March 24, 2002

MURLI Manohar Joshi, the Minister of Human Resource Development in the BJP government, recently in one of his interviews complained that why is there so such hue and cry among some liberal historians and intellectuals especially for history textbooks and not on textbooks of other social sciences?

In his response, the simple explanation is that any distortion, either in history or in social sciences, is an intellectual crime. But history, as compared to other disciplines, is a very sensitive as well as powerful subject because its understanding helps to shatter the well established myths, reduces the images of heroes and brings them down to the level of ordinary man, and changes the notion of the past which is used by powerful groups to sanctify their rule and legitimize their privileges.

Correct study of history also provides understanding of the historical process which makes and un-makes traditions and institutions. That is why history becomes a dangerous discipline to those who want to use its distorted version for their own interest. They like to confine it in a framework of their ideology in order to justify their present political agenda by portraying the past to their liking. Whenever, history is written under the shadow of ideology, distortion, omission and misinterpretation become the practice to gratify it.

In Pakistan, we have observed such processes when historical writings are adjusted according to needs of officially propagated ideology. Since BJP’s government came to power in India, it is also attempting to implement the Hindutva ideology in changing of history textbooks.

The Hindutva ideology was developed and popularised by V.D. Savarkar (d.1966) who started his early career as a nationalist and ended as an extremist Hindu. According to him, “A Hindu means a person who regards this land of Bharatvarsha, from Indus to the seas, as his Fatherland as well as his holy land, that is the cradle land of his religion.” This definition of Hindu means that India has to be his ‘pitribhumi’ (ancestral land) and his ‘punyabhomi’ (land of his religion). This excludes Muslims as well as Christians from becoming loyal Indians as their holy lands are outside India. However, there was a problem that the Hindus were also not indigenous inhabitants as the Aryans were outsiders and came to India either as invaders or migrants. To solve this problem, it is required to change the facts of history. The Hindutva historians and ideologues claim that the Aryans invasion is a myth and that they were not foreigners but the indigenous people. On the contrary, it is argued that the Europeans and other Aryan people were migrants from India. It is also pointed out that the Dravidians were the early offshoots of the Vedic people.

David Farley, a supporter of the Hindutva ideology, rejects the arrival or the invasion of the Aryan. According to his arguments it is a myth that was created by the British in the 19th century to fulfil their political motives. On the basis of this they wanted to keep north and south India culturally divided as Aryans and Dravidians; it also justified their rule on the basis that foreigners always dominated India politically.

To adjust historical fact in the ideological frame is always problematic and can be done only after distorting them. It is interesting that how Savarkar tries to define the name of ‘Hind’. He writes that, “It is quite probable that the great Indus was known as Hind to the original inhabitants of our land and owing to the vocal peculiarities of the Aryans it got changed into Sindhu. Thus Hindu would be the name that this land and the people inhabited it before the time so immemorial that even the Vedic name Sindhu is but a later and secondary form of it.”

Historically, it is proved that the Aryans called the Indus as Sindhu which later on was named Hind by the Persians. The Arabs called the Indian subcontinent al-Sindh wa al-Hind. It is also proved by the historians that the Aryan is not a race but denotes to groups of people who spoke Indo-Aryan language and arrived to India in a series of migrations. However, to prove that the Aryans were the original inhabitants of India, the Hindutva historians claim that the Harappan civilization was Aryan and not of the Dravidian origin.

There are serious implications of the Hindutva ideology and writing of history under its influence. Regarding Muslims non-Indian, it rejects the rule of the Muslim dynasties and instead of owning, tends to look the cultural heritage of the Sultanate and the Mughals as alien and therefore, unacceptable. The historical monuments of this period became symbols of humiliation that urge them to demolish them as it happened in the case of Baburi Mosque. Or to convert them as the Hindu monument by falsifying history. As some claim that Taj Mahal was not built by Shahjahan but it was a Hindu temple. This distorted picture of the past would poison the mind of people and would threaten the religious rights and equal rights as citizens of India of Muslims and Christians.

If India becomes a Hindu state, Pakistan and India both would poise against each other on the basis of two antithetical ideologies. Subsequently, a permanent strife would prevail in South Asia. There is also a danger that both states, in order to purify their societies from foreign and alien elements, will launch a campaign against their opponents and establish dictatorial and fascist state apparatus.

With the process of history, there is such integration and acculturation that no nation could claim to be pure. Neither is it possible to exclude those that are regarded by the racist polluted parts of a nation. This experiment was made by the Nazis and failed. There is time to learn lessons from the past and deter to make similar experiments at the expense of human dignity. Falsification of history brings disastrous results to a society. It is high time for India and Pakistan to refrain from making history a victim of their ideologies.

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