Historians From India

"The late arrival of the horse in India is not surprising since the horse is not an animal indigenous to India. Even on the west Asian scene, its presence is not registered until the second millennium BC. The horse was unimportant, ritually and functionally, to the Indus civilization."

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

"Epic literature is not history but is again a way of looking at the past."

"Some forms of Indian asceticism, although not all, have a socio-political dimension and these cannot be marginalized as merely the wish to negate life."

"Strangely, Indians travelling outside the subcontinent do not seem to have left itineraries of where they went or descriptions of what they saw. Distant places enter the narratives of storytelling only very occasionally."

"That every civilization emerges out of interactions with others, but nevertheless creates its own miracle, was not yet recognized by either European or Indian historians."

"Nationalism seeks legitimacy from the past and history therefore becomes a sensitive subject."

"Rajendra I ruled jointly with his father for two years, succeeding him in 1014. The policy of expansion continued with the annexation of the southern provinces of the Chalukyas, the rich Raichur doab and Vengi. Campaigns against Sri Lanka and Kerala were also renewed. But Rajendra’s ambitions had turned northwards. An expedition set out, marching through Orissa to reach the banks of the Ganges. From there, it is said, holy water from the river was carried back to the Chola capital. Bringing back the water through conquest symbolized ascendancy over the north. But Rajendra did not hold the northern regions for long, a situation parallel to that of Samudra Gupta’s campaign in the south almost 700 years earlier."

"Some have argued that as language is the medium of knowledge, that which comes in the form of language constitutes a text; since language is interpreted by the individual, the reading by the individual gives meaning to the text; therefore each time a text is read by a different individual it acquires a fresh meaning. Taken to its logical conclusion, this denies any generally accepted meaning of a text and is implicitly a denial of attempts at historical representation or claims to relative objectivity, since the meaning would change with each reading. However, the prevalent views are more subtle."

"The majority of current politicians are characterised by little, if any, vision of the kind of society they wish to construct, barring those that come with the limited concept of extreme religious nationalism."

"Intolerance of the views of others and anti-intellectualism are on the rise. In this confrontation, universities and the educational system are, and will continue to be, obvious targets. Education can easily be converted into indoctrination."

"(The Srauta Sutra of Baudhayana) "refers to the Parasus and the arattas who stayed behind and others who moved eastwards to the middle Ganges valley and the places equivalent such as the Kasi, the Videhas and the Kuru Pancalas, and so on. In fact, when one looks for them, there are evidence for migration."

"Secularism is the curtailment of religious control over social institutions, not the absence of religion from society. It is when our primary identity is of equal citizens of the nation, not as belonging to a particular religion or caste. But the Indian definition of secularism is limited to the coexistence of many religions which is incomplete because some religions can still be marginalised as they are."

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

"We know from the Qur'an that Lat, Uzza and Manat were the three pre-Islamic goddesses widely worshipped, and the destruction of their shrines and images, it was said, had been ordered by the Prophet Mohammad. Two were destroyed, but Manat was believed to have been secreted away to Gujarat and installed in a place of worship. According to some descriptions, Manat was an aniconic block of black stone, so the form could be similar to a lingam. This story hovers over many of the Turko-Persian accounts, some taking it seriously, others being less emphatic and insisting instead that the icon was of a Hindu deity. The identification of the Somanatha idol with that of Manat has little historical credibility. There is no evidence to suggest that the temple housed an image of Manat. Nevertheless, the story is significant to the reconstruction of the aftermath of the event since it is closely tied to the kind of legitimation which was being projected for Mahmud. The link with Manat added to the acclaim for Mahmud. Not only was he the prize iconoclast in breaking Hindu idols, but in destroying Manat he had carried out what were said to be the very orders of the Prophet. He was therefore doubly a champion of Islam."

"The destruction of temples even by Hindu rulers was not unknown, but Mahmud’s was a regulated activity and inaugurated an increase in temple destruction compared to earlier times"

"Elliot and Dowson state that religious bigotry was characteristic of the Indian past. They do confess that in presenting the translations from Persian and Arabic sources, their intention is to highlight the oppressive rule of Muslim kings. They state that the intolerance of the Mohammedans led to idols being mutilated, temples destroyed, forced conversions, confiscations, murders and massacres, not to mention the sensuality and drunkenness of tyrants. Such descriptions were intended to convince the Hindu subjects that British rule was far superior and to their advantage. This was not an isolated attitude and is reflected in many British writings on Indian history. Religious bigotry was frequently read into the texts translated in the nineteenth century, which coloured the reading of the Turko-Persian texts. For example, where Utbi says, ‘He (Mahmud) made it obligatory on himself to undertake every year an expedition to Hind,’ the translation of this passage in Elliot and Dowson’s work reads, ‘the Sultan vowed to undertake a holy war to Hind every year’."

"To categorize some people as indigenous and others as alien, to argue about the identity of the first inhabitants of the subcontinent, and to try and sort out these categories for the remote past, is to attempt the impossible."

"The Hindutva version of the theory became a mechanism for excluding some sections of Indian society, specifically Indian Muslims and Christians, by insisting that they are alien."

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

"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’."

"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."

"If it can be argued that the Harappan culture is in fact Vedic or that the Rigveda is earlier even than the Harappan, then the Vedas continue to be foundational to the subcontinental civilisation of South Asia and also attract the encomium of representing an advanced civilization, superior even to the pastoral-agrarian culture actually described in Vedic texts."

"The discovery of Harappan sites on the Indian side of the border between India and Pakistan is viewed as compensating for the loss of the cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa which are located in Pakistan."

"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."

"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."

"Dayananda Sarasvati, seeking to return to the social and religious life of the Vedas, used the Vedic corpus as the blueprint of his vision of Indian society. But he argued that the Vedas are the source of all knowledge including modern science, a view with which Max Mueller disagreed. He underlined the linguistic and racial purity of the Aryans and the organisation which he founded, the Arya Samaj, was described by its followers as 'the society of the Aryan race'. The Aryas were the upper castes and the untouchables were excluded."

"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.’"

"Capitalism is often believed to thrive among Semitic religions such as Christianity and Islam. The argument would then run that if capitalism is to succeed in India, then Hinduism would also have to be moulded in a Semitic form. ... Characteristic of the Semitic religions are features such as a historically attested teacher or prophet, a sacred book, a geographically identifiable location for its beginnings, an ecclesiastical infrastructure and the conversion of large numbers of people to the religion—all characteristics which are largely irrelevant to the various manifestations of Hinduism until recent times. Thus instead of emphasizing the fact that the religious experience of Indian civilization and of religious sects which are bunched together under the label of ‘Hindu’ are distinctively different from that of the Semitic, attempts are being made to find paralle!s with the Semitic religions as if these parallels are necessary to the future of Hinduism."

"The pressure of new circumstances led initially to large-scale slave-trading and the emergence of slave labour during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The numbers of slaves in the Sultans' establishments were very high (50,000 under Alauddin Khilji, and 180,000 under Firuz Tughluq). Barani judges the level of prices by referring to slave prices, and the presence of slaves was almost all-pervasive."

"The parallel can be seen for example in the recent resurgence of the worship of Rama, where the control of this religious articulation is politically motivated. The characteristics of the Semitic religions are introduced into this tradition. The teacher or prophet is replaced by the avatâra of Vishnu, Rama; the sacred book is the Râmâyana; the geographical identity or the beginnings of the cult and the historicity of Rama are being sought in the insistence that the precise birthplace of Rama in Ayodhya was marked by a temple, which was destroyed by Babur and replaced by the Babri Masjid; an ecclesiastical infrastructure is implied by inducting into the movement the support of Mahants and the Shankaracharyas or what the Vishwa Hindu Parishad calls a Dharma Sansad; the support of large numbers of people, far surpassing the figures of earlier followers of Rama-bhakti, was organized through the worship of bricks destined for the building of a temple on the location of the mosque. There has been an only too apparent exploitation of belief. The current Babri Masjid dispute is therefore symbolic of an articulation of a new form of Hinduism, militant, aggressive and crusading, which I have elsewhere referred to as Syndicated Hinduism."

"Communal interpretation is based on the notion that for the last thousand years Indian history has been dominated by a society which consists of a monolithic Muslim community and a monolithic Hindu community. And that these two communities have always been in a state of conflict. Therefore every historical event that takes place is to be explained by this conflict. This I think is absolutely primitive history. This is worse than colonial history. Because historical interpretation has now moved on to a position where we analyse an event in a multi-causal way."

"The invention of an Aryan race in nineteenth century Europe was to have, as we all know, far-reaching consequences on world history. Its application to European societies culminated in the ideology of Nazi Germany. Another sequel was that it became foundational to the interpretation of early Indian history and there have been attempts at a literal application of the theory to Indian society. Some European scholars now describe it as a nineteenth century myth. But some contemporary Indian political ideologies seem determined to renew its life. In this they are assisted by those who still carry the imprint of this nineteenth century theory and treat it as central to the question of Indian identity. With the widespread discussion on 'Aryan origins' in the print media and the controversy over its treatment in school textbooks, it has become the subject of a larger debate in terms of its ideological underpinnings rather than merely the differing readings among archaeologists and historians."

"The fundamental sanity in Indian civilization has been due to an absence of Satan."

"Not surprisingly, nationalism was replaced by a form of militant Hinduism, and the communal atmosphere in Indian politics in the late 1930s and the 1940s tended to vitiate the study of ancient and medieval history. The Gupta period became the ‘Golden Age’ largely because it was the period of renascent Hinduism. Many of the ills of India were ascribed to ‘the Muslim invasions and rule’. It was maintained that Hinduism in its Sanskritic form was the essential culture of India, and other forces were in a sense an intrusion."

"[In India’s case] what one can foresee, perhaps, for the end of the next century [i.e. the twenty-first], is a series of small states federated within a more viable single economic space on the scale of the subcontinent."

"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)."

"Intellectually, these Nehruvian historians and pressmen stand thoroughly discredited. But they have power positions in the media and in the education and research establishments, so they still manage to black out criticism and alternative opinions. A recent example of their power is the nomination of a successor to Leftist Muslim historian Irfan Habib as head of the Indian Council of Historical Research. The expected choice was Prof. G.C. Pande, former vice-chancellor of two universities. But the secularist intelligentsia launched a campaign against him : "RSS connections loom large". It is said that Irfan Habib contacted the Shahi Imam, who in turn had a chat with his friend V.P. Singh, prime minister. At any rate, G.C. Pande's name was scrapped from the list of candidates. This is also one more example of the unscrupled connivance between secularists and Muslim communalists."

"Another curious agenda is that of what is described as 'a critical mass' of Indians and a few others in America and Canada who refer to themselves as the Indo-American school (as against what they call the Indo-European school of scholars who work within the earlier Indian and European scholarship). The Indo-American school, according to one of its prominent spokesmen, consists of predominantly American-trained professional scientists researching on ancient India (presumably as a hobby), and using the resources of modern science and technology. Obviously well-endowed, they run their own journal from their main office in Canada. They too are committed to proving that the Vedic and the Harappan cultures are the same and that their antiquity goes back to the fifth millennium bc and therefore the Aryans are indigenous to India and took the Aryan mission westwards from India. Much of their writing contributes to the invention of yet more methodologies about a complex subject. What is striking about their publications is their evident unfamiliarity with the methods of analysing archaeological, linguistic and historical data. Consequently their writings read rather like nineteenth century tracts but peppered with references to using the computer so as to suggest scientific objectivity since they claim that it is value-free. Those that question their theories are dismissed as Marxists! That Indian scientists in America should take upon themselves the task of proving the Harappan to be Vedic, to having influenced other civilisations such as the Egyptian, and to proving that the Aryans proceeded on a civilising mission issuing out of India and going westwards, can only suggest that the 'Indo-American school' is in the midst of an identity crisis in its new environment. It is anxious to demarcate itself from other immigrants and to proclaim that the Indian identity is superior to the others who have also fallen into the 'great melting-pot'."

"Nations are not easily forged since many identities have to be coalesced."

"All history is contemporary history; you can't get away from the politics around you."

"His commitment to the Babri Masjid could be gauged from the fact that under his Chairmanship, ICHR was accused of functioning as a wing of the BMAC. Suraj Bhan admitted in Court that during Professor Habib's tenure, ICHR sanctioned him a grant for "exploration" at Ayodhya."

"The big buffoon of the debate was the Stalinist Professor, R.S. Sharma. He had patched up a book, Communal History and Rama's Ayodhya, in December, 1990. Claiming to “call the VHP bluff,” he was trying to bluff his way by hurling abuse at those who had offered hard and clinching evidence. In January, 1991 he led forty-two “academics” in a public statement that there was absolutely no evidence for pre-Babri Hindu temple at the disputed site. The AIBMAC was led to believe that it had found a powerful advocate for its case. But when the chips were down, their stalwart was the first to turn tail and run away from the contest. He needed six weeks to study the evidence on a matter on which he had already reached firm and final conclusions. It had been easy for him to make statements and allegations in the partisan press. But confronted with genuine scholars who placed authentic evidence on the conference table, Sharma and comrades found themselves comered. Their talk was no longer that loud."

"Sharma had “tried to place Indian history [….] in an alien framework”, and secondly, that the textbook writer had “given … wrong data and also suppressed some vital information... Page after page and paragraph after paragraph [showed] something extremely shocking. Data which do not exist. Informations which are wholly or are partially wrong. Facts which are disputed. Theories which are outdated. Chronology which no serious scholar would accept. Terms which are not in vogue. Sociological and cultural interpretations of archaeological data without giving due regard to the inherent limitations of the data themselves. Maps which are not organically related to the text. Absence of several vital facts and epoch- making discoveries."

"Besides history, Prof. R.S.S. loves politics, equally, if not more."

"R.S. Sharma's whose Indian Feudalism has misguided virtually all historians of the period, not only because it it entirely written from the a priori assumption of the 'dark age', doggedly searching for point by point parallels with Europe, but also, ... because there has never been anything to challenge it... Sharma has repeated his views innumerable times - almost verbatim often, and hardly developing them... Sharma's thesis "involves an obstinate attempt to find 'elements' which fit a preconceived picture of what should have happened in India because it happened in Europe (or is alleged to have happened in Europe by Sharma and his school of historians whose knowledge of European history is rudimentary and completely outdated) or because of the antiquated Marxist scheme of a ‘necessary’ development of ‘feudalism’ out of ‘slavery’. The methodological underpinnings of Sharma's work are in fact so thin that one wonders why, for so long, Sharma's colleagues have called his work 'pioneering. It generated a spate of ‘feudalism studies’, elaborat­ing Sharma’s thesis, differing perhaps on minor points, as the case maybe, and critical here and there of ‘the inadequacy of the data’, but remaining variations on a theme.... There are, as indicated before, a very few authors whose work effec­tively addresses the feudalism thesis in a critical manner... Sharma, for one, appears to have been in no mood to take heed of criticism levelled at his work. Under the impact of the feudalism thesis the historiography of the period is still in utter disarray."

"This is how the matter stood till 1972 when the ICHR was established by the Government of India with R S Sharma as its chairman and S Nurul Hasan as its presiding Minister. The members of the Council all belonged to the political left and there was a consistent attempt to fill up the history vacancies in Delhi and elsewhere with fellow- communists. A new university—Jawaharlal Nehru University—was established under the government auspices in Delhi to espouse the leftist cause. The ICHR became the most important source of funding of historical research. With the control of both appointments and funding, historical research in India went completely into the leftist control during this phase. This control was immeasurably strengthened by the simultaneous leftist control of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) which led to a uniform history syllabus at the school level all over the country and the selection of a few communist authors to write books expounding this syllabus. These authors, because of the wide circulation of their books at the school level, gained almost celebrity status overnight. R S Sharma and Romila Thapar were selected for writing books on ancient India."

"Coincidentally, we find this selective use of “truth” in a recent paper by Marxist scholar Prof. Ram Sharan Sharma... In a short space, Sharma crams pell-mell arguments which he clearly regards as devastating, leaving no one in doubt about the truth of the good old Aryan invasion / migration theory...However, on closer scrutiny, Sharma’s points rest on manipulated quotations and data, in consonance with the Pravda method... His recourse to misrepresentation and concealment does little to inspire confidence in the inherent strength of the invasionist model: if indeed that is all he can find to oppose the “indigenist” school, then the latter’s adherents have ground to rejoice."

"From his high pedestal, Prof. Sharma could afford to disregard the 'very few authors whose work effectively addresses the feudalism thesis in a critical manner', and he 'appears to have been in no mood to take heed of criticism levelled at his work'. This disregarding and ignoring of counter-evidence is tactically the best way to prolong your dominant position (which is why this tactic was adopted by most secularists in the Ayodhya debate): it denies publicity and respectability to the critic's alternative thesis. But to the progress of science, this upholding of dogma and suppression of debate is detrimental."

"People will be surprised to find that the V.H.P. has been unable to cite any ancient Sanskrit text in support of its claim that there has been an ancient Hindu belief in Ram Janma-sthãna at Ayodhya. Surely, if there were such a strong belief there would have been numerous Vaishnavite texts exhorting worshippers to visit the spot. The absence of any such reference makes it very dubious that the belief in Ram Janma-sthãna is of such respectable antiquity as is being made out. It is even doubtful if it is earlier than the late eighteenth century, as we shall see."