Author: Sandhya Jain
Publication: The Hindustan Times
Date: July 22, 2003
URL: http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/printedition/220703/detPLA01.shtml
Ever since NCERT Director J.S. Rajput
publicised his decision to modernise textbooks in all subjects, a barrage
of one-sided criticism has accompanied the proposed updating of history
texts.
Even before new books could be commissioned,
historians and writers with known Left leanings began attributing motives
to the then unknown writers. The NCERT may have aroused misgivings in some
quarters with its near-simultaneous decision to advise schools not to teach
certain portions of the old history books on the ground that the certain
communities had taken offence to them. But to the extent that they were
academically valid, these concerns could've been accommodated in the new
books.
Several of the NCERT's new history
books have since come out, and some of them have been badly received. Yet
one book, Medieval India for Class XI by Meenakshi Jain, has been greeted
with deafening silence for nearly seven months. Colleagues have informed
me that there has been intense pressure on Left historians to condemn this
otherwise accurate narrative, as it deviates too sharply from their own
perspective. Hence, under the aegis of the Left-dominated Indian History
Congress (IHC), an Index of Errors of all the new books has been compiled.
The section on medieval India is presented under the signature of Irfan
Habib.
No doubt Habib's name has been used
because of his richly deserved reputation as a formidable scholar. Yet,
it is equally undeniable that he ranks among intellectuals who deny legitimacy
to the Hindu civilisational ethos and its place in national life. This
school has sought to keep civilisational issues out of textbooks and to
whitewash the horrors of the medieval era.
The NCERT's new book on medieval
India has given them a rude shock. Although the author has relied solely
upon the published works of renowned historians, IHC stalwarts protest
that "the dark corners of the medieval era" have been brought into the
light. In all objectivity, this should not be surprising as the period
had few redeeming features. Habib and his friends should have accepted
the truth gracefully. Instead, they have tried to challenge almost every
fact in the book, little realising that it has relied extensively upon
their own published research and other standard works in the discipline.
A few telling examples will suffice
to elucidate how far intellectual integrity has been sacrificed at the
altar of political ideology. For instance, the Index of Errors sharply
rebukes the author for claiming that Indian peasants suffered unparalleled
exploitation under the Delhi sultanate. Yet, it is Habib who states: "To
begin with, the new conquerors and rulers. were of a different faith (Islam)
from that of their predecessors. their principal achievements lay in a
great systematisation of agrarian exploitation and an immense concentration
of the resources so obtained." (The Social Distribution of Landed Property
in Pre-British India, ed. R.S. Sharma and V. Jha; Indian Society: Historical
Probings, PPH, 1974, p 287.)
The NCERT authors' critique of Balban
as a weak ruler has been strongly disparaged. Here again, Habib and Nizami
assert: "Balban, his officers and his army. proved themselves extraordinarily
inefficient and clumsy." (ibid, p 292) and ". it took Balban six years
or more to crush the rebellion of Tughril and a riffraff of 200,000 had
to be enlisted at Awadh to strengthen the regular army. Balban did not
challenge any of the great Hindu rais. his officers failed against the
raids of frontier Mongol officers. both in the civil and the military field
Balban and his governing class had been tried and found wanting". (ibid,
p 303). The iconoclasm attributed to Alauddin Khalji is also a direct quotation
from Habib and Nizami.
The IHC's contention that there's
no proof that Sher Shah extracted jiziya is absurd. Satish Chandra has
stated in his (now replaced) NCERT textbook: "Jizyah continued to be collected
from the Hindus, while his nobility was drawn also most exclusively from
the Afghans" (p 150). Surely, historical facts can't be changed to suit
the whim and fancy of the moment!
The low annual growth rate of the
Indian population between 1600 and 1800, pegged at 0.14 per cent, has been
denied by the IHC. Alas, it is Habib who declaims: ". the population during
the Mughal period did not remain stable though the compound rate of growth,
0.14 per annum, was hardly spectacular and was much lower than the rate
attained during the nineteenth century." (The Cambridge Economic History
of India, Vol. I, Orient Longman, 1982, p 167, ed. Tapan Raychaudhari and
Irfan Habib.) Is Habib disowning his own scholarship?
Medieval slave trade in India rivals
early Arab and later European trade from Africa. It would be unjust to
negate this atrocity from the annals of history. The IHC claims this flourishing
market in human beings declined under the Mughals. But noted historian
Dirk Kolff (Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of a Military Labour
Market in Hindustan, 1450-1850, Cambridge University Press, 1990) is fairly
emphatic: "There is irrefutable evidence for the enslavement and deportation
of thousands and thousands of peasants by the Mughal aristocracy. Many
of these were sold to countries to the west of India. The trade had flourished
before 1400, when Multan was a considerable slave market, but it was continued
after that, with Kabul as the main entrepot" (p 10); "In these deportations
Jehangir also had a share" (p 11); and "the Emperor Shahjehan also used
to have offenders against the state transported beyond the river Indus
to be 'exchanged for Pathan dogs'." He concludes: "Anyway, it is clear
that, in the 1660s, Indian supply of and Persian demand for slaves was
still considerable."
This is not to say there are no
errors in the book. Muhammad Ghur should be called Muhammad of Ghur and
Muhammad Ghazni designated Muhammad of Ghazni. Bakhtiyar Khalji has been
described as a slave when he was a free man, and the historian who commented
adversely on Muhammad bin Tughlaq was Badauni, not Barani. But to quibble
that the Dastur-ul-Amal-I Alamgiri wasn't an official document shows how
contrived the whole exercise is. None of these points merited listing in
an Index of Errors. They could have been faxed to the NCERT director for
rectification in his next reprint.
