Subject: "History vs Propaganda" by Romila Thapar
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 09:26:38 +1300


The Times of India         10 Dec. 2001

History vs Propaganda
by ROMILA THAPAR
WHAT is really at stake in the current row over history textbooks is 
the right of the professional historian to assert the pre-eminence of 
history over myth and fantasy. History in India has been regarded as 
a soft option: The popular belief is that anyone who has read a few 
books on a subject can claim to be a historian.
What is not generally understood is that in the last half century the 
writing and research on history has become far more professional.
We do now have to observe a historical method; ways of reading and 
interpreting sources. Reading a text alone is not sufficient to draw 
historical conclusions, it is equally important to know the context 
of the text - the purpose, the function, the audience and the patron, 
all go towards the making of a text.
Reading, therefore, means an analytical activity that draws on 
logical reasoning, and the priorities of causation. There is also the 
input of other disciplines in the social sciences - in ancient 
history, for example, both archaeology and linguistics make 
contributions.
In other words, writing history is a complicated process. This is not 
understood very often at the popular level, and certainly not by the 
politicians who are currently criticising the history we write.
This then raises the question of who judges what is valid history? 
The validity has to be judged by professional historians who may 
criticise these books and whose criticism we would take seriously 
(provided they are professional historians).
Politicians and heads of religious organisations would have views on 
the politics of what is included in a textbook, but one cannot take 
their judgments on the correctness or otherwise of the historical 
content of the books, with any seriousness.
The NCERT is not willing to reveal the names of the so-called 
historians whom it claims to have consulted. So the debate is not 
among historians but between historians and politicians. The real 
issues are not issues of historical accuracy.
What our critics are saying in effect is that: "We neither need to 
know your methods nor are we interested in knowing them. That is 
irrelevant. What we are interested in is the political message, a 
political exploitation of a particular historical view that we 
endorse''.
The real concerns are to provide propaganda for the elections in UP 
and Punjab, and to facilitate the imposition of the RSS version of 
history on state schools.
It is curious too that some of our books have been used for almost 40 
years - mine on Ancient India has been prescribed since 1966 and I 
revised it in 1987 - and have not created pedagogic problems. But we 
are suddenly told that there are 50,000 complaints against them and 
that certain communities are feeling offended by them.
One of the attitudes that we have to grow out of as a society is the 
insistence that anything a historian or a social scientist might say 
must have the consent of the community to which it relates.
If one reads the chronicles and historical biographies of earlier 
times, all manner of remarks - sometimes outrageous - were made about 
various communities.
Yet there was accommodation. Sooner or later we shall have to come to 
terms with the notion of a critical evaluation of social groups, and 
this may bring about the maturity that we need in present times.
Beyond the immediate politics of the action, there is an attempt to 
falsify history in order to prove the theories on which the Hindutva 
ideology is based. For example, the historical primacy of a 
distinctive Aryan people is maintained.
This is unacceptable, because Aryan is a linguistic label, refers to 
the Aryan-speaking peoples and is not the name of a single people or 
a race.
There were many who lived in the subcontinent prior to the Aryans. 
The claim is made that the Aryans were indigenous to India, which 
most scholars reject in favour of arguing for migrations of 
Aryan-speakers into India.
The latter argument is supported by linguistic data, but in the 
Hindutva reconstruction of the early past, the linguistic evidence is 
ignored.
Another assertion - that the Harappan civilisation was created by the 
Aryans - is not taken seriously by most scholars, nevertheless we now 
have Murli Manohar Joshi pronouncing on what he calls the Sarasvati 
civilisation, and which he claims is prior even to the Harappan. Yet 
the evidence for this is so far invisible. The Rigveda is also being 
taken back in time, and quite arbitrarily from millennium to 
millennium.
What is happening is that there is a building up of a fantasy that is 
being thrust upon students in the guise of historical knowledge. This 
is doubly objectionable because the fantasy is attempting to prove 
that the caste Hindu has an unbroken, lineal descent of 5,000 years.
The thesis of Savarkar that those who can claim Indian ancestry and 
India as the land of their religion, can claim to be Indian, the 
others being foreigners, is sought to be vindicated.
A further element in their theory is that Indian civilisation, 
encapsulated in Vedic Aryanism, was entirely indigenous and was the 
first to invent all manner of sophisticated technologies, none of 
which was derived from other cultures.
They argue simultaneously that India virtually civilised the world. 
The notion of civilisation in this theory is a 19th century, colonial 
concept, now discarded by historians.
The other area of dispute arises yet again from their endorsing the 
colonial interpretation - the interpretation of Mill and Macaulay - 
that Indian history should be seen as the Hindu and the Muslim 
civilisations and the British period.
This views Hindu and Muslim communities as being monolithic and 
uniform, as well as permanently in conflict. Muslim rule, therefore, 
meant the oppression of Hindus.
If one looks at the medieval scene without the blinkers of Hindu and 
Muslim communalism, it is fascinating to see the interface between 
what we call the Hindus and the Muslims and between them and many 
others. An example of this is Eknath's, Hindu-Turk Samvad, that 
speaks freely and even critically of differences, but the context is 
one of living life together. What is also fascinating is that the 
medieval period is the time when many present-day rituals, practices 
and mythologies, were being formulated as a part of Hinduism. They 
drew from the interface of varying ways of life and beliefs, 
modulated over time. To say, therefore, that all Hindus religious 
practices derive from the Vedas, is an artificial imposition of 
uniformity on a religion whose strength lies in its plurality.
(As told to Mahesh Daga)
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