NEW DELHI: ``Historians are neither Left nor Right,'' says newly appointed ICHR chairman Prof M G S Narayanan even while he criticises his ``Marxist friends'' for having monopolised the ICHR in the past.
The new chairman, an acknowledged scholar, says he plans to broadbase the research carried out by the council so that scholars from different regions, universities and disciplines find space.

While denying that the BJP government had packed the council with its supporters, Prof Narayanan, however, admits that they would not have appointed anyone hostile to them. He states, however, that far
greater damage was done to history by the so-called leftist historians.

Prof Narayanan says most of the controversies were a result of the media playing into the hands of politicians, either deliberately or out of ignorance. ``I have a feeling that most of the media was
misled and they did not bother to learn about the functioning of the ICHR.''

One instance, he says, is all the hue and cry over the reconstitution of the council with ``journalists writing as if the ruling parties have brought in people sympathetic to them. They must have been totally ignorant or what had happened before as if it had never happened. They never mentioned that the ICHR was used as an instrument by the so-called leftist historians for the benefit of their parties, unscrupulously.''

Saying this misuse had not been repeated by the BJP government, Narayanan says, ``Of course, they select people who are not against them naturally. This probably happens everywhere. But I have not seen
them doing it the same way as my Marxists friends did. For instance, support or fellowship, foreign travel, etc, the same group of people (used to get it) as if there are only a handful of scholars in history in JNU and not anywhere else in the country.''

When the council is reconstituted (the current council's term ends at the end of August, Prof Narayanan expresses hope that there will be wider representation of ``good scholars, with a national outlook and
good representation. Earlier the South was not properly represented. Even in research projects, you do not find many applications from other parts of the country because the rules of funding are not
available to them. This kind of a thing is anti-national''. He, however, refuses to comment on whether there would be a mix of leftist and rightist scholars, saying he does not recognise these categories.

On the controversial 'Towards Freedom' project, Narayanan defends the council's stand. While saying that the volumes must be brought out because scholars have worked on it, he, however, asserts the right of
the council to scrutinise the manuscripts. The decision on whether they would require changes, editing, or a supplementary volume or a critical volume should be left to the council.

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