Diversity of interpretation behind history slugfest
M Rajivlochan
Historian
The spat at Kannur, between the Governor of Kerala, Arif Mohammed Khan, and Irfan Habib, the historian from Aligarh, may have left some people dumbfounded, especially when the Governor, during his inaugural speech, told the hecklers that ‘it is for people such as you that Maulana Azad said that the partition swept away the muck, but a little dirt still remains’. The sessions of the Indian History Congress have long been known for partisan political clap-trap and skullduggery. Dignitaries, especially for the inaugural session, are carefully chosen, keeping in mind their political leanings. In the present instance, the sotto voce question that is being asked is about the reason to invite Arif Mohammed Khan in the first place. Earlier, in 2001, at the session of the Indian History Congress at Bhopal, Bhai Mahavir, who was then the Governor of Madhya Pradesh, was not invited, neither was Uma Bharati, the local MP, ostensibly because their political leanings did not synchronise with those approved by the managers of the History Congress. Chief Minister Digvijay Singh had provided patronage to the Indian History Congress on that occasion.
The Indian History Congress is a voluntary association which has about 2,500 life members. For some years now, membership is restricted to those who are sponsored by other life members and an MA in history is a pre-condition for membership. It was not so restrictive earlier, though ever since its inception, the IHC has had to address political partisanship.
It was at the initiative of what was known as the Maharashtra School of Historians that the Indian History Congress came into existence. Its first session was held in June 1935 at Pune with the express objective of bringing together researchers in history who were working in different corners of India. Sir Shafaat Ahmed Khan, who presided over the session, acknowledged that there would inevitably be a diversity of interpretation and of political purpose in the writing of history in a country as vast and diverse as India, yet there was need for the historian to not allow one’s political leanings to overshadow one’s historical research.
It was in the 1960s that the IHC became the venue for ideological struggles of the Left and the Right, when a number of young historians pointed out that the papers read at the IHC were essentially promoting hatred against the Muslims of India by focussing entirely on the valorous defence put up against the invaders by the Indian rulers in the centuries gone past. The younger historians argued that much of the communal violence in the country was fuelled by such an understanding of history, which they called was a ‘communal’ understanding of history. These historians received considerable government patronage when Indira Gandhi became the Prime Minister. One of the outputs of such government patronage was a small pamphlet called ‘Communalism and the writing of Indian history’ which was based on a seminar organised by the All India Radio. The authors of this pamphlet were Romila Thapar, Harbans Mukhia and Bipan Chandra. Another output was the re-writing of history textbooks by the NCERT and an insistence by the Central government that these textbooks be taught in all Centrally- funded schools. Even the competitive exams came to be based on these textbooks. The authors of these textbooks included RS Sharma, Romila Thapar, Satish Chandra and Bipan Chandra. The NCERT textbooks were criticised for being biased towards the Left, being hostile to Hindus and hiding details of Afghan sultans and the Mughals.
The first non-Congress government in India, in 1977, tried to change these textbooks and stop patronage to the Indian History Congress. A small group, led by Devahuti and Lokesh Chandra, unsuccessfully floated an alternate forum. S Gopal, the son of Dr S. Radhakrishnan and the biographer of Jawaharlal Nehru, who was the IHC president, urged the historians to fight and destroy the ideas of those promoting alternate and communal versions of history, with the greatest possible aggression.
The return of Indira Gandhi brought government patronage back to the Left historians and sidelined the efforts of Devahuti and Lokesh Chandra. Meanwhile, the Left historians also came to dominate the Indian Council for Historical Research, the government-appointed council for disbursing funds for historical research in India. The ICHR journal became the place for Left leaning historians to express their views. Funds were given only to projects that overtly found approval with their ideology. This meant that projects for researching the history of say, the Ram Setu, supposed to link India with Sri Lanka, were not approved for fear that it might provide a historical basis for the story of prince Rama fighting king Ravana. Projects researching the origins of the mythical river Saraswati were disapproved and rejected. Any project to do with the history of the RSS was rejected unless it specifically indicated that it would prove that the RSS was a communal organisation.
While other social scientists discussed ways to improve their method of research and encompass more and more data, historians avoided going beyond banal statements on the method of history. However, as the Left historians began to age, they also began to make public statements that provided an insight into their ‘method’ of history. In one interesting interview to Rajya Sabha TV during the 2014 session of the IHC at JNU, Habib said historians chose only a handful of facts to write their history and ignore those that do not fit their narrative. In another interview to the BBC, on whether Maharana Pratap was great or not, Harbans Mukhia said only that history needs to be written and researched that promoted the approved sort of political objectives and ideology. Romila Thapar, in her Early India, explained why only historians should write history and no one else, and confessed that as the domain of knowledge grew, the historian was increasingly clueless and yet willing to pass judgments. These two interviews, and Romila Thapar’s confession, by three of the greatest historians of India, give a clue as to why history writing in India, is so poorly researched and unreadable.
