historic Research (KCHR)
by the Antony-led UDF Government. The KCHR established on the lines of
ICHR, by the CPM-led LDF government, prior to two months of their losing
power, was packed with anti-Hindu historians and left intellectuals. Its
chairman was none other than Prof K.N. Panikkar of Jawaharlal Nehru University,
a Communist fellow-traveller who is in the forefront of the Marxist offensive
against saffronisation of education and academic bodies. It is also ironical
that this same K. N. Panikkar was appointed as Vice-Chancellor of the Sree
Sankara Sanskrit University by the previous CPM regime, has no idea of
Sankara's philosophy or Sanskrit language and is against teaching of Sanskrit
in schools and colleges.'
The CPM which had penetrated all
walks of human activity in Kerala, also had a strong-hold over academic
bodies and universities. Most of the senate and syndicate members of universities
in Kerala are packed with Marxists. The Vice-Chancellors are proclaimed
Marxists. The next aim of the CPM was to penetrate into the realm of the
history of Kerala and corelate it with the Communist movement, i.e. they
wanted history of Kerala to he rewritten with a Marxist outlook. It was
with this view that they approached the renowned Historian of Kerala Dr
A. Sreedhara Menon. He was asked to write the history of Kerala in the
company of comrade EMS and left intellectual Shri P. Govinda Pillai. The
nationalist that he was, he refused outrightly. Then came the CPM strategy
of forming the KCHR and packing it with left academicians and pseudo-intellectuals
like K. N. Panikkar, Dr K. N. Ganesh, Rajan Gurukkal, KKN Kurup, Dr Meera
Velayudhan, M. P. Raghava Warrier, Dr Michael Tharalan, Dr Kesavan Veluthat,
Dr Muhammed Koya and Dr K.S. Mathew, etc.
The procedure adopted for the formation
of the KCHR was more political than academic. Most of the genuine and independent
historians/ academicians working in the field of historic research were
kept in the dark. The KCHR was nothing but a conspiracy of the reds to
appropriate history by means of hidden agenda and secret manoeuvres.
The Antony Government while disbanding
the KCHR had accused it of incurring enormous expenditure daring its short
period of existence.
It is pertinent to note that Prof.
K. N. Panikkar who was earlier doing a project "Towards Freedom" for ICHR,
had drawn lakhs of rupees, without neither completing the same nor submitting
proper accounts.
Hailing the decision of the Kerala
Government, the ICHR chairman and reputed historian Prof. M.G.S. Narayanan
said that when the CPM wanted to do Historic Research on camouflaged party
machinery, a democratic government had every right to dismantle it. "The
KCHR was a CPM conspiracy to hijack history for their destructive sectarian
purpose of party propaganda" Refuting the red charge that RSS was behind
the KCHR disbanding, he said the CPM resorts to such usual gimmicks when
they were caught red-handed.
Meanwhile, the Delhi red brigade
consisting of R. S. Sharma, Irfanhabib, Satish Chandra (Former Chairman
ICHR), K.M. Shrimali, Sumit Sarkar, Tanika Sarkar and Mushirul Hassan etc.
have joined their Kerala counterparts in accusing Antony of bowing to the
dictates of the RSS. They already bear a grudge against him for not attending
the non-BJP chief ministers conference called by Buddhadeb Bhattacharya
to protest against saffronisation of education. In fact, Antony had admonished
the left for using the work saffronisation, while attacking the RSS, since
he considers saffron sacred and pure and as a symbol of Bharat's age old
culture and heritage. He had said that attack on saffron would be attack
on our age-old civilisation.
While the reds are lamenting over
the collapse of their historical dream (in addition to Basu's historical
blunder), the people of Kerala are saved from a Marxicised history.
