Historiography of India

"One must beware of falling into a kind of uncritical Indological McCarthyism towards those open to reconsidering the established contours of ancient Indian history, irrespective of their motives and backgrounds, and of lumping all challenges into a simplistic, convenient and easily-demonized 'Hindu Nationalist' category."

"The idea of continuity of the Indian civilization does not suit the beliefs of this group of people. There is a serious difference between these two groups. Whereas you can laugh the opinions of the former group away as those of Hindu traditionalists, you cannot do that in the case of the latter for the simple reason that they are mostly government of India historians with powers over the fate of history students and teachers in the country. India may be the only country where the government has its own brand of historians by appointing them in various capacities to the Indian Council of Historical Research which controls virtually the entire funding of historical research in the country. Irfan Habib, to whom the name Sarasvati is a kind of anathema, was a former chairman of this organization directly under the Ministry of Culture."

"Many of those who read history at Delhi in the mid-1970s and later, still bear the ugly scars inflicted by the thought police of sarkari Marxism. 'There are two interpretations of history', a leading representative of the Red Cretin Brigade used to inform his students casually, 'the bourgeois interpretation and the Marxist interpretation, and the Marxist interpretation is the correct one.' ...Whereas the British Marxists established their reputation by crafting their radical concerns their Indian counterparts took cheeky short cuts. it may also explain why substantive research on Indian history has increasingly become the prerogative of British, and a few American and Australian universities. The presiding deities of Indian historiography have meanwhile devoted themselves to writing politically correct text books that present history as chapters of received wisdom. They have also drafted resolutions for the Indian History Congress and written articles in the press on the Ayodhya issue."

"The medieval period of Indian history has been a source of propaganda for historians with ideological predilections. .... But the tradition of tailoring and embroidering the past for influencing the course of future developments did not die with the departure of the British. The burden of carrying forward this admittedly unscientific historiography has now been enthusiastically assumed by their Marxist prototypes. Being victims of ideological myopia, the Marxist historians of India have cared to see only that aspect of reality which falls within the range of their narrow vision. Those aspects of reality which fall beyond it have been either left unexplained or treated merely as an extension of that which they have perceived and, therefore, utterly unworthy of their serious attention."

"For those unfamiliar with modern Indian history: the Marxists, already pushy for acquiring as much power in the institutions as they could grab, were handed a near-monopoly on institutional power in India's academic and educational sector by Indira Gandhi ca. 1970. Involved in an intra-Congress power struggle, she needed the help of the Left. Her confidants P.N. Haksar and Nurul Hasan packed the institutions with Marxists, card-carrying or otherwise. When, during the Emergency dictatorship (1975-77), her Communist Party allies threatened to become too powerful, she and her son Sanjay removed them from key political positions but, in a typical instance of politicians' short-sightedness, they left the Marxists? hold on the cultural sector intact. In the good old Soviet tradition, they at once set out to falsify history and propagate their own version through the official textbooks. After coming to power in 1998, the BJP-dominated government has made a half-hearted and not always very competent attempt to effect glasnost (openness, transparency) at least in the history textbooks. This led the Marxists to start a furious hate campaign against the so-called 'saffronization' of history."

"Most importantly, for the ancient period, Indian Marxist and other anti-Hindu historians posit a massive conflict (between Aryan invaders and natives) in spite of the total absence of either textual or archaeological evidence for such conflict; while for the medieval period, they wax eloquent about an idyllic “composite culture” and deny a massive conflict spanning centuries (viz. between Muslim invaders and Hindu natives), against the copiously available evidence for this conflict, both textual and archaeological. This observation is entirely correct: both ancient and medieval history have been rewritten in the sense of belittling and blackening Hindu civilization and extolling its enemies."

"For her class of people, a “professional historian” is a historian with academic status. They are very status-conscious and constantly pull rank, especially when faced with informed arguments. For a scholar, this is weak, but for sophomores, it is uppermost in their minds: climbing the status ladder. When you know the academic circles, you become far less inclined to be over-awed by academic status: many professors have obvious ideological prejudices and bend their findings to suit their presuppositions. Moreover, in many countries to some extent, and certainly in India, scholars in the humanities are selected for ideological conformity with the dominant school. After nearly half a century, this has led to a situation where a post of “eminence” is simply equivalent with ideological conformity, at least passively (not raising your head), often actively (furthering the dominant paradigm)."

"But the negationists are not satisfied with seeing their own version of the facts being repeated in more and more books and papers. They also want to prevent other versions from reaching the public. Therefore, in 1982 the National Council of Educational Research and Training issued a directive for the rewriting of schoolbooks. Among other things, it stipulated that: "Characterization of the medieval period as a time of conflict between Hindus and Muslims is forbidden." Under Marxist pressure, negationism has become India's official policy. (...) India has its own full-fledged brand of negationism: a movement to deny the large-scale and long-term crimes against humanity committed by Islam. This movement is led by Islamic apologists and Marxist academics, and followed by all the politicians, journalists and intellectuals who call themselves secularists. In contrast to the European negationism regarding the Nazi acts of genocide, but similar to the Turkish negationism regarding the Armenian genocide, the Indian negationism regarding the terrible record of Islam is fully supported by the establishment. It has nearly full control of the media and dictates all state and government parlance concerning the communal problem (more properly to be called the Islam problem)."

"What the BJP government claims to offer, what all scholarly historians want, and what is loathed by the Marxists who have dominated the cultural and educational establishment since decades, is glasnost: openness, an end to the dead hand of Marxist dogma in Indian history-writing. However, it is quite wrong to say that the Sangh Parivar takes this job "very seriously". It took three years before relieving leading Marxists of their influential positions (Prasar Bharati, NCERT, IHC). Most of its new nominees were not up to the job, some because of ill-health (e.g. K.S. Lal and B.R. Grover, both now deceased), some because they had never functioned in an academic setting. It should not be forgotten that for decades, at least since ca. 1970 when the Marxists led by P.N. Haksar and Nurul Hasan were given a lot of effective power in this sector in return for their support to Indira Gandhi, distinctly non-Marxist young historians found their access to an academic career blocked by the Marxist hegemons. Of the new textbooks, some are impeccable and are welcomed as undeniable improvements, e.g. Meenakshi Jain's presentation of the Muslim period, arguably the most sensitive and controversial part of the series. Some of the others, by contrast, have been criticized or ridiculed even by fair-minded observers."

"The facts concerning the persecution of Hindus in the pre-modern age were a matter of consensus until recently. For contemporary political reasons, the Congress movement under Mahatma Gandhi and especially under Jawaharlal Nehru thought it opportune to minimize or deny this painful history. They invented a history of Hindu-Muslim bhai-bhai totally at variance with the information given in the primary sources. The job of rewriting history in this sense was subsequently taken up in right earnest by the post-independence generation of vocal Marxist scholars, who gained firm control of the guiding history institutions under Indira Gandhi. For those unfamiliar with modern Indian history: the Marxists, already pushy for acquiring as much power in the institutions as they could grab, were handed a near-monopoly on institutional power in India's academic and educational sector by Indira Gandhi ca. 1970. Involved in an intra-Congress power struggle, she needed the help of the Left. Her confidants P.N. Haksar and Nurul Hasan packed the institutions with Marxists, card-carrying or otherwise. When, during the Emergency dictatorship (1975-77), her Communist Party allies threatened to become too powerful, she and her son Sanjay removed them from key political positions but, in a typical instance of politicians' short-sightedness, they left the Marxists' hold on the cultural sector intact. ...After coming to power in 1998, the BJP-dominated government has made a half-hearted and not always very competent attempt to effect glasnost (openness, transparency) at least in the history textbooks. They ordered the writing of new history textbooks for the schools. This led the Marxists to start a furious hate campaign against the so-called "saffronization" (hinduization) of history... Since some ignorant dupes of these Marxists denounce as "McCarthyist" anyone who points out their ideological inspiration, it deserves to be emphasized that "eminent historians" like Romila Thapar, R.S. Sharma and Irfan Habib are certified as Marxists in standard Marxist sources like Tom Bottomore's Dictionary of Marxist Thought . During the official historians' Ayodhya temple/mosque dispute in 1991, the pro-mosque team's argumentation and several other anti-temple pamphlets were published by the People's Publishing House, a Communist Party outfit. One of the recent textbook innovations most furiously denounced as "saffronization" was the truism that Lenin's armed seizing of power in October/November 1917 was a "coup d'état". And in early 2003, while they were unchaining all their devils against glasnost , the Marxists ruling West Bengal deleted from a textbook a passage in which Mahatma Gandhi's biographer Louis Fischer called Stalin "at least as ruthless as Hitler". Such are the true concerns of the "secularists" warning the world against the attempts at glasnost in India's national history curriculum. History falsification comes in different forms and has concentric lines of defence and attack. At the time of unlimited "secularist" self-confidence and belligerence, this went as far as to deny that any Islamic persecution or oppression of Hindus had taken place. When that proved untenable, it was claimed that intolerance had admittedly existed but that it had been unrelated to Islam, that it was a general phenomenon typical of the medieval period."

"One of the main purposes of history books, as taught in different countries in the world, is to instill a sense of national pride and honor —in short, to inculcate a sense of patriotism and nationalism. Whether it is the United States, Great Britain, Russia, Germany or China, this is certainly the case today and has been so as long as these countries have existed as modern nations... However, India is a strange and unique country in which history books are often anti-national in nature. India has largely kept intact the British approach to Indian history devised in the colonial era. Students of such textbooks come away apologetic or confused about their country and its traditions. Textbooks in Marxist ruled states of India like West Bengal and Kerala leave their students with a sense of the greatness of Communism... History books in India try to ignore the dominant Hindu ethos of the country and its history before the Islamic period... The real danger in India is not the arising of a chauvinistic nationalism like that of Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy...but a lack of national spirit and historical consciousness that keeps people alienated from their roots and the country divided."

"‘A breed of cerebral czars’ [has ensconced themselves in positions of control] ‘individuals with whom certain institutions have become far too incestuously associated, who not only have the power to hand out tenures but also to send their followers abroad through several new fellowships’... ‘Academic feudalism,’ says a lecturer at JNU, ‘is so acute in History because there are so many opportunities now.’ Academic feudalism – that is, the relations that develop between an influential professor and his protégés – takes many forms. ... Sometimes, the feudal lord treats his followers as ideological allies to further the cause of liberalism or Marxism-Leninism on committees and in the university generally. And sometimes academic feudalism manifests itself as a power-sharing arrangement between a particular teacher and his students to keep ‘outsiders’ out of the staff room. ... 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. Tripta Wahi, convenor of the Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) and lecturer at Hindu College, DU, says that the appointments made by the senior historian could not be challenged by anyone because of his reputation. ‘Yet the people he has placed in my college are totally mediocre. In fact they are third divisioners whose only claim to fame is that they do not teach any school of History which is at variance with their teacher.’ …Academic feudalism is often the result of doctrinal strife which sometimes spills over into bitter personal animosities … Consequently, a student of DU complains, ‘We have to be very careful. If a post-modernist tutor thinks our work is too traditional he may not recommend us for a scholarship abroad. But if we happen to fall under the supervision of an old-fashioned Leftist who thinks us too post-modernist, he may give us a bad mark…’"

"In the late Sixties and early Seventies, historical research got entangled in the larger politics of the state in which the Congress under Indira Gandhi and the Communist Party of India found themselves on the same wave length. The establishment of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) in 1969 under the chairmanship of Prof. R. S. Sharma was largely the result of this politics. Besides being an eminent scholar, Prof. Sharma's sympathy for the Left ideology in general and for the CPI in particular was well-known. His close association with the then Education Minister and CPI sympathiser, Nurul Hasan, was common knowledge. During his chairmanship, there were allegations from many historians that ICHR was being used for propagating history from a Marxist standpoint. The nexus between ICHR and NCERT was also mentioned in the same vein. [….] During the Emergency, people watched with dismay the camaraderie between the Congress and the CPI and in that context the role played by the Left historians was not overlooked. [….] At the micro- level, it was the Left-oriented historians versus the rest. [….] The battle apparently looked like one between ‘secular’ and `communal’ historians but behind the facade was the realpolitik of the Congress and the CPI, on the one hand, and the Janata bandwagon, on the other."

"With regard to the problem of communalism whether it be Hindu- Muslim, Vaishnava-Saiva or Shia-Sunni it may be assumed that the people of India have come of age. If that is so the historians of India should neither look for forces of communal synthesis nor for those of conflict; they should just look for facts as they unfold themselves in the historical process. If they only look for facts supporting synthesis they may be good nationalists but they would at the same time be inverted communalists. Let history be our psychoanalyst. Once we are able to accept ourselves for what we are we will be able to give the right direction to our present and future. … A historian’s commitment to history must remain untouched by his loyalties, political, religious or others."

"The whole tenor of this tendentious scheme for "national integration" becomes fully explicit in the following fiat from the Ministry of Education: “Characterisation of the medieval period as a dark period or as a time of conflict between Hindus and Muslims is forbidden. Historians cannot identify Muslims as rulers and Hindus as subjects. The state cannot be described as a theocracy, without examining the actual influence of religion. No exaggeration of the role of religion in political conflicts is permitted… Nor should there be neglect and omission of trends and processes of assimilation and synthesis.” [...] The only way which this ruling sees out of what it calls “the communal strife” is that Hindu history should be substantially diluted and tailored to the needs of Islamic imperialism, and that Muslim history should be given a liberal coat of whitewash or even made to pass muster as national history. This has been the main plank in the platform for “national integration”. Hitherto this Experiment with Untruth was confined mainly to Muslim and Communist “historians” who have come to control the Indian History Congress, the Indian Council of Historical Research, and even the University Grants Commission. Now it has been taken up by the National Integration Council. The Ministry of Education of the Government of India has directed the education departments in the States to extend this experiment to school-level text-books of history. And this perverse programme of suppressing truth and spreading falsehood is being sponsored by a state which inscribes Satyameva Jayate on its emblem. ... But that is about all that can be said in commendation of the scheme sanctioned by the National Integration Council and sponsored by the Ministry of Education. The rest is recommendations for telling lies to our children, or for not telling to them the truth at all."

"This caravan loaded with synthetic merchandise has, however, continued to move forward. Eight years later (1982), it was reported that “History and Language textbooks for schools all over India will soon be revised radically. In collaboration with various state governments the Ministry of Education has begun a phased programme to weed out undesirable textbooks and remove matter which is prejudicial to national integration and unity and which does not promote social cohesion. ... It was pointed out by the leftist professors that the major cause of “communal trouble” was the “bad habit” of living in the past on the part of “our people”. Most of the politicians knew no history and no religion for that matter. They all agreed with one voice that Indian history, particularly that of the “medieval Muslim period”, should be re-written. That, they pleaded, was the royal road to “national integration”."

"Historical science runs into such problems in India as the researchers of the ancient history of other countries and peoples can- not even conceive of."

"The significant feature of Professor Habib’s Marxist interpretation of medieval Indian history is not that Marxism has absorbed Islam but that Islam has absorbed Marxism."

"There may, however, be other supplementary explanations of the neglect of medieval Muslim history in South Asia. It was not expedient soon after the banishment of Bahadur Shah and the destruction of the last vestiges of Mughal culture at Delhi and at a time when it was hoped to conciliate the British politically, to remind the world of the power which Muslims had once enjoyed in South Asia and to provoke fears that the loss of this power was so much regretted that the Muslims must always be fundamentally disloyal. In any event, for those who had lived through the sack of Delhi and the repression of the Muslim aristocracy thereafter, it was perhaps too painful to study a South Asia in which Muslims had been all-powerful. Furthermore, it must be remembered that Sir Saiyid Ahmad and the Aligarh school were, as some of their descendants still are, resolutely non communal in politics. To study the history of medieval India, particularly with the methods of history dominant in historical writing on South Asia in the late nineteenth century, with its literal reliance on ‘authorities’, could only have resulted in antagonism between Hindus, whose pusillanimous ancestors were, in medieval Muslim histories, usually being sent to hell, and Muslims whose virile ancestors were always doing the despatching. Sir Saiyid and the Aligarh school were educationists not politicians; they conceived the differences between Hindu and Muslim as of the same order as those between Catholic and Protestant in nineteenth-century England; nothing should be said to prevent the growth of a sense of nationhood transcending religious differences. Finally, it is possible that the balance of the history curriculum at Aligarh, with its emphasis upon English and European history, was tilted against the study of medieval Muslim history. Nor, one suspects, was this tilting of the balance regretted at Aligarh in the period before 1914. Only in the study of western history and of the western approach to history could Muslims discover and understand the new world pressing in upon them. In sum then, the interests of the western-influenced Muslim intelligentsia in South Asia before the nineteen-twenties were more Islamic than Indian and more religious than historical. �"

"In approaching Muslim historical writing on medieval Muslim India in the nineteen-twenties it must be remembered that Muslim historians were immigrants into an already settled colony. By 1925 Elphinstone, Elliot, and Dowson, Stanley Lane Poole, William Irvine, Henry Beveridge, Wolseley Haig, Vincent Smith, and W. H. Moreland among the British, and Sir Jadunath Sarkar, Ishwari Prasad, and C. Vaidya among the Hindus, had mapped out the territory and staked their claims. Either the Muslims had to challenge the whole land settlement or be content to prospect in the interstices of existing homesteads; whichever course they chose to adopt they were obliged to adapt their behaviour and modify their attitudes in relation to the existing settlers. Moreover, since they had been taught to use the same tools as those earlier settlers their own economy tended almost inescapably to conform with or to complement that which they found in being. That is not to say that Muslim historians of the nineteen-twenties and later did not challenge existing conceptions of medieval Indian history; they did, but often by merely asserting their opposites. They proposed to correct optical illusions about medieval India by prescribing different pairs of spectacles, not by advising therapeutic methods which would change the capacity of the eyes themselves."

"Modern Muslim historiography on medieval India, in English, is in its methods and in its concepts clearly not sired by Muslim historiography in India before Sir Saiyid Ahmad Khan's day. It is a response to western thought, as mediated by the British, not a convolution within Muslim culture itself. It is imitative, not original. That is not, of course, to imply that the relation between western and modern Muslim historiography on medieval India is simply that of seal and wax impression, However, modern Muslim historical writing has taken over the idea that history is a form of critical inquiry into the past from evidence and not merely a repetition of testimony and authority. It assumes that the object of history is to answer questions about human actions performed in the past. It employs the academic critical apparatus of footnotes, appendices, bibliography, and is clearly a very sophisticated form of activity."

"Modern Muslim historiography on medieval India has been chiefly a form of Islamic apologetic, justifying the ways of medieval Muslims to the modern world and, in the process, commenting on the future of Muslims in South Asia as the authors see it. It will have been noticed that Muslim writing on medieval India tends to concentrate upon such figures as Akbar and Aurangzib and upon the period when Islam made its first political impact upon South Asia, There is an urge to discuss such questions as ‘whether Akbar stood for Hindu-Muslim unity, whether Aurangzib was a ‘communalist and if so whether he was governed by religious or political considerations and whether the Ghorid conquest of north India was ‘a good thing’ or ‘a bad thing’. There is too the desire, not always of course conscious, to establish that whatever Muslims did in medieval India was right if not in terms of religion then in terms of politics."

"Modern Muslim writing in English on medieval India is an expression of the Muslim urge in modern times either to accept terms from, or to come to terms with, or to impose terms upon, twenticth-century South Asia. With the possible exceptions of Ibn Hasan’s and Abdul Aziz’s work on the Mughals and Muhammad Bashir Ahmad’s work on the administration of justice in medieval India, interest in the past is not really academic. The practical intentions of the historians are underlined by their interest more in the similarity than in the dissimilarity between past and present; in the search for uniformity rather than for the diversity in the human past. ‘They tend to regard the past as valid and the interests of the people of the ppast as valid only in relation to the present. They award the ‘verdicts of History’. They tend to assume the existence of eternal entities in human history, of which events are but the expressions—such entities as nation, lass, autocracy, democracy, Hindu-Muslim antagonism, toleration and equality—regarding them almost as causative factors outside the historical process instead of as convenient linguistic descriptions of human behaviour. Tt may reasonably be alleged that, in practice, itis impossible to jump into the skins of other people of one’s own time, still less of time past; the his- torians under discussion do not, in general, appear to make that aim even their ideal, What matters is where the history of South Asia is proceeding. What matters is to write a significant abridgement of the past which can be thrown at the heads of one’s opponents, not an encyclopaedia of the past which cannot be thrown at anyone's head because itis so firmly and weightily anchored in its own milieu."

"It is perhaps impossible to sustain completely (on present evidence) the hypothesis that Muslim historical writing on medieval India is completely controlled by political considerations. It may be no mere coincidence, however, that works emphasizing the community of interests and the cultural intercourse of Hindus and Muslims tended to appear in the nineteen-twenties, that works emphasizing their polarity in religion and thought but suggesting that political co-operation had been and could be secured, tended to appear in the nineteen-thirties, and that works emphasi- zing theseparate political achievements and destiny of the Muslims in South. Asia tended to appear in the nineteen-forties, The situation of Aligarh today may also be not unconnected with the appearance there of Marxist interpretations of medieval history. It is interesting to speculate—for I can attempt no more—whether any of the attitudes of medieval Muslim historiography have been carried over into modern Muslim historiography on medieval India. There appears to be the same intense consciousness of Islam as the unique, vital, final way of life and thought. There is the same inarticulate premiss that the writing of history should justify the ways of Muslims to men. There is the same assumption that history is purposive, teleological; there is the same urge towards a universal schematic view of history. May not the personification of ‘the Muslim doctrine of equality and toleration’ or ‘the Quranic con- ception of God’ as ‘a revolutionary force of incalculable value for the attainment of human welfare’ and their treatment as final causes in history be the consciousness of the sovereignty of God in modern dress? The significant feature of Professor Habib’s Marxist interpretation of medieval Indian history is not that Marxism has absorbed Islam but that Islam has absorbed Marxism."

"Even more unexpected is the divorce of the Muslim part of the history of medieval India from the study of Islam as a religion and as a system of thought in its wider extra-Indian setting. Thus, the discussion of the posture of the sultans of Delhi and of the Mughal padshahs towards the Muslim religious establishment—of such questions as whether, for example, the Delhi sultanate was in any sense a theocracy or whether Akbar’s religious activities were unislamic, was kept isolated from a general consideration of the background of Islamic ideas on government as they had developed historically and from a consideration of the actual currents of religious thought and feeling in the Muslim community in Akbar’s time. In such a standard work as Vincent. Smith’s Akbar, The Great Mogol, no attempt is made to examine what constituted orthodoxy and unorthodoxy among Muslims of that time, or to describe the content of the religious controversies in which Akbar was involved in the light of developments in Muslim thinking outside India. It seemed to be assumed that Indian Islam was more Indian than Islamic and that it was proper to interpret the aspiration of Islam to be both a religious and a political order as in practice an aspiration merely to be a political order."

"Without weighty grounds, we must not push aside unanimous Indian tradition; else one practises scepticism, not criticism."

"By ‘established’ historians I mean self-proclaimed secular, progressive or left historians who have established an academic empire and try to stifle any voice of dissent or truth. At times, they obfuscate matters."

"“History and Language textbooks for schools all over India will soon be revised radically. In collaboration with various state governments the Ministry of Education has begun a phased programme to weed out undesirable textbooks and remove matter which is prejudicial to national integration and unity and which does not promote social cohesion....” Accordingly, “Twenty states and three Union Territories have started the work of evaluation according to guidelines prepared by the NCERT....”"

"But the worst effect of partition has been that 1947 has tended to produce two historiographies based on territorial differentiation. Comparing the works of Ahmad Ali entitled Culture of Pakistan with Richard Symond's The Making of Pakistan (London, 1950) on the one hand and Humayun Kabir's Indian Heritage and Abid Hussain's National Culture of India on the other, W. Cantwell Smith says that the Pakistani historian 'flees from Indian-ness, and would extra-territorialize even Mohenjodaro (linking the Indus-valley civilisation with Sumer and Elam) as well as the Taj (yet though left in India, the monuments and buildings of Agra and Delhi are entirely outside the Indian tradition and are an essential heritage and part of Pakistani culture, - p.205), and omits from consideration altogether quite major matters less easily disposed of (such as Asoka's reign, and the whole of East Pakistan) The Indians 'on the other hand seek for the meaning of Muslim culture within the complex of Indian 'unity in diversity' as an integral component.'27 So, after 1947, besides the 'objective' and 'apologist', 'Secular' and 'Communal' versions, there are the Pakistani and Indian versions of medieval Indian history."

"Marxist history also lays claim to be counted as objective history. The phrase ‘objective history’ is very attractive, but sometimes under this appellation, all shadows are removed and medieval times are painted in such bright colours by Marxist historians as to shame even the modern age. At others, modern ideas of class-conflict, labour-exploitation and all that goes with it, and many other modern phenomena and problems are projected backwards to fit in the medieval social structure. The word ‘religion’ is tried to be eschewed because it is thought to be associated with bitter memories. If the medieval chronicler cries out ‘Jihad’, it is just not heard: but if he cries aloud persistently, it is claimed that he never meant it. The Marxists or leftists read into history what they think history should be. All this makes the content of Marxist history dubious, needing it to be buttressed by brochures, statements and booklets under a number of signatures. Often, Marxist writers work in groups, mutually admiring each other’s discoveries."

"It would normally be expected that historical writing on Muslim rule in medieval India would tell the tale of this discrimination and the sufferings of the people, their forced conversions, destruction of their temples, enslavement of their women and children, candidly and repeatedly mentioned by medieval Muslim chroniclers themselves. But curiously enough, in place of bringing such facts to light there is a tendency to gloss over them or even suppress them. Countries which in the middle ages completely converted to Islam and lost links with their original religion and culture, write with a sense of pride about their history as viewed by their Islamic conquerors. But India's is a different story. India could not be Islamized and it did not lose its past cultural anchorage. Naturally, it does not share the sense of glory felt by medieval Muslim chroniclers. But some modern “secularist” writers do praise Muslim rule in glowing terms. All historians are not so brazen or such distortionists. Hence the history of Muslim rule in India is seen through many coloured glasses. It is necessary, therefore, to take a look at the “schools” or “groups” of modern historians writing on the history of medieval India so that a balanced appraisal of the legacy of Muslim rule in India may be made."

"And funny though it may sound it was decided to falsify history to please the Muslims and draw them into the national mainstream. Guidelines for rewriting history were prepared by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), and a summary of the same appeared in Indian Express datelined New Delhi, 17 January 1982. The idea was “to weed out undesirable textbooks (in History and languages) and remove matter which is prejudicial to national integration and unity and which does not promote social cohesion… Twenty states and three Union Territories have started the work of evaluation according to guidelines, prepared by NCERT.” The West Bengal Board of Secondary Education issued a notification dated 28 April 1989 addressed to schools and publishers suggesting some ‘corrections’ in the teaching and writing of ‘Muslim rule in India’ - like the real objective of Mahmud Ghaznavi’s attack on Somnath, Aurangzeb’s policy towards the Hindus, and so on. These guidelines specifically say: “Muslim rule should not attract any criticism. Destruction of temples by Muslim invaders and rulers should not be mentioned.” One instruction in the West Bengal circular is that “schools and publishers have been asked to ignore and delete mention of forcible conversions to Islam.” The notification, says the Statesman of 21 May 1989, was objected to in many quarters. “A row has been kicked up by some academicians who feel that the ‘corrections’ are unjustified and politically motivated…” Another group feels that the corrections are “justified”. This experiment with untruth was being attempted since the 30’s-40’s by Muslim and Communist historians. After Independence, they gradually gained strength in university departments. By its policy the Nehruvian state just permitted itself to be hijacked by the so-called progressive, secular and Marxist historians. .... Armed with money and instructions from the Ministry of Education, the National Council of Educational Research, University Grants Commission, Indian Council of Historical Research, secular and Stalinist historians began to produce manipulated and often manifestly false school and college text-books of history and social studies in the Union Territories and States of India. This has gone on for years. ... On the one hand, the government through the Department of Archaeology preserves monuments the originals of which were destroyed by Islamic vandalism, and on the other, history text-books are directed to say that no shrines were destroyed. Students are taught one thing in the class rooms through their text-books, while they see something else when they go on excursions to historical monuments. At places like Qutb Minar and Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque they see that “the construction is all Hindu and destruction all Muslim”. History books are not written only in India; these are written in neighbouring countries also, and what is tried to be concealed here for the sake of national integration, is mentioned with pride in the neighbouring Muslim countries. Scholars in Europe are also working on Indian history and untruths uttered by India’s secular and progressive historians are easily countered. .... Thousands of pilgrims who visit Mathura or walk past the site of Vishvanath temple and Gyanvapi Masjid in Varanasi everyday, are reminded of Mughal vandalism and disregard for Hindu sensitivities by Muslim rulers."

"And yet some writers delude themselves with the mistaken belief that they can change their country's history by distorting it, or brain-wash generations of young students, or humour fundamentalist politicians through such unethical exercise. To judge what happened in the past in the context of today's cultural milieu and consciously hide the truth, is playing politics with history. Let history be accepted as a matter of fact without putting it to any subjective interpretations. Yesterday's villains cannot be made today's heroes, or, inversely, yesterday's Islamic heroes cannot be made into robbers ransacking temples just for treasures. Nor can the medieval monuments be declared as national monuments as suggested in some naive 'secularist' quarters. They represent vandalism. No true Indian can be proud of such desecrated and indecorous evidence of 'composite culture'. 'History,' says Froude, 'does teach that right and wrong are real distinctions. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of humanity.' It is nobody's business to change this moral law and prove the wrongs of the medieval period to be right today by having recourse to misrepresentation of history. Manipulation in the writing of medieval Indian history by some modern writers is the worst legacy of Muslim rule in India."

"These sentiments, which are echoed in other books, are not only uncalled for and misleading, but are calculated to distort the vision and judgment of modern readers. Those who cannot forget, even while writing the history of ancient India, that they belong to the imperial race which holds India in political subjection, can hardly be expected to possess that sympathy and broad-mindedness which are necessary for forming a correct perspective of ancient Indian history and civilisation. European scholars have rendered most valuable service by way of collecting materials for ancient Indian history and civilisation, and India must ever remain grateful to them for their splendid pioneer work. But they would hardly be in a position to write the history of India, so long as they do not cast aside the assumptions of racial superiority and cease to regard Indians as an inferior race."

"[R.C. Majumdar restricts the term ‘nationalist historians’ to those Indians who in reconstructing their country’s history aimed at examining or reexamining] some points of national interest or importance...which have been misunderstood or misconceived or wrongly represented. Such an object is not necessarily in conflict with a scientific and critical study, and a nationalist historian is not, therefore, necessarily a propagandist or a charlatan."

"...history, divorced from truth, does not help a nation. Its future should be laid on the stable foundations of truth and not on the quicksands of falsehood, however alluring it may appear at present. India is now at the cross-roads and I urge my young friends to choose carefully the path they would like to tread upon."

"For more than 30 years, historians Romila Thapar, Satish Chandra, R.S. Sharma, Bipan Chandra and others enjoyed such great political backing from the Congress establishment that they convinced themselves that they, and they alone, possessed god’s gift of the ability to interpret India’s past. They operated as a cartel and prevented others from articulating alternative points of view."

"It is an ominous sign of the time that Indian history is being viewed in official circles in the perspective of recent politics. The official history of the freedom movement starts with the premises that India lost indendence only in the eighteenth century and had thus an experience of subjection to a foreign power for only two centuries. Real history, on the other hand, teaches us that the major part of India lost independence about five centuries before, and merely changed masters in the eighteenth century."

"Political necessities of the Indians during the last phase of British rule, underlined the importance of alliance between the two communities, and this was sought to be smoothly brought about by glossing over the differences and creating an imaginary history of the past in order to depict the relations between the two in a much more favourable light than it actually was. … But history is no respecter of persons or communities, and must always strive to tell the truth, so far as it can be deduced from reliable evidence. This great academic principle has a bearing upon actual life, for ignorance seldom proves to be a real bliss either to an individual or to a nation. In the particular case under consideration, ignorance of the actual relation between the Hindus and the Muslims throughout the course of history - an ignorance deliberately encouraged by some - may ultimately be found to have been the most important single factor which led to the partition of India. The real and effective means of solving a problem is to know and understand the facts that gave rise to it, and not to ignore them by hiding the head, ostrich-like, into sands of fiction."

"It is very sad that the spirit of perverting history to suit political views is no longer confined to politicians, but has definitely spread even among professional historians. … It is painful to mention though impossible to ignore, the fact that there is a distinct and conscious attempt to rewrite the whole chapter of the bigotry and intolerance of the Muslim rulers towards Hindu religion. This was originally prompted by the political motive of bringing together the Hindus and Musalmans in a common fight against the British but has continued ever since. A history written under the auspices of the Indian National Congress sought to repudiate the charge that the Muslim rulers broke Hindu temples, and asserted that they were the most tolerant in matters of religion. Following in its footsteps, a noted historian has sought to exonerate Mahmud of Ghazni’s bigotry and fanaticism, and several writers in India have come forward to defend Aurangzeb against Jadunath Sarkar’s charge of religious intolerance. It is interesting to note that in the revised edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, one of them, while re-writing the article on Aurangzeb originally written by William Irvine, has expressed the view that the charge of breaking Hindu temples brought against Aurangzeb is a disputed point. Alas for poor Jadunath Sarkar, who must have turned in his grave if he were buried. For, after reading his History of Aurangzib, one would be tempted to ask, if the temple-breaking policy of Aurangzeb is a disputed point, is there a single fact in the whole recorded history of mankind which may be taken as undisputed? A noted historian has sought to prove that the Hindu population was better off under the Muslims than under the Hindu tributaries or independent rulers."

"I have approached the subject from a strictly historical point of view. It is an ominous sign of the time that Indian history is being viewed in official circles in the perspective of recent politics. (xxii-xxiii)"

"Political necessities of the Indians during the last phase of British rule underlined the importance of alliance between the two communities, and this was sought to be smoothly brought about by glossing over the differences and creating' an imaginary history of the past in order to depict the relations between the two in a much more favourable light than it actually was. Eminent Hindu political leaders even went so far as to proclaim that the Hindus were not at all a subject race during the Muslim rule. These absurd notions, which would have been laughed at by Indian leaders at the beginning of the nineteenth century, passed current as history owing to the exigencies of the political complications at the end of that century. Unfortunately slogans and beliefs die hard, and even today, for more or less the same reasons as before, many Indians, specially Hindus, are peculiarly sensitive to any comments or observations even made in course of historical writings, touching upon the communal relations in any way. A fear of wounding the susceptibilities of the sister community haunts the minds of Hindu politicians and historians, and not only prevents them from speaking out the truth, but also brings down their wrath upon those who have the courage to do so. But history is no respecter of persons or communities, and must always strive to tell the truth, so far as it can be deduced from reliable evidence. This great academic principle has a bearing upon actual life, for ignorance seldom proves to be a real bliss either to an individual or to a nation. In the particular case under consideration, ignorance of the actual relation between the Hindus and the Muslims throughout the course of history,—an ignorance deliberately encouraged by some,—may ultimately be found to have been the most important single factor which led to the partition of India. The real and effective means of solving a problem is to know and understand the facts that gave rise to it, and not to ignore them by hiding the head, ostrich-like, into sands of fiction. (p. xxix.)"

"It is thus quite clear that both from purely academic and practical standpoints, the plain duty of a historian of India is to reveal the truth about the communal relations in the past, without being influenced in any way by any extraneous factor. This conclusion is fortified by other considerations. It is now a well-known fact that a few powerful dictators who dominated Europe in the recent past emphasized the need of re-writing the history of their countries to suit their political actions and ideals. This is undoubtedly a great tribute paid to history for its formative influence upon mankind, but cuts at the very root of all that makes history an intellectual discipline of the highest value. There are ominous signs that the same idea is slowly invading democratic countries also, not excluding India. This world tendency to make history the vehicle of certain definite political, social and economic ideas, which reign supreme in each country for the time being, is like a cloud, at present no bigger than a man’s hand, but which may soon grow in volume, and overcast the sky, covering the light of the world by an impenetrable gloom. The question is therefore of paramount importance, and it is the bounden duty of every historian to guard himself against the tendency, and fight it by the only weapon available to him, namely by holding fast to truth in all his writings irrespective of all consequences. A historian should not trim his sail according to the prevailing wind, but ever go straight, keeping in view the only goal of his voyage—the discovery of truth. (p. xxx)"

"Such disclosures may not be liked by the high officials and a section of the politicians, but it is the solemn duty of the historian to state the truth, however unpleasant or discreditable it might be to any particular class or community. Unfortunately, political expediency in India during this century has sought to destroy this true historic spirit... It is very sad that the spirit of perverting history to suit political views is no longer confined to politicians, but has definitely spread even among professional historians... Although the statements are based on unimpeachable authority, there is hardly any doubt that they will be condemned not only by a small class of historians enjoying official favour, but also by a section of Indians who are quite large m number and occupy high position in politics and society. It is painful to mention, though impossible to ignore, the fact that there is a distinct and conscious attempt to rewrite the whole chapter of the bigotry and intolerance of the Muslim rulers towards Hindu religion" This was originally prompted by the political motive of bringing together the Hindus and Musalmans in a common fight against the British but has continued ever since. A history written under the auspices of the Indian National Congress sought to repudiate the charge that the Muslim rulers broke Hindu temples, and asserted that they were the most tolerant in matters of religion Following in its footsteps a noted historian has sought to exonerate Mahmud of Ghazni’s bigotry and fanaticism, and several writers in India have come forward to defend Aurangzib against Jadunath Sarkar’s charge of religious intolerance. It is interesting to note that in the revised edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, one of them, while re-writing the article on Aurangzib originally written by Sir Wiliam Irvine, has expressed the view that the charge of breaking Hindu temples brought agamst Aurangzib is a disputed point. Alas for poor Jadunath Sarkar, who must have turned in his grave if he were buried For, after reading his History of Aurangzib, one would be tempted to ask, if the temple-breaking policy of Aurangzib is a disputed point, is there a single fact in the whole recorded history of mankind which may be taken as undisputed? A noted historian has sought to prove that the Hindu population was better off under the Muslims than under the Hindu tributaries or independent rulers. “While some historians have sought to show that the Hindu and Muslim cultures were fundamentally different and formed two distinct and separate units flourishing side by side, the late K. M Ashraf sought to prove that the Hindus and Muslims had no cultural conflict.” But the climax was reached by the politician-cum-historian Lala Lajpat Rai when he asserted that “the Hindus and Muslims have coalesced into an Indian people very much in the same way as the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes and Normans formed the English people of today.” His further assertion that “the Muslim rule in India was not a foreign rule” has now become the oft-repeated slogan of a certain political party. I have discussed the question in some detail elsewhere”” and need not elaborate the point any further."

"In a 1942 article entitled “ ‘Histories’ of India,” K.M. Munshi wrote, “Most of our histories of India suffer from a lack of perspective. They deal with certain events and periods not from the Indian point of view, but from that of some source to which they are partial and which by its very nature is loaded against India.”"

"“History writing has been used both to build nations and to dismantle them. ...History has never been an objective reporting of a set of empirical facts. It’s a present day (re)conception and filtering of data pertaining to the past, to build a narrative that is consistent with the myths of the dominant culture. … While each rich and powerful civilization emphasizes its indigenous cohesiveness and continuity, and with scholarship under control of those loyal to it, the reverse is the trend among the economically weak civilizations such as India. In the case of Indian civilization, the scholars’ emphasis has been on how there might not even be such a historical entity as India or Hinduism, and how its civilization was entirely brought by foreigners into India. This intellectual breakup of Indic Traditions into historical layers of cultural imports, each with a nexus in some other part of the world, is the intellectual equivalent of the political breakup of India. That so many Indian have sold out to this project is certainly noteworthy, and is a major untold story of our times. In the long run, it is tempting for the West to assimilate this last remaining non-Western knowledge system, and breaking it into digestible modules facilitates this. However, the havoc that such a potential breakup would unleash would also be of catastrophic global proportions. Furthermore, the future positive harvests that this civilization is capable of giving to the world would end.”"

"Of quite a few casualties of the standards of academic integrity at the hands of self-styled 'secular' academics, those in the field of medieval Indian historiography happen to be the worst."

"The most important assumption was that Indian history was just a collection of unrelated events, like a series of migrations and conquests, owing their origin to external stimuli. It did not reveal the organic growth of a nation or a civilization, marking the stages of development or decline. The people are not an active force bringing about changes like the renaissance and reformation, or producing a revolution at some stage. It was a procession of exotic and colourful characters, autocratic kings and emperors just having their way without encountering resistance from the people. ...a long series of invasions…[acted] upon the unresponsive masses [and] political and historical upheavals [were] not products of conditions within society, representing certain trends or movements among the people. […] It was as though India was simply a geographical entity, providing an empty stage for odd characters to appear and move about for some time before their mysterious disappearance."

"There was a general tendency to condemn and denigrate everything Indian, calling it Hindu and communal, without realizing the fact that the label ‘Hindu’ did not represent a religion in the Semitic or Western sense, but a whole civilization which possessed institutions and outlook entirely different from those of the Western civilization. [….] Western standards, capitalist or communist, were applied indiscriminately to Indian history for evaluating the developments in all walks of life. This was evident in the way terms like religion, state, class, empire, nation, law,justice, morality, etc. were used in the analysis and interpretation of the past in India."

"We are aware of the fact that certain historians professing to project the Marxist ideology have been in the habit of claiming infallibility and monopoly of wisdom, branding all other historians as reactionary and communal and treating them as untouchables. This intellectual fascism has to be discouraged. What they were enjoying for some time was not a monopoly of wisdom but a monopoly of power in several government bodies and universities. This has come to an end happily. Historical research must now gather new momentum in this country so that our people are eventually liberated from the hegemony of Eurocentric history and enabled to develop their own independent Indian perspective."