A Book Summary: EMINENT HISTORIANS Their technology, their line, their fraud by ARUN SHOURIE Part 1

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The Historians

1. A characteristic concoction

2. Eminent entrepreneurs!

3. How to do it!

4. A fitting tribute

5. When cornered, cry ‘Petty’,

‘Personal’, ‘Uncivilized’

6. ‘…after selling himself in the flesh market’

A characteristic concoction:

............The next issue of the CPI(M) mouthpiece, Peoples Democracy, reproduced this editorial! And carried with it an article by one of the ringleaders, K.N. Panikkar. ‘Saffronisation of historical research,’ proclaimed the heading. Panikkar repeated the charge of the word ‘rational’ having been replaced by ‘national’. He added another: the Memorandum of Association of the ICHR mentions five objectives, he said, but the resolution put out by the saffron brigade mentions only two.

Thus, the charge rested on three bits of ‘evidence’, that the Memorandum of Association of the ICHR had been changed; second, that a word – ‘rational’ – in the resolution announcing the new members of the ICHR had been surreptitiously replaced by another word – ‘national’; third, that while the original Memorandum of Association had specified five objectives for the ICHR, the new resolution cut out three of these. Having been educated by The Hindu that the ‘nodal ministry’ for the matter was the Ministry of Human Resources Development, I rang up the secretary of that ministry. Has the Memorandum of Association of the ICHR been changed? I asked. No, he said. It has not been changed, he said. And then about the resolution announcing the new members. The allegation, you will recall, was that the aim which in the Memorandum of Association is, ‘to give a national direction to an objective and RATIONAL presentation and interpretation of history…’, had been altered in the resolution to read, ‘to give a national direction to an objective and NATIONAL presentation and interpretation of history….’ I have before me the statement of the Ministry of Human Resources Development [No. F. 30-28/86-U3] dated 6 October 1987, that is of eleven years ago. It gives the text of the resolution of the Government of India announcing the new members – announcing, among other things, that Irfan Habib is being appointed as chairman with retrospective effect from 9 September 1986. The corresponding expression in it is, ‘to give a national direction to an objective and NATIONAL presentation and interpretation of history….’ I have before me the statement of the Ministry of Human Resources Development [No. F. 30-13/89-U3] dated 15 May 1991. It gives the text of the resolution of the government of India announcing the new members – announcing, among other things, that Irfan Habib is being reappointed as chairman with retrospective effect from 12 March 1990. The corresponding expression in it is, ‘to give a national direction to an objective and NATIONAL presentation and interpretation of history…’ To test my hypothesis yet again, I looked for and obtained the immediately preceding statement of the ministry. It bore the number F. 30-3/94-U.3, and was dated 8 September 1994. Like the others, it furnished the members – announcing, among other things, that Ravinder Kumar, another ‘historian’ of the same hue, was being appointed as chairman with retrospective effect from 8 September 1990. The corresponding expression in it was, ‘to give a national direction to an objective and NATIONAL presentation and interpretation of history…’ That is how far I was able to get on my own. I requested the secretary of the ministry: could he please request someone to look up resolutions of the earlier years, and see whether they contained anything different? Could he help me trace when this ‘alteration’ got made? The secretary was able to trace resolutions going back up to 1978 – that is, twenty years. Each of them carried the very same words! The research of the secretary and his colleagues established that – to reproduce the word the secretary used – the whole mystery had arisen from a ‘typographical error’: some typist banging away on his typewriter some twenty-odd years ago typed ‘rational’ as ‘national’. As each typist, when asked to type out the subsequent resolution, copied the preceding one, that word continued to be typed as ‘national’ year after year. The leftists inferred no conspiracy. But, lo and behold, now that a BJP government was in power, inferring conspiracies – to use their favourite phrase – was a historical necessity. It was objective history! It was progressive methodology! I half expected them to put on their Sherlock Holmes caps again, and establish that the governments of Mrs Indira Gandhi, of Rajiv Gandhi, of V.P. Singh, of Narasimha Rao had all been in league with the RSS, and therefore parties to this grave conspiracy! I then rang up Vinod Mehta, the editor of Outlook and president of the Editors Guild of India. ‘But the reporter says she has the text and everything,’ he said. I narrated what I had found. He promised to check and get back to me. When we talked again he said he had sent me the text of the resolution. But that was the current one. My point had been that the ‘change’ on which Outlook had built its story had existed in all resolutions for at least twenty years. He said he would get back to me. He never did. Nor did senior journalists of two other publications that had built their stories on the fabrication, and who, after I requested them to ascertain the basis of their accounts, had promised to get back to me.......................................

............................Not only were these ‘historians’ the advisers of the Babri Masjid Action Committee, its advocates in the negotiations, they simultaneously issued all sorts of statements supporting the Babri Masjid Action Committee’s case – which was the ‘case’ they had themselves prepared! A well-practised technique, if I may say so: they are from a school in which members have made each other famous by applauding each other’s books and ‘theses’! And these very ‘historians’ are cited as witnesses in the pleadings filed by the Sunni Waqf Board in the courts which are considering the Ayodhya matter!

Their deceitful role in Ayodhya – which in the end harmed their clients more than anyone else – was just symptomatic. For fifty years this bunch has been suppressing facts and inventing lies. How concerned they pretend to be today about that objective of the ICHR – to promote objective and rational

research into events of our past! How does this concern square with the guidelines issued by their West Bengal government in 1989 which Outlook itself had quoted – ‘Muslim rule should never attract any criticism. Destruction of temples by Muslim rulers and invaders should not be mentioned?’ But incorporating their wholesale fabrications of the destruction of Buddhist viharas, about the non-existent ‘Aryan invasion’, that is mandatory – to question them is to be communal, chauvinist!

..........How is it that over twenty-five years persons from their school alone had been nominated to the ICHR? How come that Romila Thapar had been on the Council four times? Irfan Habib five times?Satish Chandra four times? S. Gopal three times?… The same pattern held for the post of chairman......

...........A much favoured device: when caught peddling a lie, insinuate that the other man is privileged! And that, as you are from the toiling masses, you cannot ascertain whether the facts he has stated are true. Therefore, what you stated must stand as fact. QED!.........