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There can be no objection to the
revision of history textbooks. They need constant revision and
updating. However, the exercise has been undertaken without
consulting the authors concerned. This is a contravention of the
agreement with them as correctly pointed out by Romila Thapar.
The whole thing has been a hush-hush affair. Things are being
done on the sly and a great secrecy is being maintained over the
names of text writers who will replace the authors under attack.
Almost as if it involves great defence secrets.
Bipan Chandra
who has done seminal work on the communal ideology points out
that no ideology can succeed if its core is not forcefully
implemented. This explains the doggedness with which BJP follows
the communal agenda in the field of education, history and
research though it may make compromises with its NDA allies in
other fields. The fact that Atal Behari Vajpayee gives a freer
hand to Murli Manohar Joshi than even L.K. Advani should
surprise none.
The essential
requirement of history is the pursuit of truth, observes Irfan
Habib. However, truth is the first casualty at the hands of the
Sangh Parivar that equates myth-making with history. There is an
attempt to convert Indus culture into Saraswati civilisation to
ward off any non-Aryan pretensions. The horse figures
prominently in the Rig Veda and is wholly absent in the Indus
valley civilisation. To colour Indus with the Aryan hue, a horse
on an Indus seal was flaunted by an ideologue of the Sangh
Parivar until this fraud was exposed by two American scholars.
R.S. Sharma
rightly claims that the books under attack were neither
academically examined, nor were the authors asked to explain the
objections raised against them. History is the most important
vehicle of indoctrination at the hands of the communalists and
their approach, argues Dr Sharma, will destroy the very fabric
of secular India. It is a serious threat to national
integration.
Sumit Sarkar
emphatically points out that history of a particular kind is
vital for the Sangh Parivar. It wants to be the sole spokesman
of Hindus. Hinduism is presented as a monolith regardless of
differences of caste, gender, class, and regional variations.
This monolith is pitted against Muslims and Christians. This
view of history, so reminiscent of totalitarian states, is an
attempt to turn the clock back.
Vir Sanghvi has
characterised the whole attempt as ‘Talibanisation’ of our
education system. Saba Naqvi Bhaumik, another journalist, finds
the move much more sinister. The Taliban were notorious for
banning most books, while the RSS runs an extensive education
network. Dileep Padgaonkar finds Murli Manohar Joshi’s call
for a "second war for the country’s cultural
revolution" as part and parcel of the Sangh Parivar’s
ideological agenda. Rajeev Dhawan, a legal luminary, does not
see mere electoral gains as the motive behind the exercise.
There is a deeper quest to subordinate all other faiths to the
hegemony of Hinduism.
Amartya Sen in
his interview has forcefully argued that the Hindu version of
history is sectarian and combative. In his opinion, India was
never a Hindu ‘Rashtra’. Rather, the two greatest
emperors of India, Ashoka, and Akbar, were non-Hindus — one
being a Buddhist and other a Muslim. Hinduism alone cannot be
the subject matter of Indian history. Different religious and
non-(or anti-) religious ideas must be taken into consideration
by a historian.
The charge
against the historians under attack is that some of their
formulations offend the sensibility of some religious and caste
groups and certain paragraphs from their textbooks, thought to
be offensive, have been deleted. There is documentary and
archaeological evidence to prove that Aryans ate beef in Vedic
times. Historians like Romila Thapar, R.S. Sharma and D.N. Jha
have been pilloried for stating this. They could be accused of
offending Hindus if they suggested that they should eat beef
now. However, what is wrong if they point out, on the basis of
strong historical evidence, that the ancestors of the modern-day
champions of Hinduism had different eating habits in the hoary
past? Satish Chandra has been berated for stating that Guru Teg
Bahadur resorted to plunder and rapine. It is cleverly concealed
that it is only the official explanation for persecuting the
Guru and not the opinion of the author. The author has
conclusively stated that "the Guru, while being a religious
leader, had also been a rallying point for all those fighting
against injustice and oppression" and "Aurangzeb’s
action was unjustified from any point of view and betrayed a
narrow approach". To quote certain lines out of context is
a typical device of the ideologues of the Sangh Parivar to
pander to the religious sensibility of a particular community.
The state in medieval times was in most of the cases rooted in
plunder and pillage. Why should Jats feel offended if historical
facts reveal that the ancestors of those who founded the
Bharatpur state indulged into highway robbery? However, Arjun
Dev has been faulted on this ground.
Indian society
comprises thousands of religious, caste, and ethnic groups. If a
historian has to remain on tenterhooks all the time about the
possibility of offending a particular social group, no
meaningful history writing is possible. Moreover, the projected
policy to seek the approval of the selection and representation
of historical facts from religious and caste leaders is fraught
with sinister consequences. Does it mean that a mammoth body of sadhus
and sants, dharmacharyas and shankracharyas,
immams and ulemas, granthis and bishops one the one
hand and caste chieftains of Brahmins, Rajputs, Jats, Gujjars,
and numberless other caste formations including the Dalits would
be there to vet every piece of history writing? One can imagine
the consequences emanating from this parliament of religious
bigots and ignoramuses.
The demolition of Babri Masjid,
the recent communal carnage in Gujarat and the turmoil at
Ayodhya, the attack on Christians and the controversy about the
history textbooks-all this and similar other things constitute
the rubric of the communal agenda of the Sangh Parivar. The
compendium under review, a treatise short in length and rich in
content, is timely and a must read for those who wish to
understand the wider ramifications of the designs of the Sangh
Parivar. The editors of this text have rendered a signal service
to the cause of the secular and scientific ethos of Indian
society by compiling it and writing an overview on the
controversy.
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