Academics From India

"Awakening late to the pandemic, authoritarian or authoritarian-minded leaders have turned it into an opportunity both to shore up their power and to conceal their stunning ineptitude. To fail to see through their manufactured , as many in the media are doing, can only further endanger the long-term moral and political health of their societies."

"The public broadcaster's critique of the government was stinging in part because Johnson enjoys a high degree of support among Britain’s privately owned, overwhelmingly pro-Tory press. Nor does Modi, assured of craven public broadcasters, expect much criticism from the , which has been described, only semi-humorously, as veritably North Korean in its devotion to the supreme leader."

"Writing about Kashmir was a strange and painfully isolating experience, but an absolutely crucial one. It made me see that, whether you are Indian or American, black, brown, or white, it is best not to get morally intoxicated by words like "secularism" and "liberalism" or to simply assume that you stand on the right side of history after having professed allegiance to certain ideological verities. Rather one should try to perceive the scramble for power, the clash of interests, that these resonant claims to virtue conceal; one should ask who is using words like "secularism" or "liberalism" and for what purposes…"

"Governments around the world say they're engaged in a war against the coronavirus. [...] This kill-or-die idiom is more than casual rhetorical overkill. Many governments are symbolically but very deliberately calling, in this time of fear and uncertainty, for general along military lines. This is so they can, while pointing to an insidious foreign enemy, aim their firepower against some of the most valuable institutions of domestic public life. They have been very successful so far."

"As a writer I am more interested in describing the past accurately than in outlining the future; we need a new past if we are to make sense of our intolerable present or work to change it…"

"Even equality is a deeply problematic concept. It has its origins in Christianity, where it is conceived as equality before God. When you transfer that into a competitive commercial society, it becomes elusive, even deceptive. Really, the drama of the modern world is the collision between the promise of equality and the fact of structural inequality…"

"Supremacy of all stripes—racial, ethnic, national—works in insidious ways, burrowing deep inside impeccably liberal minds…"

"The publication of Dr. Tasneem Ahmad’s translation is a notable contribution to the National celebration of the 450th Anniversary of Akbar’s birth. I feel confident that it would reinforce the interest in Akbar’s age widespread among those who have a care for the long process of the creation of a composite culture and a unity that together constitute what is India.... ‘What it [the Tarikh-i-Akbari] now needed was a full-scale English translation.’... ‘This has been provided by Dr. Tasneem Ahmad in a very competent manner, aiming at faithful accuracy and at a critical assessment of the information here received by comparing it with that offered by other sources.’"

""The evidence for such enslavement is there for all to see. So economically important was it that the success of military campaigns was often judged by the number of captives (burdas) obtained for enslavement. Qutbuddin Aibak's campaign in Gujarat in 1195 netted him 20,000 slaves, seven years later a campaign against Kalinjar yielded 50,000. In 1253 Balban obtained countless 'horses and slaves' from an expedition in Kalinjar. In the instructions that Alauddin Khalji is said to have issued to Malik Kafur before his campaigns in the Deccan it is assumed that 'horses and slaves' would form a large part of the booty. As the Sultanate began to be consolidated, the suppression of mawas or rebellious villages within its limits yielded a continuously rich harvest of slaves. Balban's successful expedition in the Doab made slaves cheap in the capital. How people of the village could be made slaves for nonpayment of revenue is described in the 14th century sources; and women so enslaved are mentioned in different contexts in two others"."

"But it seems likely... that Sarasvati/Harakhvati was the name for the Helmand. Otherwise it is difficult to understand how Sarasvati could be put between Sindhu and Sarayu as the major intervening river in RV X, 64.9."

"Professor Bipan Chandra was sanctioned a sum of Rs 75,000 for the year 1987-88 for the assignment entitled A History of the Indian National Congress... He never cared to submit any manuscript. Upon inquiry, ICHR stated that the remaining balance is yet to be received because a formal manuscript in this regard is yet to be received…..Later I learnt that the Rs 75,000/- which had been allotted to this “eminent historian” for this project — “the Oral History Project” — had been but a part, a small part of the total take. … As nothing but nothing had turned up in the ICHR in return for its grant, the second part of my query remained: what action had the ICHR taken in the matter? Eventually I was told, ‘No action has been initiated on this as Dr Bipan Chandra is stated to be still working on the project.’ That was the position nine years after his eminence had collected the money!... The ICHR commenced a National Movement Project to document the freedom struggle from the mid-1850. Bipin Chandra took Rs 12000 to produce the volume covering 1885-86. Result? Nothing has been heard of it since….To assist him to shoulder his onerous load in this regard, the ICHR has employed over the years, one regular staff member plus eight staff members on consolidated salary. Result? Not submitted. But, to be fair, this pattern is not confined to this eminent historian alone. It has been the pattern for the entire institution manned and controlled by these ‘eminent historians’."

"Without undue modesty, we can say we know more about India’s past than Marx did."

"In one of his theses Marx said: 'Philosophers have so far interpreted the world. The point is to change it.' Marxism sees an innate unity between perception of the past and present practice. This unity implies continuous interaction: as time passes and history (human experience) lengthens, we draw greater lessons from it for the present; and as our present experience tells us more about the possibilities and limitations of social action, we turn to the past and obtain new comprehensions of it."

"Academic feudalism – that is, the relations that develop between an influential professor and his protégés – takes many forms... In JNU, an eminent nationalist historian, Professor Bipan Chandra, was so well known for placing his students in departmental posts that others did not even bother to apply if they did not have his support."

"There was an impression of hope and optimism when the Conference started, but very soon it was clear that Jinnah’s intransigence and rearguard action by the imperialists would make it impossible for it to succeed. The negotiations broke down because Jinnah insisted that all the Muslim members of the Executive Council should be nominated only by the League. Nor were the British willing to sign any agreement with the Congress to which the Muslim League was not a party. The policy of ‘Divide and Rule’ was at its zenith."

"He was successful in articulating a usable political history, and then openly practicing history as ideology by other means. His assumptions are now so widespread that we forget what an achievement it was to make them hegemonic. One assumption, clearly articulated in Communalism in Modern India, was that while communal consciousness could exist in pre-Modern India, communalism could not. This is not the place to go into the veracity of this claim. But what is striking is that this conclusion is arrived at almost a priori. History is an elaboration of this claim, not evidence for it... The strange Congress-Left elective affinity was forged less by a fear of the RSS than by the fact that the Congress, during the ’70s, gave up its own complex historical sensibility and substituted it with the Left. Chandra was the key protagonist in that significant historical transformation and therefore dominated like few historians have."

"As a historian, Chandra had the confidence to admit whenever any of his formulation was disproved. “That’s how he kept evolving as a historian,” says Mukherjee. He was humble too, often admitting in class that his English wasn’t as good as fellow historian and colleague S Gopal. Chandra was a Marxist historian; however, in the last few decades, he also developed an admiration for Gandhi and his methods. In fact, his book on the rise and growth of economic nationalism in modern India was first published by the Left’s in-house, People’s Publishing House. Communist intellectual Mohit Sen was one of his firm friends."

"It is inherent in the unity of past and present that Marxist historiography must continuously turn to fresh aspects to explore and re-explore and fresh questions to answer... This examination must cover everything from general principles to specific facts, because both are all the time being brought into question by others. We have to answer them not by denunciation – always a bad counsellor – but careful scrutiny and investigation."

"In the early phase of the conquest many cities were sacked and temples formed a special target partly to justify the conquest and partly to seize the fabulous treasures they were supposed to contain. During this period, a number of Hindu temples were converted into mosques….’"

"‘My debt to my revered teacher,’ writes Tasneem Ahmad, ‘Professor Satish Chandra is incalculable. He took great pains in reading and correcting the work and his considered suggestions have paid me rich dividend.’"

"By no definition could Akbar or Aurangzeb be declared a foreigner, unless being a Muslim was made the ground for declaring one a foreigner. In reality, the struggle between Pratap and Akbar or Shivaji and Aurangzeb had to be viewed as a political struggle in its particular historical setting. To declare Akbar or Aurangzeb a ‘foreigner’ and Pratap or Shivaji a ‘national’ hero was to project into past history the communal outlook of 20th century India. This was not only bad history; it was also a blow to national unity."

"Thus, Buddhism did not so much decline, as it assumed forms which made it indistinguishable from Hinduism."

"To begin with, the new conquerors and rulers…were of a different faith (Islam) from that of their predecessors… their principal achievements lay in a great systematization of agrarian exploitation and an immense concentration of the resources so obtained."

"Moreover, the British and communal historians attacked the notion of a composite culture in India."

"“…the population during the Mughal period did not remain stable though the compound rate of growth, 0.14% per annum, was hardly spectacular and was much lower than the rate attained during the nineteenth century”"

"Nanda writes disparagingly of “Hindu” intellectuals––including those in the West—who try to produce alternative sciences often inspired by post-modernism. She is unaware that many—including Einstein and Schrödinger—fit her descriptions of such “Hindu” Western prophets “facing backward” who revolutionized science by “alternative sciences”. She misreads those positions she criticizes into one anti-science conspiracy of post-modernism and Vedic science adherents. ... Instead of rewriting received Western wisdom to fit this real historical experience of India, she resorts to only Western conceptual categories. She damns both Indian social reality as well as attempts at fresh Indian conceptualization. For her, secularization means brainwashing the local population into an unashamed McCauleyite template illustrating deep feelings of insecurity about her own culture... Hers is a collage of ill-argued and tendentious positions; a generally unconvincing polemic. ... She is indeed a backward looking prophet, looking backward to the Western certainties of that age.... Our age begs an important question. How does Asia prepare itself for the Asian century which from all accounts would be on us within the next few decades and India, warts and all, among the leaders? At that global frontier, Asians would have once again to think for themselves drawing inputs from their many different subcultures. But Nanda seems to deny the possibility of such creative attempts."

"But her orthography betrays the American roots of her ideological orientation. In 2005-2007 she was in the employ of the John Templeton Foundation, an American Christian lobby-group that claims science as compatible with and even a product of Christianity.... It is not clear whether Meera Nanda has actually converted to Christianity or is merely one of those secularists who, after the fall and discrediting of Communism, have found new patronage in the US-centred Christian network. But fact is that she champions the Christian cause in India. ... That is why a Templeton Foundation agent on a mission to demonize Hindu resistance seizes on this opportunity to criminalize criticism of Islam by associating it with Breivik. [...] Here we have a Templeton scholar in the paid service of the Christian lobby, who tries to implicate the long-dead scholars Ram Swarup and Sita Ram Goel, veterans of the Gandhian non-violent struggle, in the Breivik affair [...] With her false accusation, dragging me and especially dragging Ram Swarup and Sita Ram Goel into the Breivik affair, Meera Nanda has dishonoured herself. I will have a hard time seeing anything but a debtor in her. How did the Marxist intellectual Meera Nanda find employment with the Christian Templeton Foundation? Why, she led them to believe that she was a scientist and philosopher of science, sharing with her prospective employers a proven anti-Hindu animus. ...she doesn’t have the mind of a scientist. She has the mind of a believer, or at least of a politician who wants to keep the believers happy... Meera Nanda can only stand on the other side, criminalizing fundamental criticism of Islam, because she is not a scientist at heart... But we know who Meera Nanda is. She is a troubled woman projecting her own obsessions on others. She is animated by hatred of Hinduism and can’t keep a story straight. But she can make her Marxist and Christian employers believe that she serves their purposes well."

"A recent case in point is Meera Nanda, who has been for some years on a self-appointed mission to expose all claims to knowledge by (let us lump them together, as she does) Hindu enthusiasts, nationalists, right-wingers or Hindutva activists. Her latest contribution, “Hindutva’s science envy”, blames in a vast sweep “the current crop of Hindu nationalists and their intellectual enablers” for being the progeny of thinkers like “Bankimchandra Chattopadhyaya, Vivekananda, Dayananda Saraswati, Annie Besant (and fellow Theosophists), Sarvepalli Radhakrishanan, M.S. Golwalkar and countless other gurus, philosophers and propagandists” — doubtless a most despicable crowd!"

"‘Meera Nanda doesn’t like India. And she hates popular Hinduism with even greater passion’."

"The claims Meera Nanda makes there about my own position are factually wrong and seem to be based on what Prof. Meenakshi Jain has aptly called "the Marxist bush telegraph". ... for now I will conclude with an observation on what seems to be her sincere declaration of interest. Among the points that "worry" her, she mentions this as the final one... Here, she really lays her cards on the table. It is very good that, unlike many other "secularists", she does not try to be clever and claim to speak for "true Hinduism" against a "distorted Hinduism" of the Hindu revivalists. Instead, she clearly targets Hinduism itself, deploring any development which might make Hinduism "gain prestige". Let us see if I can translate that correctly: wanting something or someone to suffer rather than to prosper is what we call "hate". She hates Hinduism, and her academic work is written in the service of that hate. To me, that is not the end of the matter. As a Catholic, I was taught never to give up hope, one of the great Christian virtues along with faith and charity.... Ms. Nanda has described how environmentalism in India is often clothed in Hindu language and symbolism. Thus, in trying to protect trees, women tie rakhis, the auspicious red threads which sisters tie around their brothers' wrists on the Hindu festival of Raksha Bandhan, around these trees."

"While medieval Islamic literature referred to Hindus as 'infidels' and denounced polytheism and image worship, there was no criticism of the caste system, the theory of pollution and oppression of untouchables that were rampant in medieval India. ... The attitude of the Muslims towards the caste system was by no means one of disapprobation..."

"Indian government funded in part the work of ISKCON (Hare Krishna) in re-forestation of Vrindavan. Department of environment is supporting temples to maintain sacred groves. Ecological aspects of Sanatana dharma have been included in the school text books of at least one state, UP."

"I will argue that sacredness of nature does not protect nature. Just because people venerate trees and rivers does not meant that they will take care of them."

"It is this pagan connection that has brought people like Koenrard Elst, David Frawley and many others in close collaboration with Hindu nationalists."

"The Hindutva literature is replete with glowing tributes to Hindu “renaissance”, which they claim to be similar to the European Renaissance that ushered in the modern age in the West. What they forget is that the Renaissance in the West re-discovered the humanistic and naturalistic sources of the Greek tradition that had been overshadowed by the Catholic Church – the Renaissance humanists rediscovered this-worldly philosophy of Aristotle and critical-realist Socrates over the other-worldly philosophy of Plato. The neo-Hindu “renaissance”, in contrast, re-discovered the most mystical and anti-humanistic elements of the Vedic inheritance – Advaita Vedanta – that had always overshadowed and silenced the naturalistic and scientific traditions in Hinduism and Buddhism. Neo-Hinduism is no renaissance, but a revival. There is no denying that the neo-Hindu “discovery” of modern science in ancient teachings of Vedas and Upanishads had a limited usefulness. Since they had convinced themselves that their religion was the mother of all sciences, conservative Hindus did not feel threatened by scientific education. As long as science could be treated as “just another name” for Vedic truths, they were even enthusiastic to learn it….."

"The more prominence Hinduism gets abroad, even for wrong reasons like the new age and paganism, the more prestige it gains in India."

"The roots of “Vedic science” can be traced to the so-called Bengal Renaissance, which in turn was deeply influenced by the Orientalist constructions of Vedic antiquity as the “Golden Age” of Hinduism. Heavily influenced by German idealism and British romanticism, important Orientalists including H.T. Colebrooke, Max Mueller and Paul Deussen tended to locate the central core of Hindu thought in the Vedas, the Upanishads and, above all, in the Advaita Vedanta tradition of Shankara. Despite the deeply anti-rational and idealistic (that is, anti-naturalistic) elements of Advaita Vedanta, key Hindu nationalist reformers – from Raja Ram Mohun Roy and Bankim Chandra Chatterjee to Swami Vivekananda – began to find in it all the elements of modernity. Vivekananda took the lead in propagating the view that the monism of Advaita Vedanta presaged the future culmination of all of modern science. Since modern science denied the role of any supernatural force outside nature, Vivekananda claimed that only Vedantic monism was truly scientific for it treated God as an aspect of nature and did not invoke any force external to nature…."

"Pride in the achievements of your own tribe is a legitimate emotion. But when pride is fuelled by prejudice against others, it becomes jingoism. Hindu triumphalism is jingoism, pure and simple. It is in fact a very dangerous jingoism targeted directly at Muslim and Christian minorities at home. The fundamental problem with Hindu triumphalism lies with its entirely self-serving and wilful denial that the great monotheistic religions of the world - Islam and Christianity - do have ample theological justifications for pluralism and tolerance."

"During the Government-sponsored scholars’ debate on the evidence for the demolished Ayodhya temple in 1990-91, Jha was a member of the Babri Masjid Action Committee’s delegation against the Vishva Hindu Parishad. Like then, his intervention now in the debate on the purported tolerance and the very existence of “Hinduism” is not an impartisan source from which debaters could borrow authoritative arguments; it is itself one side of the polemic. Which is permitted, but should be kept in mind by the reader."

"Note the unscholarly language, and this at his advanced age. We are dealing with a verbal street-fighter who has been given a post as an academic. Further down, we see him belittling his opponent, typical for the nouveau riche who thinks the world of his own status... To sum up: like any stage magician, Jha indulges in misdirection. While he himself has been caught in the act of misquoting his source (Yadava), and repeats this act of dishonesty in this very article, he tries to offset his embarrassment by a flight forward, viz. heaping imaginary allegations and plain swearwords upon his critic."

"Shourie had raised a huge controversy by publishing his scandalous and slanderous Eminent Historians in 1998 during the NDA regime and now, after sixteen years, he has issued its second edition, from which the article under reference has been excerpted. He appears and reappears in the historian’s avatar when the BJP comes to power and does all he can to please his masters. His view of the past is no different from that of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and their numerous outfits, consisting of riff-raff and goons who burn books that do not endorse their views, who vandalize art objects which they label blasphemous, who present a distorted view of Indian history, and who nurture a culture of intolerance. These elements demanded my arrest when my book on beef-eating was published, and they censured James Laine when his book on Shivaji came out. It is not unlikely that Shourie functions in cahoots with people like Dina Nath Batra, who targeted A K Ramanujan’s essay emphasizing the diversity of the Ramayana tradition; Wendy Doniger’s writings, which provided an alternative view of Hinduism; Megha Kumar’s work on communalism and sexual violence in Ahmedabad since 1969; and Sekhar Bandopadhyaya’s textbook on modern India, which regrettably does not eulogise the RSS. Arun Shourie seems to have inaugurated a fresh round of battle by fudging, falsifying and fabricating historical evidence and providing grist to Batra’s mill."

"Admittedly, one does not have to take the miracles seriously, but it is not justified to ignore their importance as part of traditions which gain in strength over time and become part of the collective memory of a community."

"The above account mentions the fortress of Bihar as the target of Bakhtiyar’s attack. The fortified monastery which Bakhtiyar captured was ‘known as Audand-Bihar or Odandapura-vihara’ (Odantapuri in Biharsharif, then known simply as Bihar). This is the view of many historians but, most importantly, of Jadunath Sarkar, the high priest of communal historiography in India. Minhaj does not refer to Nalanda at all: he merely speaks of the ransacking of the ‘fortress of Bihar’ (hisar-i-Bihar)."

"Far from being considered the crown jewel of Hinduism, yogic asanas were in fact looked down upon by Hindu intellectuals and reformers—including the great Swami Vivekananda—as fit only for sorcerers, fakirs and jogis…."

"It is neither possible nor necessary to deny that the Islamic invaders conquered parts of Bihar and Bengal and destroyed the famous universities in the region."

"We have already encountered D.N. Jha, and seen how he concocts ‘evidence’ and distorts sources in his textbook on ancient India.... Given what we have seen of Marxist historians even in this brief book, the brazen-faced distortions – to the point of falsehood – do not surprise me. What does surprise me is that no one looked up either the source that Jha had cited or the text.... That these eminences were in control of journals, of history congresses, and university departments, had another immediate consequence: no one dared question their work. They hadn’t to explain their ‘theses’, they could serve up any concoction as ‘evidence’. In regurgitating the same assertions, they convinced themselves that they were being consistent; in arriving at the same reductionist explanations for diverse phenomena, phenomena millennia apart, they convinced themselves that they were fortifying the theory. In fact, all they were doing was repeating themselves. There was nothing new to be learnt as it had all been explained before! In a word, unquestioned, above being challenged, they slipped into shoddiness, and thus stagnation – Jha’s Address is an illustration of the kind of drivel that came to pass as scholarship."

"The idea that the Muslims were destroyers of 'Hindu' temples and that they converted 'Hindus' to Islam by force is extremely tendentious and is largely unfounded."

"For the upper classes all periods in history have been golden; for the masses none."

"The Hindutva forces, in their bid to aggravate religious conflicts in the country, argue that Hindus were forcibly converted to Islam and Christianity in the past and therefore they have to be reconverted so as to take them back into the Hindu fold. But such an assertion has no basis in our history."

"It is true that my conclusions and views on certain issues are based on my knowledge existing prior to the submission of ASI’s report in court. I and Prof. Habib had given this statement that remains of old mosque or Eidgah had been found beneath the disputed site and not of any temple.If this propaganda that remains of temple were found at the disputed site, had not taken place, there would have been no occasion for me and Prof. Irfan Habib to give the above statement."