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ROMILA Thapar delivered yet another magisterial lecture on history last week. Titled ‘Our history. Their history. Whose history?’, the 91-year-old professor wove the theme around a quote from Eric Hobsbawn whose work has spawned generations of fine scholars and public intellectuals worldwide.
Writing about the abuse of history, in the 1990s in particular, by movements that produced nationalist myths and legends, Hobsbawn cautioned against the threat in the influential volume The Invention of Tradition, which also had essays among others by Hugh Trevor-Roper and Bernard Cohn. “History is the raw material for nationalist or ethnic or fundamentalist ideologies, as poppies are the raw material for heroin addiction. The past is an essential element, perhaps the essential element, in these ideologies. If there is no suitable past, it can always be invented.”
Indeed, as Thapar addressed the gathering at Delhi’s India International Centre, Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS chief, was holding forth in an interview published at roughly the same time, presenting the mythical golden age of India’s past as historical fact. Given the times we are in, it was Bhagwat who got the headlines. Thapar’s lecture to a familiar audience was like the warm towel a pugilist gets to freshen up before the next bout in the ring.
Let’s touch base with both, the ever-questioning craft of a professional historian, and the myth-making populism of a right-wing nationalist who claims insights into the past, present and future of a turbulent nation. In broad strokes, the points Thapar made flowed from her study and teaching of history couched as they were in reason and verifiable facts. Bhagwat spoke predictably of a grand past whose grandeur Muslim rulers in the main had interrupted.
Thapar’s lecture to a familiar audience was like the warm towel a pugilist gets to freshen up before the next bout in the ring.
Thapar mentioned the Hindu nation-Muslim nation binary injected by colonial historiography, in particular by James Mill who never visited India. It led to her other point. Hindu nationalists extolled the valour of Maharana Pratap in the battle of Haldighati against Mughal emperor Akbar’s forces. A closer scrutiny would reveal that the battle for Akbar was led by his Hindu chieftain Mansingh, whereas Pratap’s forces were shored up by Hakim Khan Sur who led his Afghan troops in the battle against the Mughals.
Another point: were Mansingh and Rana Pratap not representing rival Rajput clans? It stands to reason that Thapar, without necessarily saying so, was pointing to a less discussed historical fact — the old animus between the Turko-Afghan sultans of Delhi and Mongol-Chaghtai forces from Central Asia that were repelled periodically before Babar succeeded in getting the better of the Pakhtun Ibrahim Lodhi in 1526.
Pratap’s Pathan general was a forebear of Sher Shah Suri, the Pathan who deposed the second Mughal emperor Humayun to briefly rule Delhi. Muslim rivalries seen at Panipat and Haldighati seem to be playing out even today between Afghanistan’s Tajik-Uzbek forces and the Pakhtun Taliban.
Prof Thapar’s point had an echo in the late Kaifi Azmi’s acerbic poem titled Pir-i-tasma-pa. “Rana Hindu tha, Akbar Musalman tha/ … Ye aur aisi bahot si jehalat ki baatein/ Mere kaandhe per hoti hain/ Kandhe jhukey ja rahey hain/ Qad mera raat din ghat raha hai/ Sar kahin paaon se mil na jaae.” (Rana was a Hindu, Akbar a Muslim. Such ignorance can crack the spine of the most erudite among us.)
As Hobsbawn had foreseen, Hindu nationalists believe the oldest democracy existed in ancient India. Thapar mentioned the French revolutionaries, who saw their reflection in Greek democracy. The Greek democracy was anything but though, excluding from its purview slaves and aliens vital to the state’s sinews, not different from the idea of democracy based on hidebound hierarchy.
Ponder Prof Hobsbawm’s poppy at work. The RSS chief said several things in the interview that could be disturbing for India’s rocky democracy. Consider two assertions. Bhagwat, according to the Indian Express, said Muslims have nothing to fear in India but they must abandon their claim of supremacy. Far from claiming any supremacy, however, the Sachar Committee report revealed the social squalor that Muslims lived in today.
“The simple truth is this — Hindustan should remain Hindustan. There is no harm to Muslims living today in Bharat. If they wish to stick to their faith, they can. If they want to return to the faith of their ancestors, they may. It is entirely their choice. There is no such stubbornness among Hindus. Islam has nothing to fear. But at the same time, Muslims must abandon their boisterous rhetoric of supremacy,” he is quoted as saying. “We are of an exalted race; we once ruled over this land, and shall rule it again; only our path is right, rest everyone is wrong; we are different, therefore we will continue to be so; we cannot live together — they (Muslims) must abandon this narrative.”
How does anyone have a reasoned conversation with this mindset? The poor Ehsan Jafri, a poet, a former member of the communist party and a former Lok Sabha MP for the Congress, wrote moving patriotic poems he published in a collection titled Qandeel (lamp). Majrooh Sultanpuri wrote a preface to the book. What was one such poem about? “My country is the land of Meera. My country is the land of Nanak. My country is the land of the Buddha.” Not only did the mob cut him to pieces, senior BJP leaders were boasting in their election campaign the other day that the troublemakers of Gujarat were taught a good lesson, and because of that there is peace and prosperity in Gujarat ever since.
Bhagwat spoke of a thousand-year war the Hindus were fighting, which made them a force to contend with. Was the release of the convicted killers of Bilkis Bano’s family and her rapists an aspect of this historic conflict with boisterous Muslims? How much blood would be shed before the advent of the new golden era for India, possibly in 2024?
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
Published in Dawn, January 17th, 2023
