History by fiat

THE LATEST DIRECTIVE by the Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister, Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi, to the National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT) to have the chapter on the Sikh Guru Teg Bahadur deleted from Professor Satish Chandra's book on medieval India for class IX, that has been in circulation for over two decades, is yet another instance of the persistent thought policing manoeuvres by the Sangh Parivar ever since it cobbled together a coalition at the Centre. Foremost, interference with the spirit of intellectual freedom is anathema to modern civilisation which has always nurtured the pursuit of scientific enquiry, even though invariably the fruits of such endeavours ran counter to established norms of viewing and understanding the world. Social enquiry presupposes a host of viewpoints and, consequently, grappling with these simultaneously is integral to the process of studying social sciences. Therefore, any attempt to write history that will ``suit the needs of the present times'' is antithetical to the endeavour of promoting human excellence, incidentally one of the Directive Principles of State Policy in the Constitution.

Dr. Joshi in particular, at the helm of the HRD Ministry, has more than served the sectarian cause of the Parivar by first insisting on a rendition of the Saraswati Vandana at the Conference of State Education Ministers in 1999. This was soon followed up by the Indian Council for Historical Research's unceremonious withdrawal of the volumes comprising the ``Towards Freedom'' project compiled by eminent historians Professor K. N. Panikkar of the Jawaharlal Nehru University and Professor Sumit Sarkar of the Delhi University, volumes that dealt with the communal riots of 1946 and the prominent role played by the communists in the freedom movement. One must also not lose sight of other dimensions of this broader campaign of cultural nationalism that saw a ban on the shooting of Deepa Mehta's film ``Water'' and the list is unending. The Bharatiya Janata Party has made no secret of its intentions to rewrite the history of the Indian nation-state, even if it has sought to rationalise such a proposal as falling within the framework of the New Education Policy drafted in 1986.

It is noteworthy that the explanation for the deletion of the portion in the NCERT book is couched in terms of the offence caused to people's religious beliefs, although it is obvious by now that the Sangh Parivar has no time for religious sensibilities whatsoever, except for the selective and systematic targeting of minority religious communities. If however, there is a growing popular misperception about the Sangh Parivar as a votary of Hinduism, it is on account of its relentless pursuit of a majoritarian agenda which seeks to identify Indian nationalism with Hinduism. The attempt at reconstructing history, first in terms of viewing ancient India as essentially an embodiment of the Hindu identity and much of the second millennium as falling neatly into Hindu and Muslim periods and the subsequent ascendancy of Hindu nationalism is part of the very same process. An appreciation of this is especially critical lest Dr. Joshi's fiat should be interpreted as seeking to safeguard religious sentiments from ``secular'' attack.

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