Author: Udayan Namboodiri
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: June 27, 2004
I am from Mallapuram district of
Kerala and happen to know a thing or two about "secularism". This is the
district which EMS Namboodiripad gifted to the Moplahs or Malabar Muslims
in 1969 by splitting up the old Calicut and Palghat districts so that they
could have their own little Pakistan tucked deep inside south India.
Search as much as you like, but
in the entire annals of free India it would be impossible to find a parallel
to such brazen implementation of the two-nation theory. And belated too,
by 22 years, which should shock those under the illusion that the "secularism"
which was enshrined in our Constitution rejects religion as a parameter
in official delimitation exercises.
But a boy from Tirur learns to internalise
such shocks. Particularly if he went on to read History in Calcutta's Presidency
College in the early 1980s where the original "detoxification" exercise
was carried out by the Marxist regime. Today, while reading Professor S
Settar's sweeping indictment of the NCERT textbooks, I can't help recall
similar incidents of rape of history to which I was a close witness.
In fact, by strange coincidence,
I saw two separate cases of such abuse in the summer of 1984. Just before
college closed for summer, some of our professors who were known to be
card carriers let it be known that the works of redoubtable scholars like
Jadunath Sarkar, DC Sarkar and Ramesh Chandra Majumdar were "undesirable".
For the sake of marks in university exams, it would be advisable to avoid
them for reference purposes as the University's examiners had already been
served the requisite (unwritten) orders.
Mind you, this was before the notorious
"Shuddho-Ashuddho" circular which was issued at the end of that decade
naming specific portions of school level texts which the communist masters
deemed as "communal". In my time, the Jyoti Basu regime was just into its
second term and was beginning its attack on Bengal's academia to purge
it of unsuitable intellectuals and unfavourable scholarly traditions.
I was visiting my home town Tirur
that summer. Now Tirur is already famous as the birthplace of Thunjuath
Ramanujan Ezhuthachan, the father of Malayalam literature. I saw there
was a new tourist attraction added to the old place. It was an obscenity
called the "Wagon Memorial".
This was a classic case of communist
rewrite of the facts of history. In August 1921, the Moplahs had conducted
an orgy of rape and murder in the entire British district of Malabar. Hundreds
of innocent Hindus and Christians were massacred, women raped, children
quartered and thousands of homes burnt down.
Mahatma Gandhi, who was then besotted
by the Ali brothers and their Khilafat movement, tried to gloss it over
initially, but later admitted that "our moplah brethren have gone mad..
they have committed a sin against the Khilafar and their own country."
Annie Besant condemned the killings and praised the resilience of many
Hindus who refused to convert even under pain of death. The British sent
a detachment of Gorkha soldiers to restore order. One group of rioters
was caught near Nilambur, about 100 miles to the west of Tirur, and was
in the process of being transported to the railhead, when, on the way,
a few, already bleeding with bullet or lathi injuries, died either of their
wounds or of suffocation.
By all accounts, these were hardened
criminals who, in the popular perception, deserved their fate for the common
good. In my own extended family, there was a great-uncle who was murdered
when a Moplah mob raided their house near Perinthalmana. Perhaps some of
those responsible for his death were in that railway wagon. But, by 1984,
the "official" history as prescribed by the government of Kerala, which
had the Muslim League as an alliance partner, was in sharp variance with
the collective memory of Malabar (now reinvented as Mallapuram).
The Marxist historians had declared
that it was a "glorious revolt" by the Moplahs against their Hindu landlords.
Sure, there were murders, but "class annihilation" was justified under
communism - or is it not ? As "proof" they cited some "accounts books"
which were looted or burnt which proved that the blood-sucking Hindu landlords
had driven them to desperation. So, in extension of this barbaric assault
on the popular consciousness, the government had rigged up a contraption
resembling an old goods wagon and put it up on display outside the municipal
headquarters. It stands there to this day as a symbol of humiliation for
the minorities of Mallapuram.
Left scholarship's arrogation of
what constitutes "secular" history is an age-old thing by now. Marxist
dogma and "secularism" have had a hyphenated relationship since 1947. What
Professors Settar and Barun De have just done with the NCERT texts is only
the reconfirmation of a tradition which began with Jawaharlal Nehru's efforts
to thwart the first President, Rajendra Prasad's patronage to RC Majumdar's
project to bring out the first ever history of the Indian freedom struggle
which the great nationalist historian wanted to write from a uniquely Indian
point of view.
Nehru was anxious that a scholar
possessing rare spine as Majumdar may be less than hagiographic in his
description of the role played by him in the Partition. He forged a tactical
alliance with the communist group which was apprehensive that its true
character as the freedom struggle's fifth columnists would be exposed.
The third factor deployed was "Muslim sensitivity".
Majumdar was unflinching in his
conviction that India's history as a slave nation began seven centuries
before the East India Company's troops won the Battle of Plassey - we only
changed our masters in 1757 The Communists had no use for another redoubtable
historian, KS Lal,who had proved in a monumental study quoting Arabic and
Persian sources to be mostly the descendants of forced converts, Their
suffering under the Turks, Persians, Afghans and Mughals was in no way
less than that of their Hindu compatriots.
But the interests of "secularism"
lies in preventing Hindus and Muslims from striking common historical ground.
So, they were made to believe that they are the natural successors of Aurangzeb
and Nadir Shah (incidentally, a road in Lutyen's Delhi was named after
Aurangzeb in pursuit of this logic) and therefore a "Hindu" history would
cause their image incalculable harm. If one has to look for the source
of the mindset displayed by Professors Settar and Barun De, this is where
it lies.
Without going into specifics, or
caring to consult the authors who have more than reiterated the academic
wholesomeness of their works by publishing a point-by- point rebuttal to
the Indian History Congress' allegations, Arjun Singh's committee has behaved
like a mob of hatchet men. Avoiding an academic debate, which they knew
would expose their own ignorance, they took recourse to sweeping generalisations
- they say NCERT's books are "communal", "prejudiced" and what have you.
But have they cared to hold up even one line from them to prove their contention?
In this context let's recall what
Majumdar wrote in his preface to History of Medieval Bengal (1973): "The
tragedy of the whole thing is that no stones are left unturned by the government
to propagate their views without caring to inquire whether there is any
historical justification for them. History books which do not incorporate
their views are not likely to be prescribed as textbooks and anybody who
challenges the official view of Indian history is included in the black
list of the government of India."
That was 31 years back and the Education
Minister was S Nurul Hasan, the communist who Indira Gandhi invited to
take over India's academic institutions. Today, the past has returned with
a vengeance under Arjun Singh, a Congressman goaded by loonie leftists.
Somewhere in between lies wallowing in dust and disrepute, India's history
scholarship.
