We are living in a present which is tense for many reasons. Identities are sought to be forged on the basis of particularly manufactured images of the past, in which aviation technology and plastic surgery and nuclear weapons go about almost in an existential abandon. Professional historians, who have devoted their lifetime to understanding and explaining the past by uncompromisingly analysing evidence in transparent ways sanctioned by the methodology of the discipline, are told that they are just repeating what colonial masters in their own Protestant Christian interest had said long ago. They had better close their shop and go home! Ramayana and Mahabharata have said it all (pray, which of their versions are we to read?) In these threatening times, the importance of this collection of essays, written over the past several decades by the doyen of historical writing in the country, cannot be exaggerated. These essays not only warn us against the dangers of an imperfect understanding of the past but also offer the necessary corrective in the form of a plea for a reliable understanding of history, empirically controlled and methodologically tested. Though not in the puerile sense in which Lord Acton piously hoped more than a century ago, a perfect knowledge of the past still seems possible. The author and the publisher have kept us under a debt of obligation for making these available in one place.
This collection is arranged in four significant sections: ‘History and the Public’, ‘Concerning Religion and History’, ‘Debates’ and ‘Our Women—Then and Now’. These captions speak loudly and clearly about the relevance of the collection for the present—each of them is of utmost importance. These essays, written by a top professional, are nonetheless addressed to the non-professional. Writing for peers in professional journals—and Thapar has demonstrated her mastery at it—is one thing; but the kind of writing that we come across here, addressing the non-expert with lucidity but without compromising on the rigour and sophistication of what is being said, requires that there is the necessary tapasya with which the author has internalized the subject. These essays had shaken up their audience when they were first published in periodicals or given as public speeches; but their relevance has only increased in the times in which we live. Each section is introduced de novo, placing the essays included in it in perspective so that their relevance and significance are brought home with utmost clarity.
The six essays included in the first section, namely, those related to historical writing in relation to the public, raise significant issues that are relevant at all times. It not only takes stock of the work that has been done in the field but also charts the areas to be inquired, particularly those through which a fuller understanding of the past can be attained. The next essay, on the role of historical writing in nation building, is full of warnings for us: ‘A nation cannot be built on a single identity nor is it feasible to collate diverse identities of religion, caste, language and so on, and hope for something to emerge. A nation as a state is a new experience and therefore requires a new identity. Ideally, this would be the identity of the Indian citizen constructed on the assumption that all citizens are equal before the law with the same rights and obligations. The theoretical basis for this exists in our Constitution, but has to be put into effect.’
Taking off from this, the next essay is titled ‘Of Histories and Identities’. Some of the identities constructed at different points of time for different purposes are questioned. Identities are not accidental and the intentions behind their creation are not innocent. ‘A nation needs identities that are broad, inclusive and that support its essential requirements of democracy, secularity, equality, rights to the institutions of welfare and to social justice. If we continue to make identities of colonial origin a part of our thinking they will continue to be the quicksand that prevents us from even aspiring to, leave alone, reaching, the utopias we had once visualized.’
The piece that follows, ‘In Defence of History’, is arguably the most important one in this section, at least for the present writer as it is also closely related to his autobiography. It must be likewise part of the autobiography of any professional historian. Based on a lecture given in Thiruvananthapuram in 2002 in the specific context when historians there were under attack and the Kerala Council of Historical Research was abolished, but also in the broader conjuncture when the Government in the Centre were trying to silence historians, this is all the more relevant today. The historians who were verbally assaulted in the most vulgar language and physically threatened were the ones who had brought about a turn in historiography in the country in the decades that preceded. Their studies, which had widened the scope and sharpened the focus of the discipline, enriched the understanding of India’s past in many ways. Unsettled by this, which questioned the naïve generalizations of the colonial pundits on which comfortable images of the past were constructed and used for furthering the politics of hate, those in, and aspiring to get into, the corridors of power felt threatened and started threatening not only the discipline of history and its practitioners but also the very fabric of society. The attempt is to force a particular image of the past as the ‘correct’ one and to close down any discussion of it. This closing of the mind does not concern history alone. It is a frontal attack on knowledge, on independent thinking, and that is why it is important that we oppose it.
Thapar’s memoir concerning writing history textbooks, presented as the next essay, is not just a leaf from her autobiography. It is a strong argument against a chameleon-like education system, where what is taught in schools change according to the political party in power. A well-grounded history has much to contribute in offering corrections to the comfortable berths that myths find, corrections that are exploratory and provisional rather than mandatory and final. The agenda for a possible history from below, taken up in the next chapter, has added relevance in this context.
The section ‘Concerning Religion and History’ has essays written in the context of the claims to identity on the basis of particular versions of certain religions. History, Thapar says quoting Eric Hobsbawm approvingly, is to nationalism what poppy-growers are to heroin addicts! These essays expose how, while to claim that one is a ‘Hindu nationalist’ seventy years ago was considered as against Indian nationalism, the same claim today is taken as affirmation of one’s being an Indian nationalist. The line between such a nationalism and communalism is thin. It is not quite religiousness which is behind this: it is religiosity. The latter, which is mere ostentation and has less to do with religion and spirituality per se than with a vulgar show of power and pelf, binds the gullible with superstitions and ensnares them with false promises of god-men, thriving on media attention and fat donations from those who profit from them. This mutilates religion and negates the real religion in the same way as what the Taliban and the mullahs have done to Islam, the supporters of Khalistan have done to Sikhism, the Goa Inquisition has done to Christianity and the Sangh Parivar is doing to Hinduism. The secular critique of communalism is not, therefore, a negation of religion; it critiques the abuse of religion for secular purposes. The euphemism of calling themselves ‘cultural nationalisms’, resorted to by these communalisms, cannot fool people for all times. It is broadly these messages that this section gives, taking various instances.
Thapar offers a historical perspective of communalism in the first essay in this section. She demonstrates that communalism is a modern phenomenon, in nurturing which a particular version of history has had a major role to play. In the next chapter on religion and the secularization of society, she points out the forces that stand in the way of secularization and why they should do so. She shows how a particular construction of Hinduism, what she calls ‘Syndicated Hinduism’, came into being under particular interests. She makes it clear that Hinduism and Hindutva are different, a distinction that is extremely important. The ordinary Hindu, unfortunately, seems to be overtaken by the Hindutvavadins.
As history is at the base of much of these constructions, the next section which reproduces some of Thapar’s interventions in debates is most crucial. What we have are discussions of the question of a few problems that are central to the understanding of early Indian history. Among them is the Aryan problem, which has been particularly sensitive in the eyes of the Hindutva version of Indian history. Thapar shows that an ‘Aryan race’ is a matter of colonial construction from the days when archaeology was in its initial stages and anthropology and linguistics had not even been born. To insist that the Aryans had an indigenous origin is not only to fall into the colonial trap but also to negate much of the evidence that has since accumulated. The essay on dating the epics deals with the Mahabharata and the Ramayana and exposes the attempt to force a particular version of each of these as the epic. Variations are wished away, or discussions of these are silenced, as the shameful events in the University of Delhi in recent years showed ominously. The next two essays are detailed studies of the Mahabharata and Ramayana respectively. They trace the growth of the epic tradition and demonstrate that they are not seamless texts as we are told in recent years. The essay, ‘In Defence of the Variant’, is an elaboration of the point, written against the background of the attack of a Ramayana exhibition organized by SAHMAT, which has a particular relevance in the context of the withdrawal by the University of Delhi of A.K.Ramanujan’s essay, ‘Three Hundred Ramayanas’ from the readings of the undergraduate programme following pressures from Right Wing Hindutva forces.
The essay on ‘Historical Memory Without History’ is a strong plea against fusing faith and history. Each is an autonomous realm and there should be ideally no conflict, if it is recognized that the two are irreconcilable. But, in pulling down a mosque on the plea that it was built on the site of the birthplace of Rama or in trying to assert that what is presented as the ‘Ramasetu’ is a cultural heritage and that it cannot be destroyed even if it is a geological formation, what is done is to mix things that do not gel. It is more likely that the idea of a structure there is a heritage, and to search for a manmade (or monkey-made!) structure there is to mock at the imaginative leap of the fantasy. It would be more appropriate to recognize the undersea formations of the Palk Straits as part of our natural heritage and protect the relevant areas for the ecology and environment of the region. But the reality here is that in setting up a confrontation between faith and knowledge, the purpose is to gain mileage in political mobilization and to divert attention from the more essential concerns confronting us.
The accounts of Mahmud of Ghazni raiding the temple of Somanatha have been used by Hindutva politics consistently to stoke the fire of hatred after a particular version of it was circulated by politicians masquerading as historians like K.M. Munshi. Thapar shows how there are many narratives, in their varying versions, from the contemporary to later periods. Interestingly, the first mention of a ‘Hindu trauma’ following Mahumud’s raid of Somanatha is in the debate in the British Parliament following the 1843 proclamation of Lord Ellenborough, then Governor-General of India, ordering the Commander of the British Army in Afghanistan to bring back to India the sandalwood gates from the tomb of Mahmud of Ghazni, stated to have been looted from Somanatha. Apart from exposing the basis of the propaganda behind the politics of hate, this piece is also important methodologically, as it reminds the historian of the multiple voices of the narratives about the same event.
The next section is on ‘Our Women—Then and Now’. The essays included in it show how even more crucial than religion and caste are aspects less central to the social ethic of India than the treatment she meted out to her women. Control of the sexuality of women is crucial in sustaining caste and patriarchy. ‘Honour’ becomes a euphemism for such control, and frequently takes the form of extreme violence against women. From Bhagavad Gita which equates women with those of low castes as sinfully born and the khap panchayats doing the rest, patriarchy has employed every means to ensure this control. There are three essays in this section: the first presenting a broad overview of women in the Indian past, the second on the question of sati and the third on the increasing instances of rapes. Rather than waxing eloquent that our civilization worshipped women (yatra nåryastu pøjyante…), these essays should open our eyes towards the reality.
Together, they help us to understand a supreme function of history. The past is there not only to inspire us with its shining examples. It is also there to instruct us with its failures and shortcomings. Celebration and/or denigration, which are essentially two sides of the same coin, do not help us too much. What is really necessary is to understand the past and explain it. Correcting past mistakes does not mean repeating them in the reverse direction (such as pulling down a mosque today with a view to ‘correcting’ the mistake of pulling down a temple in the past); it involves not repeating them. It is taking such lessons from history that a nation with claims to civilized status can progress. The essays included in this collection tell us this, jointly and severally.
Kesavan Veluthat is Professor in the Department of History, Delhi University, Delhi.