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HVK Archives: 'Distortion of history'; and a response

'Distortion of history'; and a response - The Hindu

V Krishna Ananth ()
8 January 1997

Title : 'Distortion of history'; and a response
Author : V Krishna Ananth
Publication : The Hindu
Date : January 8, 1997

As the nation is preparing itself to observe 50 years of
independence, the polity is facing serious challenges and history
is sought to be distorted for sectarian purposes. Some of the
established canons of historical research are defied and
nationalism is sought to be defined in a different fashion. Prof.
Irfan Habib, eminent historian, who was in Chennai to attend the
Indian History Congress session two weeks ago spoke to this writer
on these and related issues. Excerpts from the interview:

VKA: How do you place history as a discipline in the current
political situation?

Prof. Irfan Habib: In the prevailing political situation, the most
important impact on history as I see It is the tendency to look
differently at the various aspects of the national movement. While
many critics of the national movement are now beginning to modify
their criticism, there are others who accentuate it in the light of
a growing perception among a large number of politicians,
intellectuals and middle classes, if not among the masses, of India
as belonging predominantly to a single cultural tradition rather
being a multi-cultural country. So one begins to look at the
national movement, how it handled this particular problem and many
things that some of us took for granted now look as achievements.
This is one example of how history is looked at differently.
Another aspect is how our perception of history influences our
present context. I would stress that the perception of history that
was handed over to us would create a particular mind and generate a
particular type of political action.

Could you specify this?

As an extreme example, I would like to cite the rise of the Nazis,
of how a particular perception of history held by a respectable
section of the German intelligentsia that the Prussian state was a
unique creation in history and a unique creation of German people
and that there was something sacred in the state and therefore of a
German mission particularly represented by the Prussian state to
defend and enlarge certain values. This perception was not racist
at least outwardly and certainly was not anti-Jewish. But how
easily was this perception utilised by the Nazis?

You mean to say that those who perceived thus were innocent of the
Nazi worldview of themselves?

Yes. When they were saying so, they would not have dreamt, at least
most of them, that this would happen; say, the most extreme of
them, Spengler; Hitler actually visited him after getting to power.
But when Hitler started persecuting the Jews, Spengler said, this
is not what I intended. not such a foolish theory of German state
and his statement was not printed and he died unrecognised by the
Nazis. So, here you have an example of how a historical theory is
created by someone who had no idea of what use it can be put to.

Is it your view that those who hold the theory of Aryan supremacy
and seek to go back to the "golden age" of our past are not
conscious of the implications of this theory?

Before 1947 the idea that the Aryans went out of India was hardly
espoused by any serious historian, not even by a serious
nationalist. Tilak, who would come close to such an idea, was
claiming that the Aryans had come from the Arctic; in other words.
the pure white race and Indians represent the pure white race. He
never argued that we (Aryans) went out of India. But now, while
some people deny that they espouse the Nazi race theory, they in
fact have espoused it; the perception is that of the Aryan race
which is anti-Dravidian and in effect denies any separate family of
Dravidian languages, which is against all developed canons of
scientific linguistics.

So what in your opinion is the guiding force behind such
contentions being made?

This is part of an effort to modernise India's cultural tradition.
There was never a view in India, even in medieval times, of a
monolithic culture. The present view that the Indian cultural
tradition was monolithic is certainly modern. We are reading modern
morals and values and the modern tests of superiority. This
feature Is not unique to India; this is being done for Islam also,
reading into Islam a kind of uniformity, a worldly life which could
not have been conceived of by its earlier practitioners who
regarded Islam as a religion where reward is to be expected after
life whereas this world has its own compromises. In other words,
Islam is being similarly interpreted that it is a modern
civilisation that it has modern values. One is reading equality in
areas where it did not exist or one is trying to justify the modern
concept of inequity and religious sentiments are brought into play
here.

What role do you accord for, religion in history?

Religion definitely has an important place in the historical
process. But religious people should not deny that history has
played an important role in changing religion. Here I am talking
about the process where words remained the same in the scriptures
but their meanings changed.

You mean to say that there is a legitimate role for religion in the
exercise of historical interpretations?

Originally it was there in the nationalist exercise and it was a
rational one: of coming to terms with religion. For instance, Syed
Ahmed Khan said that there is no one absolute interpretation of the
Quran and that every generation should interpret the Quran from the
contemporary perspective; I am friendly to this approach since it
appears very modernist and bold. I see its importance because
people are very religious and Syed Ahmed Khan was trying to win
them over to science. But it has this danger that if the Quran is
so relevant to whatever you do, then the historical Quran becomes
relevant to your present. This problem of dealing with religion and
conceding that religion can influence current life opens the doors
to the kind of revivalist thinking just as it opened to scientific
interpretation.

This is what is happening in India today and in a sense it is not
unique to India. The VHP and the Muslim fundamentalists may think
that their is unique but they are actually a production of modern
values, modern conditions of life interacting with religion and
that provides its interacting with religion and that provides its
ideology. Now every ideology has uses for various classes. An
ideology is its own motor power and once created motivates men to
do it. It operates under particular circumstances. In India, we can
say that the conditions were created due to our failure to go along
with the vision of the Karachi resolution. The limitations in
implementing them and the fact that it began to falter since the
Seventies deprived Indians of the self-confidence in themselves as
a modern nation which the national movement had given.

So what in your opinion should be the bottom line of historical
research?

Just as an impartial judge must be bound by the law and his
perception must be based on the law, a historian cannot be partial
on his premises. There are two aspects to this; one is the
technical of history particularly that of testing of evidence. This
applies to everyone. To that extent, even a communal historian like
R. C. Majumdar was very much annoyed when the RSS promoted a theory
that the great Delhi and Agra monuments were built by Hindu rulers:
He wrote to them saying that since they had given space to such
nonsense he was not going to contribute to The Organiser. I respect
this stand. What I mean to say is that the sanctity of technical
aspects of history must be respected by all historians. Historical
linguistics, inscriptions and the canons of archaeological
excavations mean nothing to our friends in the VHP and the only
thing that matters to them is working up religious sentiment.

Why is this shift in priorities gaining ground?

One factor is that the nationalist tradition and the historiography
handed over by it is running out of steam: not because the evidence
has changed but because the environment today dislikes ideals. When
ideals do not matter then many aspects which we thought were
accepted premises of scientific history, as for instance, hatred
against poverty are no longer guiding intellectual thought. You
can not look at them clinically or not look at them at all. Well, I
would say that the religious cults are trying to occupy the
political space increasingly and are being confronted by some
values of the nationalist movement already there in the popular
consciousness.

________________________________________________________________

Response:

From:
Ashok Chowgule
President, Mumbai Pranth.
Mahanagar Vishwa Hindu Parishad,
36, Piroja Mansion,
Opp Grant Road Station (E),
Mumbai 400 007.

January 13, 1997.

Sir,

This has reference to the interview of Prof Irfan Habib (Jan 8) by
Shri V Krishna Ananth. Since Prof Habib claims that the VHP is
distorting history, may we ask him a few questions:

1. Shri Will Durant had said, "The Mohammedan conquest of
India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a
discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a
precarious thing, whose delicate complex of order and liberty,
culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians
invading from without or multiplying within." (Story of
Civilization - Our Oriental Heritage, p 459.) Would this be the
correct rendering of history?

2. Prof Habib has labeled Shri R C Mazumdar as a "communal"
historian. What is the basis of this? And what is Prof Habib's
own political leaning?

3. Prof Habib says that Sir Syed Ahmed Khan tried to win the
Muslims over to science. Sir Syed had said, "I ask you, would our
aristocracy like that a man of low caste or insignificant origin,
though he be a Bachelor of Arts or a Master of Arts and have the
requisite ability, should be in a position of authority above them
and have power in making the laws that affect their lives and
property? Never! Nobody would like it....Men of a good family
would never like to trust their lives and properly to people of low
ranks." Does this conform to scientific thinking?

4. Was the Babri structure built on a vacant land or after
destroying a Hindu temple?

This is sufficient for the moment. If he cares to reply them, we
can ask some more.

Yours sincerely,

(Ashok Chowgule)

To:
The Editor, The Hindu,
Kasturi Buildings,
859/860, Anna Salai,
Chennai 600 002.


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