Author: Sandhya Jain
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: June 29, 2004
Joseph K was submitted to the motions
of due process of law and allowed to have his say before being snuffed
out with banal savagery in Franz Kafka's grimly prophetic The Trial. Reviving
memories of the communist leviathan since consigned to the dustbin of history,
Mr Arjun Singh's committee to review NCERT's new history textbooks has
surpassed that sham tribunal with its peremptory decision to recommend
scrapping of all textbooks commissioned by the NDA Government.
Though appointed on June 12, 2004,
Professors S Settar, JS Grewal and Barun De arrived in the capital only
on June 22 and just three days later proposed wholesale purging of the
books, without according the authors the minimal courtesy of a hearing.
Press reports indicate that the committee worked to a pre- determined schedule,
if not to a command performance. Pre-selected experts and activists appeared
before the committee, while written offers of cooperation from the affected
authors received the cold shoulder.
While no chargesheet was served
nor evidence adduced regarding so-called "distorted and communally biased
portions" in any of the books under scrutiny, the trial was conducted with
unseemly haste. In the absence of a formal prosecution, there was, naturally,
no defence. Judgment was pronounced at a hastily convened press conference.
I am personally pleased with this
blatant partisanship, as it has taken the subject of history out of the
closet and into the public arena, where all can see the intellectual dishonesty
of Marxist historians. Besides tarnishing its academic credentials by asserting
the primacy of ideology before the discipline of History, the committee
is tainted by what legal circles call a conflict of interest.
Prof JS Grewal, the medievalist
on the committee, has jointly authoured works with Prof Irfan Habib, who
authoured the medieval India section of the Indian History Congress' notorious
Index of Errors, which spearheaded the Leftist attack on NCERT. Some news
reports suggest that Prof Habib met the committee, as did activists of
Sahmat, an organisation that hosted press conferences wherein Leftist academics
spat venom against NCERT.
Even worse, the committee executed
a personal agenda, disregarding the mandate given by the HRD Ministry.
Its order explicitly stated that as textbooks for the current year had
already been printed and teaching commenced in most schools, it would be
"impractical to withdraw these books at this stage without causing dislocation
in the studies of millions of students". The panel of historians was only
to identify "distorted and communally biased portions," if any, and simultaneously
recommend short passages to fill in gaps that may develop as a result of
deletion of impugned passages.
The eminent historians superseded
the Ministry's order in totality, for reasons that need to be made public.
The committee did not make even a suggestive list of errors or instances
of communal tinge in any of the books it rubbished. This suggests, as the
authors claim, that there are no such passages, and that rather than honestly
admitting this, the historians served a political agenda. By not identifying
so-called saffron passages, the committee also evaded the treacherous trap
of suggesting substitute inputs. For such an exercise would have completely
discredited Marxists, as they would have had to reveal, in black and white,
what facts of history they wished to erase or (re)interpret.
An affected author has claimed that
the books are being scrapped at the instance of a cabal determined to monopolise
the rendition of Indian history. Certainly the committee's behaviour lends
credence to the view that Marxists cannot afford an open debate on history,
and rely exclusively on State power to suppress facts and impose interpretations
upon an innocent public.
Readers who think history is essentially
a factual narrative of what happened in the past and cannot be affected
by ideological preferences may wish to understand some fundamental issues
in danger of distortion at the hands of Indian Marxists and their fellow
travellers. To begin with, we need to appreciate that India is no ordinary
country, and that the history of India is actually the story of the triumphs
and travails of a great civilisation.
This civilisation is anathema to
Indian Marxists, who rabidly deny its unity, integrity, uniqueness and
continuity. This is why they uphold colonial falsehoods about an Aryan
Invasion, even after it has been seriously discredited by academics and
archaeologists the world over. Yet Marxists project India as a landmass
subject to successive invasions (and immigrations) since the dawn of history,
with perhaps only the so-called Dravidians as original inhabitants. In
this worldview, Vedic (Arya) Hindus are not a coherent community, and the
Jain and Buddhist traditions are projected as rival streams rather than
as parts of an unified spiritual spectrum.
Ignoring the magnitude of evidence
regarding ancient India's spiritual and commercial forays in the world,
Marxists pretend that India was completely isolated from the world until
Islam arrived as invader-saviour and ended her seclusion. Violently silencing
the view that Islam triggered off the rigidity of the caste system, Marxists
claim that Islam transformed Hindu society with a message of equality.
Under the patronage of the Nehruvian
State, Indian Marxists have completely disallowed discussion on the cultural
deadlock in Indian society following Islam's violent advent in the subcontinent.
The havoc wrought by Islam on the Indian people is similarly taboo, and
till date there is not a single account documenting the sheer numbers of
natives killed is resisting Islamic kings and warriors.
Readers may be surprised to learn
that far from lacking a sense of history (another colonial propaganda and
legacy), Indian society scrupulously documented the tragedy and heroism
of its encounter with Islam. Through the tenth to the nineteenth century,
the writings of bards, wandering saints, women of princely families, and
other strata of society, all reflect a startling continuity of perception
towards Islam. It was the Nehruvian State that ruthlessly purged this vision
and created a great schizophrenia in national consciousness that is called
secularism, but has a distinctly non-secular tilt. Yet India cannot be
healed unless she comes to terms with her past, and she cannot come to
terms with her past until she faces it in all its blood and gore.
Marxists are committed to fragmenting
and erasing India's civilisational memory, which is why they are resisting
even simple non-interpretative narratives from reaching school children.
An old textbook dislodged by NCERT managed the feat of writing about Jehangir's
reign without mentioning his execution of Sikh Guru Arjan. The persecution
and execution of subsequent Gurus by successive Mughal rulers was similarly
glossed over, with the result that the ordinary student simply failed to
comprehend why groups like the Sikhs, Marathas and Jats offered such sustained
resistance to Mughal rule.
Not only do Marxists avoid debate,
they pretend that the Index of Errors was not rebuffed by NCERT's fallacies
in the IHC's Index of Errors. In the circumstances, they could hardly be
expected to do justice to the new books by meticulously examining each
one for bias or distortion. It will be a sad mockery of education if the
committee now recommends textbooks published by Leftist NGO Ekalavya whose
books were not accepted even by the Digvijay Singh Government in Madhya
Pradesh, or Delhi Government's SCERT which suggest that Delhi residents
provoked their own massacre by Nadir Shah, who no doubt came as an invader-
guest!
