Six civilians hurt in blast

SRINAGAR, Jan 1 (PTI) — Seven persons, including a BSF jawan, were injured when militants hurled a grenade on a security bunker in Lal Chowk area this afternoon, an official spokesman said.

Militants hurled the grenade on a BSF bunker at Palladium in Lal Chowk, injuring the BSF jawan and six pedestrians.

The injured were hospitalised.

A Border Security Force jawan was killed when Pakistani troops resorted to shelling on Indian positions on Wednesday, an official spokesman said today.

Constable Jeetpal Singh died on the spot at Jabla post in Nowgam Sector of Uri in North Kashmir during the unprovoked shelling, he said, adding the Indian troops returned the fire.

Two civilians were killed near Badhoon in Rajouri district. The Rashtriya Rifles (RR) gunned down a militant in Kishtwar area of Doda district.

The bodies of the civilians were handed over to their families.

A Pakistan-trained militant was killed in Hindo village of Thratri area.

Tribune News Service adds from Jammu: Abdul Nissar Khan, a militant from occupied-Kashmir, had sneaked into Jammu region to marry a "hoor" fairy but surrendered along with six of his colleagues before Maj-Gen Bhupinder Singh here on Friday.

The seven militants had infiltrated into Jammu recently and had been assigned the task of carrying out bomb blasts. Shabir Ahmed, a resident of Kupwara, who had crossed over to Pakistan in 1995 and had sneaked back into the Jammu region, recently had been directed by the Pakistani agencies to carry out blasts in Srinagar on Republic Day. Others who surrendered were Aijaj Beg, Shabir Ahmed Katana, Mohammed Sharif, Nazir Ahmed and Mohammed Amin.

The militants pledged to cooperate with the government in containing the activities of militants and eliminating foreign mercenaries responsible for a large number of killings in the state.

General Bhupinder Singh assured that they would be rehabilitated.

The Special Operations Group (SOG) of the Jammu and Kashmir police claimed to have foiled militants' plans to create trouble during the current holy month of Ramazan with the recovery of arms and ammunition, including nine rifles, an MMG, SLR carbine, three pistols and 30 grenades from a hideout following the arrest of a contact of the Hizbul Mujahideen on the outskirts of the city. A spokesman of the SOG said he had been deputed to collect arms and ammunition from Kupwara in North Kashmir to be used in Srinagar.

RSS creating facts: Prof Habib
From Jangveer Singh
Tribune News Service

PATIALA, Jan 1 — Attempts to "distort" history by the Sangh Parivar with the support of the Central Government was hotly debated at the just-concluded 59th session of the Indian History Congress held at Punjabi University here.

While the tempo was set by Congress president Prof Partha Sarathi Gupta when he referred to Vidya Bharti schools in the country teaching "unscientific hypothesis", the issue was also referred to by Prof Satish Chandra during a special lecture and also came up at the annual business meeting of the Congress.

Finally, the Congress passed a resolution criticising the manner in which a "one-sided view" of history was being projected besides changes in textbooks being affected by the BJP-led state governments.

Prof Irfan Habib, who was instrumental in getting this resolution passed, in an interview with TNS alleged the Sangh Parivar and its historians were "creating facts" without evidence. For instance, they were trying to seek an Aryan home in India and denying a Dravidian linguistic family by claiming the Rig Veda was written earlier than 5,000 B.C. Similarly, the Sangh Parivar was claiming the Indus valley civilisation was Vedic despite linguistic and archaeological evidence to the contrary.

Prof Habib said with regard to medieval India, the Sangh Parivar harped on only the persecution of Hindus ignoring cultural contribution and growth of composite traditions involving Hindus and Muslims. He also criticised the "parivar" for its narrow view of the national movement. He said though it itself did not contribute to the movement, it tried to denigrate leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. "Such distortions have been taken to the extreme in Pakistan and we know the results," he explained.

Eminent historian Prof Bipin Chandra said though history was continuously being reinterpreted, the BJP was going back to "communal" writers. He said the religious life of the people could nowhere be expected to be the most important aspect of life. Nowadays, people were more interested in economic and scientific developments and social and cultural changes.

Prof J.S. Grewal stressed that the basic principles of historical writing followed all over the world should be observed in India too. He said any statement on the past should be made on the basis of evidence which could be examined in the present. Besides, all interpretations must be in rational and logical terms and any statement made on the basis of emperical evidence must be revised in the light of more emperical evidence.

Prof Grewal said writers who wrote about the past without following these principles laboured under the misconception that they were writing history, while in fact they were only writing political polemic.

Dr B.R. Grover, former Director of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), while saying distortions had occurred in Indian history, said the BJP had nothing to do with the same. On the contrary, case studies revealed that the distortions had been made by leftist historians. He gave the example of leftists ignoring the destruction of Hindu temples in the medieval period, despite documented evidence. Similarily, NCERT books carried "distorted" lessons and there was a need to correct these.

Dr S.K. Gupta from Himachal University, Shimla, said the real problem lay in historians writing history in imperial, Christian, Communist, Islamist or socialist frameworks and moulds. He said such historians always practised double standards in their evaluation of reality. It is because of this that the golden age of Indian history during the ancient times was being belittled, he added.

Mr V.N. Datta, Professor Emeritus, Kurukshetra University, however, said to his mind there was no finality in history and it was subject to modification in the light of new evidence. Prof Datta said the view of Marxists and those who practised "Hindutva" believed that history had a definite framework. Any attempt by Communists or the BJP to serve the cause of a particular party of government was bound to distort history, he contended.

Dr S.K. Gupta, Head, Department of History, Punjabi University, called for doing away with pre-conceived notions and said "we should not stray away from truth due to religious or other considerations".