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HISTORY
AND DISTORTION
Following are excerpts from a two part article that came in Rediff.com
recently. The URL's of the two parts respectively are - http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/jan/03rajeev.htm
http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/jan/04rajeev.htm
Part I (January 3, 2002)
Title -Historicide: Censoring the past... and the present I would
like you to take the following quiz: How many of the following recent
news stories (all from the year 2001, except one, maybe) have you
personally heard of?
*Two Hindu priests were dragged
out of a temple in Jammu and beheaded by suspected Islamic terrorists.
*There was a conference in New Delhi on the preservation of diversity
in religion, which was attended by luminaries such as the Dalai
Lama. *A Hindu Bangladeshi professor, a college principal in Chittagong
and
a prominent freedom fighter, were shot dead during the genocide
against Hindus in that country.
*Two Christian Rwandan nuns were convicted of crimes against humanity
for their roles in the massacres of minority Tutsis in their country.
*The Konkan Railway, the first major railway project in India since
Independence, has been a major success despite the difficult terrain
and the logistics nightmares.
*The Vatican released a report admitting that many nuns have been
raped, impregnated and even murdered by priests, missionaries, et
al. A group of Indian and foreign experts got together to release
their
plans for preserving the heritage of India for humanity and for
all time.
*The Tarun Bharat Sangh has succeeded in reviving many rivers in
the arid foothills of the Aravalli ranges in Rajasthan through simple
traditional water conservation measures.
[...]
*An acclaimed Russian film about Lenin was prevented from being
exhibited in West Bengal by the state government because it was
less than laudatory.
*Muslim militants went on a rampage in Pathanamthitta, Kerala, burned
the BJP offices as well as gas stations and buses, and attacked
Sabarimala pilgrims.
If you recall seeing more than
three of the above, I would wager that you do not live in India.
Because the English-language media in India completely censored
almost all of these stories.
Many of these got substantial
airplay in the international media. The shocking story of the Rwandan
nuns accused and convicted, Nazi-like, of crimes against humanity
has been in the news in Europe for some
time. For instance, this is what The Economist had to say about
the nuns in Rwanda: in "Judging genocide", June 16, 2001.
[....]
As for the story about the
Konkan Railway, it is an inspiration. In the face of obstacles,
including extremely difficult terrain (many tunnels, bridges, etc)
as well as the task of raising large amounts of money through a
public bond issue, the railway was constructed on schedule and within
budget. It used to be said that ndians could never match the feats
of the British engineers who built much of India's network; isn't
it amazing that E Sreedharan, the man who ran this Herculean effort,
is a virtual unknown?
We have heard all about 'Mother'
Teresa, but why is Baba Amte, whose work with lepers deserves at
least as much renown as the Albanian nun's work, is not pushed forward
for a Nobel Prize? Nor do large sums of money get thrown at him.
Michel Danino told me about
the International Forum for India's Heritage that has been formed
with the express intent of preserving India's remarkable heritage,
some of which is in danger of being lost due to neglect and mismanagement.
In this context, see also an interview with Maneka Gandhi (http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/nov/27inter.htm).
However, notes Michel with chagrin, not a single English-language
Indian newspaper carried the announcement.
India's Marxists and their
fellow travellers had a field day complaining about censorship in
regards to Fire and Water. Why then did they not extend the upholding
of the freedom of expression to the Lenin film, Taurus, by renowned
Russian director Alexander Sokurov? And why did the media not upbraid
them for this hypocrisy?
Swami Dayananda Saraswati,
a respected Hindu monk and scholar, hosted a major conference in
Delhi in mid-November. It was the "World Congress for the Preservation
of Religious Diversity", intended to support the preservation
of the mosaic of religious traditions and cultures, "a priceless
heritage of humankind". His Holiness the Dalai Lama attended.
Yet, India's English-language newspapers almost completely blacked
out this conference. Why? Because it was challenging the rationale
for religious conversion.
[...]
If there is anything positive
and good happening in India, you certainly won't find it written
up by the regular media, which is too full of bellyaching and accusations.
Incidentally, I found many inspiring examples of success stories
in India on the site www.goodnewsindia.com (no, not www.goodnewsindia.org,
which is one of those offensively smarmy Christian fundamentalist
sites), which apparently is a labour of love for a gentleman named
D V Sridharan. I salute this person's persistence and spirit of
service for the nation, which is so sorely lacking in the mainstream
media.
Therefore I find the current
brouhaha in the English-language media about history textbooks most
alarming. They who are so worried about censoring the past (as they
accuse the BJP of doing) certainly do censor the present with gay
abandon! This is important: the young become what they are fed,
a topical case in point being the Islamic seminaries of Pakistan.
These have inculcated in an entire generation of Pakistanis a mindset
of intolerance and violence against Hindus and Indians based on
a falsified history of the Indian subcontinent. If we inculcate
in our children a false history of India we will create a society
of monsters: much like our lost generation that worships America,
Russia or China, but never India. This cannot be
countenanced.
I think it was Oscar Wilde
who said that the only thing we owe to history is to rewrite it.
The Marxists have been true believers in the virtues of "truth
by repeated assertion". They have been adept at fabricating
history to suit their pet theory du-jour. They have used history
as a tool for propaganda and for their agit-prop tactical goals.
[....]
Consider the status of the leftist historians who are now waxing
eloquent about their 'objectivity'. It turns out that large numbers
of them were friendly witnesses cited by the Sunni Waqf Board in
their case in the Ayodhya matter. If they are testifying on behalf
of one side, the Muslims, in a litigation where the facts are anything
but crystal clear and there is a lot of room for interpretation,
how they could then be considered purely 'objective' or 'impartial'
is somewhat mysterious. Interestingly, almost all of the grey eminences
currently breathing fire were associated with the Babri Masjid Action
Committee, according to Arun Shourie, in Eminent Historians, ASA
Publications, 1999:
R S Sharma
Suraj Bhan
D N Jha
Romila Thapar
Irfan Habib
B N Pandey
R L Shukla
Satish Chandra
Gyanendra Pandey
Shourie skewers each of the
individuals famously grousing now about their lovely textbooks being
rejected: R S Sharma, D N Jha, Satish Chandra, et al. He shows them
to be shady characters just short of being charlatans, scarcely
the saintly academics they like to pretend to be. It is nothing
short of astonishing that these are the people who have been allowed
to mould India's children for the past half-century. India's citizens
have clearly failed in their duty of vigilance.
There is an unholy alliance
of these 'eminent historians' and others, for example Bipan Chandra
and K N Panikkar. These people have formed a cozy clique, where
they review and applaud each other's works and
ensure they all have cushy, government-funded posts where they are
supposed to write books that never do get written; but large sums
of money do get paid, and they get 'research grants', 'travel grants'
and other porkbarrel goodies to hand out at taxpayer expense. The
sinecures have continued till now; the real problem is that the
BJP is now ensuring that some of these 'eminent historians' are
forced to do some work to justify their existence.
Romila Thapar, taking up cudgels
on behalf of her friends, has accused those on the other side of
being "pulp historians". She targets, in particular, scholars
such as Koenraad Elst, Subhash Kak, David Frawley, N S Rajaram,
et al who are not necessarily holders of PhD in history; but then
they are also not fattening at the trough of Indian taxpayer money.
There are several responses
to such an ad hominem attack. First, granted, they may not be professional
historians, but that probably enables them to see the Emperor's
New Clothes very well indeed. Second, if they are pop historians,
why, then Thapar et al might well be considered court hagiographers.
Third, non-professionals often contribute dramatically to the growth
of a discipline as compared to hide-bound traditionalists.
First, they are not professional
historians, granted. But then, why do leftists not object when Amartya
Sen, Nobel Prize winner in economics, not history, holds forth on
history? But they do not: Romila Thapar shared the stage with Sen,
and surely nodded approvingly, at the Indian History Congress in
Kolkata on January 2.
The title of Sen's address was "History and the enterprise
of knowledge". This quote will give a flavour of the content:
There is also a systematic
confounding here of mythology with history. An extraordinary example
of this has been the interpretation of the Ramayana not as a great
epic but as documentary history which can be invoked to establish
property rights over places and sites possessed and owned by others.
Sen pontificates thus about
Ayodhya. To put it bluntly, what does Sen know about either mythology
or history? A Nobel Prize in one discipline is no guarantee of knowledge
in any other. I am reminded of William Shockley, Nobel Prize winner
in physics, who later became a laughing-stock for his idiotic theories
on race and intelligence. Why isn't Thapar asking Sen to cease embarrassing
himself with inane
pronouncements?
And frankly, even Sen's economics
is suspect. Kerala, the Marxist paradise and object of much adulation
by Sen, has now become a basket case, a 'money-order economy' sustained
only by remittances from
expatriates, along with large doses of Christian and Arab money
for conversion and church-/mosque-building activities. Kerala is
perilously close to having a cargo cult: it would come to a standstill
without produce-laden trucks from Tamil Nadu.
Furthermore, as a friend remarked,
if you have in Sen the left-wing Nobel Prize winner with pithy quotes
to support Thapar and company, then there is in V S Naipaul the
right-wing Nobel Prize winner. Do the two cancel each other out?
In point of fact, Naipaul certainly knows much more than Sen does
about people and societies, as a much-admired travel writer. Why
won't India's leftists then accept Naipaul's opinions? Why do they
attack him instead?
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