Author: Krishen Kak
Publication: www.vigilonline.com
Date: May 17, 2004
URL: http://www.vigilonline.com/reference/columns/columnsList.asp?columnist_id=1
Thoughts on issues of current interest
[my comments - as an Indian citizen - within square brackets], including
instances of some double standards of our public figures, especially in
the construction of Indian identity (all those Macaulayan myths, and the
hypocrisy that is Nehruvian secularism).
[On NDTV recently, Rajdeep Sardesai
passed a gibe at MM Joshi losing the election, that Joshi could now think
about his re-writing of history books. Yet, only a little while earlier,
Sardesai had passed without comment Sitaram Yechury's openly-stated priority
of re-rewriting history.
Communist leaders the world over
are skilled at dissembling and at double standards (dachas for themselves
along the Black Sea - or the equivalent in Salt Lake City - and cramped
tenements for the teeming proles). The treacherous foreign loyalty of the
Indian communist leaders is no secret (did not the current ruling dispensation
in WB profess a pro-Chinese stand in the Sino-Indian war?), nor is their
duplicity over secularism (remember the current WB CM announcing encouragement
to madrassas, that he'd earlier described as "anti-national" - http://www.indianexpress.com/ie20020212/top5.html
- all for the sake of Muslim support); over disinvestment ("Reds under
beds", editorial, The Pioneer, May 15, 2004), and over electoral strategy
(The Election Commission would not allow a film on Godhra because it "offended
decency, glorified violence and offended religious susceptibilities" (The
Hindu, May 17, 2004) but, in West Bengal, the Marxists "played videotapes
on Gujarat till late into the nights.....The Muslim dominated regions were
literally inundated by cassettes on Gujarat.....which the CPI(M) tactfully
played out night and day..." (Saugar Sengupta, "Bengal's Joan of Arc slayed",
The Pioneer, May 16, 2004). And, of course, their double standards over
history]
The Pioneer, May 17, 2004, editorial
"Past imperfect"
"Samudragupta alias Chandragupta
was the greatest ruler of the Gupta dynasty". "Fa-Hein came to India, saw
Ashoka's and Gupta palaces and the caves of Ellora" (which means he lived
at least 1,400 years). "The people of ancient India did not know how to
read and write". "Paper and silk came to India via (sic) Muslim invaders."
These are just samples from a "history"
textbook currently in circulation among Class VI students of West Bengal's
state school system. No "saffronisation" of history has yet been possible
in that "secular" utopia. So millions of Bengalis are growing up learning
utter falsehoods, whether arising from the poor scholarship of textbook
writers approved by the Marxist government, or, the deliberate acts of
omission dictated by the Shuddho-Asuddho circular of 1989 which clearly
laid down a policy of misrepresenting the past. Quite the same spirit guided
the authors on the permanent panel of NCERT for 30 years preceding the
coming of the NDA Government to power.
A whole generation of Indians grew
up in the "knowledge" that the Aryans came to India from some other country;
that the Somnath temple sacking by Mahmud of Ghazni was only an economic
crime; Guru Teg Bahadur was an ordinary criminal who got his just desserts
from Aurangzeb and that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was caused by
the United States and Pakistan. Of course, there was no mention of Stalin's
great crimes, the Prague Spring didn't happen and, what is more, books
in circulation till 1999 scarcely breathed a word about the fall of communism.
To the Leftists, school book history
is about mind control. Ninety-nine per cent of Indians learn all the history
they can while in school. So whatever is drilled into pre-16'ers stick
for life and the dream of an eventual "revolution" is kept alive.
[The eagerness of the communists
to write their version of history as the history is understandable. Nehru
encouraged and benevolently presided over what the editorial elsewhere
calls "academic gangsters", and some of whom Arun Shourie cuttingly exposes
as "Eminent Historians" (ASA, 1998). The consequences for Indians of this
gangsterism are summed up by Michel Danino at http:// www.bharatvani.org/michel_danino/colonization.html
.......]
Almost all Indian history taught
today in our schools and universities has been written by Western scholars,
or by "native historians who [have] taken over the views of the colonial
masters," in the words of Prof. Klostermaier of Canada's University of
Manitoba. All of India's historical tradition, all ancient records are
simply brushed aside as so much fancy so as to satisfy the Western dictum
that "Indians have no sense of history." Indian tradition never said anything
about mysterious Aryans invading the subcontinent from the Northwest, but
since nineteenth-century European scholars decided so, our children still
today have to learn by rote this invention now rejected by most archaeologists
; South Indian tradition said nothing about the Dravidians coming from
the North, driven southward by the naughty Aryans, but again that shall
be stuffed into young brains. No Indian scholar or grammar or tradition
ever claimed that Sanskrit and Tamil languages were great rivals belonging
to wholly separate families, but this shall be taught at school in deference
to Western linguists or to our own "Dravidian" activists. The real facts
of the destruction wreaked in India by Muslim invaders and also by some
Christian missionaries must be kept outside textbooks and curricula, since
they contradict the "tolerant" and "liberating" image that Islam and Christianity
have been projecting for themselves. Even the freedom movement is not spared
: as the great historian R. C. Majumdar and others have shown, no serious,
objective criticism of Mahatma Gandhi or the Indian National Congress is
allowed, and the role of other important leaders is systematically belittled
or erased.
The result is that the Sardesais
of this world sneer at attempts to correct these gross distortions; they
are simply not prepared to look at empirical evidence to the contrary,
they have closed minds - see, for example, http://india.indymedia.org/en/2003/02/3494.shtml
- and mockingly open mouths.
Take the Aryan Invasion Theory,
on which the academic gangsters built their divisive construction of Indian
identity. This theory is still, as The Pioneer notes, taught to students
in West Bengal. It is also taught by by Delhi's prestigious Lady Shri Ram
College to its History Honours students.
And yet there is not one shred of
empirical evidence, not one pottery shard, to support it. The theory was
a colonial construction used to divide and rule and to kill millions of
people. The evidence is all there - chapter and verse - in NS Rajaram's
very readable "The Politics of History" (1995).
Or if this is heavy stuff for sound-byters
like Rajdeep Sardesai, let him and Prannoy Roy take a look at a very easily-read
booklet, David Frawley's "The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India" (2001).
Or, on a contemporary issue, Koenraad
Elst's neatly factual "Ayodhya: The Case Against the Temple" (2002).
As Swapan Dasgupta notes, "History
suggests that Indian Communists have made the hijacking of political authority
a skill. Between 1969 and 1977, Indira Gandhi pursued the material interests
of her family and allowed the Left to play havoc with the economy and education.
A repetition of the scenario cannot be ruled out" (No mandate for a Left
hijack", The Pioneer, May 16, 2004).
The communists have made no secret
of their intention to expand their West Bengal all over India. Earlier
this morning, a self-professed "Marxian" described to me West Bengal as
an "an unfree society".
To repeat from The Pioneer: "To
the Leftists, school book history is about mind control. Ninety-nine per
cent of Indians learn all the history they can while in school. So whatever
is drilled into pre-16'ers stick for life and the dream of an eventual
"revolution" is kept alive." This is the writing of our history at its
worst mischief-making - and our Rajdeep Sardesais and NDTV gloat!
The title of this offering is from
David Cannadine, "History In Our Time", (Penguin, 2000:285). The Rajaram,
Elst and Frawley are all available from Voice of India, 2/18 Ansari Road,
New Delhi 110002, tel. 2327-8034, fax 2328-2047].
