Misappropriating authority

WITH HIS CATEGORICAL statement that the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) has not accorded its Director, Mr. Sushil Kumar, any authority to air opinions on matters of history, the Chairman, Prof. B. R. Grover, may have put the lid on one more unseemly controversy involving the body. Mr. Kumar, as it emerges, has had nothing to do with the discipline of history and his position in the ICHR is restricted to carrying out administrative tasks; and in this sense, the imperative for him is to stick to administrative matters and resist any temptation to dabble in matters that require academic skills. One would expect the ICHR as a body to ensure, at least from now on, that the name and authority of the institution are not misappropriated by its employees.

Mr. Kumar's contention that the Babri Masjid has ceased to be a mosque since prayers were not held in its precincts for many years in the past, and hence Muslims must give up their claims over that at least now, is not at all a new argument. This was among the ideas that were floated by proponents of the Hindutva agenda in Ayodhya even while the strident among them were engaged in whipping up communal passions across the country. But the fallacy of this line was exposed even at that time; the context in which the gates of the Babri Masjid remained locked until a lower court ordered its reopening in 1986 and the larger aspect of the campaign for a temple there being taken into the political realm, and the impact of the campaign on civil society are all truths that cannot be glossed over. It is in this context that one finds in Mr. Kumar's ideas a larger meaning than an expression of his sentiment. There is indeed cause for concern also because Mr. Kumar chose to give expression to such ideas in his capacity as Director of the ICHR. Hence, there is a lot more to the issue than an official overstepping his authority or of someone in the ICHR speaking out of turn.

Mr. Kumar's act will also have to be seen in the context of a tendency among a section in the ICHR, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and other autonomous academic bodies to speak out of turn in such a manner as to ``please'' those in higher positions within and outside the bodies. There were instances in the past when persons associated with one or another of these academic institutions were allowed to participate in campaigns of a partisan political nature and even make statements based only on their own ``beliefs''. A large number of those who were associated with the ASI and hence involved in archaeological excavations, funded and guided by the professional body, showed a lot of enthusiasm in associating themselves with the sectarian campaign organised by the Sangh Parivar. This tendency was rampant in the past couple of decades and it persists even now.

The striking feature of all those instances was that such associates of the ASI were found to make full use of their association with the professional institution in lending their names to the Hindutva campaign, even while they refrained from presenting the same ``findings'' before any of the national or international fora of professionals. For, they knew only too well that their ``findings'' were not based on any material facts that could be put up for professional scrutiny. They also refused to restrain such platforms as the VHP or the Bajrang Dal from using their academic credentials to legitimise sectarian campaigns. Hence, the episode involving Mr. Sushil Kumar raises concerns. It is for this reason that one would expect the political leadership of the Government to let academic bodies remain the preserve of those committed to scholarship. This principle is of the utmost significance to an institution like the ICHR. History, after all, is replete with instances of damage to a nation's polity and its civil society when the discipline and the writing of history were allowed to be distorted.

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