In her 2005 book, Somanatha, famous Indian historian Romila Thapar wrote that history is a matter of evidence, not belief. She was responding to her critics who were mostly Hindu nationalists. Ever since the 1960s, Thapar has been battling historical scenarios and narratives constructed by the Indian right. She claims that Indian history in textbooks has been derived from ‘communal interpretations’ in which events in the last thousand years are interpreted solely in terms of ‘a notional continual conflict between monolithic Hindu and Muslim communities.’

We have seen the same happening in Pakistan as well. However, from the 1980s onward, a series of historians began to react to the official version of history accusing it of not only being made up of distorted facts, but also encouraging a myopic worldview, further tainted by religious bias and misplaced arrogance.

Historians such as Ayesha Jalal, K.K. Aziz, Dr Mubarak Ali and Rubina Saigol; and educationists/scientists such as A.H. Nayyar, Pervez Hoodbhoy and Ahmad Salim, have written extensively on the issue, warning that the many notions found in Pakistani textbooks (put there to appease the overarching ideological and political status of the state and its right-wing allies), were creating generations of young Pakistanis who will find themselves alienated in a world which does not quite work the way their textbooks tell them.

However, while in Pakistan, much of the criticism and subsequent suggestions made by the aforementioned revisionists, have (slowly and cautiously) begun to make their way into the rhetoric and policies of the state and the government, things in this respect seem to be going from bad to worse in India.

In Pakistan, the criticism and corrective input by scholars has begun to reflect in state rhetoric and policies of the government, while in India, things are going from bad to worse

Indeed, up until the early 2000s, the Pakistani revisionists faced harassment and a string of unsavoury labels from a reactive state and rightest detractors. But today, their theories and findings have begun to find a place in the ongoing discourses within a state and society now attempting to rid themselves of extremist violence and thought.

In India, militant Hindu nationalism has been on the rise for the past two decades or so. But today, it is finally managing to wield the kind of political power and social influence which it was denied in the past.

In an ironic twist, just as attempts are being made in Pakistan to roll back the concoctions and myopic strands found in the old ideological narrative of the state, Cambridge University Press published a hefty book by an Indian historian, Venkat Dhulipala, which goes to great lengths in trying to establish the accuracy of the old narrative.

Perhaps awkwardly conscious of the rise of Hindu militancy in India, Dhulipala was driven to prove that the militancy in his country was a reaction to the militant nature of the old faith-centric narrative in Pakistan?

The irony is that it is Dhulipala’s book which is now being waved and thumped triumphantly by the remnant purveyors of the old narrative in Pakistan.

I don’t know what Dhulipala thinks about the ideological narrative which the Hindu nationalists are trying to weave into Indian textbooks, but he certainly is not a revisionist. In India, revisionist historians are under attack like never before. One of Romila Thapar’s textbooks which was introduced in Indian schools in the 1960s, was recently removed from the curriculum by the current BJP government. The book was replaced by one authored by Meenakshi Jain, a political scientist who has been a vocal supporter of Hindu nationalism.

Jain has accused Thapar of trying to portray Hindu nationalism as a modern political construct squarely based on an anti-Muslim bias and which had no roots in the ancient history of the Hindus of the subcontinent.

Aroun Shourie, a former minister in the BJP government which was headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, wrote a scathing critique of historians such as Thapar in his book, Eminent Historians. He derided members of the Indian Council of Historical Research, accusing them of being Marxists. He fell just short of also labelling them anti-India.

Then there is the case of American academic and historian, James Laine, who went looking for the non-mythical aspects of the celebrated 17th century Hindu warrior Shivaji in his 2004 book Hindu King in Islamic India.

After the book was published, a group of thugs belonging to the far-right party, the Shiv Sena, stormed the library where Laine had done his research, and broke down its windows and doors and set fire to a number of books.

One of Laine’s Indian collaborators was thrashed and his face blackened. After this, people acknowledged by Laine in his book were given police guards. But the BJP government also decided to ban the book in India.

Perhaps the most notorious is the case of renowned Indian historian, Professor D.N. Jha. In 2002, he completed his eighth book, the Myth of the Holy Cow. In it he drew from various ancient historical and Hindu theological sources to establish that the cow was not always sacred in Hinduism and that ancient Hindus regularly ate beef.

To Jha the issue of cow worship and beef in India today is more political and ideological in nature than theological.

After word got out about the contents of the book, its appointed publishing house was threatened (by militant Hindu groups) and asked not to publish it. The publisher withdrew and Jha had to look for another publisher. The book was finally published but almost immediately, Jha began receiving death threats. Hindu nationalist groups demanded that Jha be arrested for heresy.

As the threats grew louder and bolder, Jha secretly left India. Even though he returned, he was unceremoniously removed from the Nalanda Mentors Group associated with the Nalanda University in Bihar.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, August 14th, 2016