Organiser has played a crucial role in challenging and opposing the Congress and the Marxists version of history providing space for dialogue over the reorientation of history
Shaan Kashyap
RE-WRITING History sounds differently to different people. For a politician-historian, the term stands for ‘motivated writing’, thus, an averment was placed by a columnist in Organiser. The writer, titled his piece as, ‘Historians no less than Politicians.’ (Organiser, Independence Day Special, 1978) If we place the above piece in the long history of
‘politics of history writing’ in India, we shall find the
‘context’. The long disapproval of NCERT textbooks was produced by Ram Sharan Sharma, Satish Chandra, Bipan Chandra and Romila Thapar had become tumultuous under the Janta Party government. The writer, Bhim Sen Singh (Satyawati College, University of Delhi) rightly
pointed out that for professional historians the term, ‘RE-WRITING’ is ‘in fact a misnomer because rewriting is involved in the very process of history writing.’ (Ibid)
However, the ideological colouring of educational and
cultural institutions which commenced with Abul Kalam Azad, Humayun Kabir, Nurul Hasan, M C Chagla had consolidated and rooted itself by the late 1970s. But for a brief Janata Government interlude, the dominance of Marxists persisted in the institutions transforming themselves into
a hegemonic force. They reproduced their ideology,
reproducing like-minded students-protégés-acolytes and
kept getting stronger. The real challenge to this hegemony was posed under NDA-I, when Murli Manohar Joshi came at the helm. However, Organiser always re-invented itself as a site of alternative discourse and concerns in history writing and the very basis of Bharatiya Itihasa! We provide a window in the past.
Long Quest for Official History
Organiser and contributors in its pages always challenged and opposed the Congress efforts for an official history. Official, state-sponsored and selective history which
suited the Congress agenda was always scrutinised and criticised by alter-voices.
No less than a man like Vinayak Damodar Savarkar took it upon him to state that ‘government selected history books which say that it was Congress that won freedom, and that it won it through non-violent means, are false. The true story of our freedom struggle is quite different.” (Ibid. October, 20, 1960)
Professional historians like R C Majumdar joined in. While reviewing Tarachand’s History of Freedom Struggle Movement, he exposed the designs of Humayun
Kabir and argued how the government inspite of
commissioning an official history with underlying motives is turning its back on the claim. (Ibid. March 27, 1961) A report in Amrit Bazar Patrika mocked Tarachand and Humayun Kabir saying that the Minister says ‘opinion of the author is not that of the government but the author has been paid a princely sum for expressing these opinion and have been printed at public cost.’ (Ibid. April 3, 1961)
Majumdar, on the other hand questioned the very basis of ‘the scheme for writing an authentic and comprehensive history of different phases of the struggle which culminated in the freedom of India in 1947.’ (Ibid. March 27, 1961) Today, we can question the suggestion of writing an authentic history more skillfully. With historians’ bias as running themes in our intellectual culture, can someone really claim to write an authentic history?
Majumdar, in another op-ed, suggested that versions of Congress official history have started getting popularity. Unlike the popular perception prevailing then, Majumdar stated that Satyagraha alone didn’t achieve
independence by non-violent action. He made a case for ‘the INA, symbolising the collapse of the military force by which alone the British could hope to keep India under control, the weakening of British military power and
economic resources as a result of the Second World War.’ (Ibid. October 20, 1960)
Resurgence
In the late 1970s, continuous attempts were made for the reorientation of history. A columnist outrightly asked, “Are we really culturally and spiritually free?” (Ibid. June 23, 1978) This kind of question categorised the reorientation of scholarship, which was way more serious than
simply re-writing. While speaking at the meeting of ‘Indian History and Cultural Society’ at Vishwa Yuva Kendra, Aligarh, historian K A Nizami set the tone for the reorientation. Nizami viewed the problem of Marxist dominance and its singularity when he reasoned that ‘human life and activity cannot be explained merely in terms of means of production.’ He further
reasoned that, ‘the history of India, as Indians have understood it, is the study of her religion and cultural movements.’ (Ibid. February 18, 1979)
The change in the government also brought out the institutional corruption of the Marxists in the realm of Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR) et al. An expose story in Organiser showed that how ‘Ram Sharan Sharma’s junta
adopted the very clever methods to
eliminate historians not toeing their
ideological lines.’ Corruption was also taken out in the sun on various projects like translation of the texts. (Ibid. March 9, 1979) This whole issue was taken to new heights by veteran journalist Arun Shourie who used the primary sources from ICHR to produce a work called Eminent Historians: Their Techniques, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998).
The institutional cleansing could not be taken forward with Indira Gandhi’s return. However, the loud noise for a
different orientation of history didn’t stop in the pages of Organiser. Scholars like Sita Ram Goel serialised almost a book called How I Became a Hindu in 1980s while contributing articles on the lacunae in the Marxist understanding of the Bharatiyata and how it must be viewed.
Later, many prominent voices like Sita Ram Goel, B B Lal, Devendra Swarup, Subramanian Swamy, Devendra Swarup, etc. continued the fight for the
reorientation of the history writing. The struggle for different ways of doing history also reached its boiling point in the midst of Ayodhya Ram Janmabhoomi Movement with archaeologists like B B Lal putting up a fight against the Marxists in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).
Till late, historians like Devendra Swarup have continued exposing the dubious
character of Marxists. Swarup wrote about how Marxists like Rajni Palme Dutt and M N Roy viewed the First War of Independence (1857) as some kind of
feudal reaction. (Ibid. June 12, 2007) Excerpts from BB Lal’s Rama: His Historicity, Mandir and Setu, Evidence of Literature, Archaeology and other Sciences were reproduced in Organiser with
comments from Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to keep the intellectual exercise around Ram Janmabhoomi vibrant. (Ibid. December 20, 2009)
History to Itihasa—A Long Way!
A snapshot from the past suggests that to reorient the History as Bharatiya Itihasa still has a long way to go. The Left
hegemony in institutions like ICHR and Indian History, Congress still diligently advances their agenda because the
alternative voices have failed to gain a legitimate entry into the institutions.
At some point of time, however,
institutions like ‘Akhil Bharatiya Itihasa Sankalan Yojna’ have to be recognised as ‘mainstream’ History Congress and thus, the fallacy of mainstream has to be subverted. Without doubt, Organiser will keep expanding as a space for alternative and varied epistemological categories as it has been doing in the past.
(The writer is a scholar of Modern History)
