‘It May End With The Closing Of The Indian Mind’

Professor Romila Thapar , member of the Prasar Bharati board till last week when she was "retired" by the Vajpayee government, is counted among India’s most outstanding historians and is an internationally-acclaimed social scientist. Her work on ancient Indian history and the origins of Indian civilisation has been read by generations of school and college students. She has also taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Jawarharlal Nehru University, apart from Delhi University and other leading universities the world over.

When were you informed about your "retirement" from the Prasar Bharati board?
The letter arrived last night. Just the bare bones-that under section so-and-so of the act, two people have to be retired at the end of every two years and the schedule is as follows: ‘99, Rajendra Yadav and myself; 2001, Abid Hussain and U.R. Rao and 2003, George Verghese. I thought to myself, how crude can they be? Even normal courtesy demands that you at least say thank you... But nothing of the sort. And this about 72 hours after you first leak it to the media.

But it surely wasn’t unexpected?
It certainly wasn’t. When the BJP first came to power, everybody said your days are numbered (laughs). I’m surprised we lasted this long.

The method in which the two of you were asked to leave and the apparent lack of courtesy was one aspect of the controversy. But do you also see this decision as motivated?
Oh, absolutely. It’s very clear from the simple reason that the explanation given as to why these two names were selected keeps varying from day to day. First the minister-I should say ministry-said it was looking for professionals and therefore didn’t want ‘other kind’ of people-academics, litterateurs, whatever. One pointed out that the Prasar Bharati Bill itself talked about the importance of having programmes on education, healthcare and various other aspects of life in India.
Therefore, obviously, you need people other than just media professionals. You need those familiar with other aspects as well. Now they contradict themselves saying that actually what they want is a board which is very broadbased! Clearly, they are changing their position daily and one is waiting to see where it all ends up. Also, the question which needs to be asked is whether the government wants to change the basic charter of the Prasar Bharati. Or just get rid of those perceived and labelled as liberals.

So all this talk of autonomy is actually...
The codeword for government control. You see, some of us were genuinely interested in the question of autonomy. Take me personally. Why did I get into this? It was after long conversations with Romesh (Thapar) who first filed the case asking for autonomy for the state-run media and then, after he died, some of us continued with this commitment. Born out of a concern that there be in this country a public broadcast system. Now that’s something these people (the government) don’t understand. I should imagine any administration would be unhappy to see this happen because then the question of accountability is not to 22 MPs. That is no accountability; it’s simply a body of MPs sitting on your head.
And it’s a very reductionist logic to use vis-a-vis defining accountability. Accountability is not even to Parliament; it is to the people, if you are a public broadcaster. And those on the board are representing the people. As for the legality (of the government action), they keep on saying under clause so-and-so endlessly and they’ve checked with the attorney general which obviously indicates they were worried about the legal position. Jaipal Reddy (who has since asserted that the government action is "outrageously improper and clearly illegal") rang me up to say this was totally illegal and that the government was playing games. Various lawyers have called to say that they would happy to support me if I decided to go in for litigation.

Are you?
No, because I don’t think litigation-individual litigation-helps. And I certainly don’t want to be back on the board! Some are suggesting the filing of a pil, but let’s see. The real stumbling block with the Prasar Bharati is funding. There is an assumption in government that if they are funding, then they call the shots and this is true of all autonomous institutions. Look at what happened during the elections. You had people from the ministry coming along, picking up tapes, fiddling around with programmes and generally being on the premises, even if in a casual manner. It got to the point where the board passed a resolution saying that political interference would not be tolerated, which certainly wouldn’t have pleased the government. It was made very clear to us that certain people were regarded as biased and that they shouldn’t be invited on the various panels. We had to take a stand against the government trying to lay down who was suitable.

Members of this government are known to hold the view that liberals and Marxists-all those "anti-BJP"-are up in arms because the party is in power...
It is the particular mindset of the current dispensation which sees any dissent as "anti-us"-hence the labelling-and thus not valid. To start off by saying we will restrict ourselves to only those who think like us is in a sense nullifying the very function of government. This is an issue which is perhaps not fully understood; that governance is not just putting a party into power, it is in fact trying to explore the best way of governance.
So I think it is in the nature of governance that there should be greater openness to ideological positions. Whatever one may say of previous governments, there was this relative openness-apart from the Emergency period. Not completely; there were periods when, for example, the RSS was banned but by and large there was a much larger range of opinion being accommodated, heard and brought into discussion. Whether it was the Congress, the Janata Party or the coalitions of the past decade. But now, with the BJP in power, the trend seems to be to try and push everybody aside except for the hardcore, those who are committed to the Sangh parivar ideology. Look at what’s happening to the educational institutions, school textbooks, ICHR, ICSSR, NCERT...

A systemised "cleansing" of the stables?
Well, it’s beginning to happen. School teachers I’ve been in touch with, those teaching history, are very concerned about what to teach the children. Because if they teach from the textbooks we have written, the kids will be penalised in the exams. This is not to suggest that textbooks should not be changed; I’m in favour of a review of all textbooks every few years because new data and interpretations keep coming in fast. Provided they are updated for this purpose. Not in order to bring in an ideological position. I think a part of the problem, actually, is a historical one.
After independence, there were two broad interpretations of history-the colonial and the nationalist-which all of us of my generation were brought up on. What happened in the ‘60s was there was a paradigm shift. In that history all over the world came to be treated not as information laid out in a chronological order but an exploration and analysis of society and the past, all of which was deeply influenced by a range of ideologies.
A lot of these interacted and it was a rich intellectual period. In India, we started looking at our data rather differently from the way the nationalists were doing. So at that time you had groups of social scientists developing who would treat the data differently from the traditional nationalist, religious-nationalist perspective. For example, in the older perspective, you read a text and took it literally-it said so in the Arthashastra and so the student learns it. We started this business of who says so, why do they say so, what is the function and purpose? You start treating the text as something that has to be analysed.
That’s a very basic difference (from) this approach they (the Sangh parivar) are trying to push, one in which they first select the texts very carefully, what the texts say is more or less taken as a statement of fact you don’t question. Tied into all this is their whole self-consciousness as a result of not having been exposed to the intellectual range of the 20th century. I’m not being intellectually arrogant but intellectual sophistication is something that never entered this stream of thinking. Consequently, there is this fallback position-this is what the texts say and that’s enough!
There is, therefore, a tendency for them to use a lot of the views of the Orientalists and the colonial historians. The discussion, for example, of the origins of Indian civilisation are straight out of Orientalist writing, and the discussion of the Hindu-Muslim interaction in the medieval period is straight out of colonial writing. It’s as if for them, historical writing stood still in the year 1905 and didn’t move on from there.

The other aspect of this attempt to control education is to tutor the child of tomorrow. To provide a validation of the two-nation theory now that ‘Muslims rule in Pakistan and Hindus in India’. This is the only perspective sought to be created for the future child. So they will ensure that even if they are out of power after five years, the mindset of the next generation is changed and any other perspective lost on them.

How would you define this approach?
I think there is a kind of closing in. I go back to the period of nationalism-the old-fashioned, anti-colonial nationalism which was inclusive. Though there were priorities and hierarchies, the attempt was to accommodate. But when you start getting nationalism based on religion it is, ipso facto, exclusive. And it being quite narrowly defined. In a sense, what is a bit disturbing is that it seems to be a sort of package deal. That the three ministries that are crucial to furthering the policies and worldview of the Sangh parivar are the ones moving ahead and making major changes: home, HRD and information and broadcasting.

The home ministry doesn’t seem too concerned about what’s happening to Christians-the noises are being made but beyond that, nothing. So the whole attitude towards minorities is given a particular direction. The HRD ministry has brought its own brand of focus to bear on education and institutions and now you have the i&b ministry going the same way. I see no chance of change in a group so committed, in such a rooted fashion. And what’s disturbing a lot of people is that these are the ministries which are crucial to any plans for social engineering. Perhaps I should say some people, because unfortunately not enough are concerned.

So, where’s it all heading? There hasn’t really been all that much of a reaction from the younger generation. One can only hope that the limitations of this kind of approach will be understood and there will be a reaction. Not demanding that there should be a return to the kind of history we, of my generation, have been writing-for goodness’ sake, we have to move on in historical analysis-but a demand that we open up the writing of history to a variety of analyses.

As you say, it’s not happening. Isn’t one of the reasons that there is a process of appropriation at work? Something all governments and ideologies engage in and is in a sense perfectly valid? And the more people are willing to be appropriated the more chances of any confrontation gets limited...
It not only limits but closes the options for many if this appropriation happens in a concerted way. This is the worry, that at the end of the day you may well have the closing of the Indian mind. Which at the moment may seem exaggerated but then this is the way it begins. So, what you have at the moment is small groups of people getting together and holding discussions. But by and large there is increasingly a feeling that they don’t want to express themselves in the media because who wants to get into a situation of confrontation with the government? And this feeling will increase.

Which reminds me, I haven’t heard of any of your colleagues on the board planning to resign in solidarity...
I haven’t either. I suppose it happens everywhere. It’s a case of...well... I mean, all of us who are members of the middle class are always, sort of, on the make (laughs). It’s a case of if government policy changes, we go along with it because we will get bigger and better jobs if we do. It’s taking a decision, really, to come to terms with the change. So what will happen is that a majority will, for good or bad reasons, come to terms with the changes and the few who will be resisting it will be constantly pointed at and described as anti-national and a demonology of sorts be built around them. For example, if today you speak analytically about nuclear policy, the average person turns around and says you are anti-national. And the government is promoting this attitude. So you are really reducing thinking to black and white.

But even if there is the kind of resistance you are talking about, the fact is if the larger mass of people-whatever the method used to mobilise them-are not in consonance with this view, you paint yourself into a corner because the government can justifiably claim that public opinion is with it.
Yes, and that’s been our fault as an independent nation. For not having paid enough attention to education-especially primary education-on a mass scale. The only way I believe this exclusivist mindset can now, in a post-Mandal India, be countered is, at least initially, raising the consciousness of Dalits, obcs and lower caste groups. To take on the Sangh parivar’s mobilisation of the middle class (which is now spreading to other segments as well) on the basis of the Hindu religion. In fact, the attempt by the current dispensation to control education is to make sure that by the time primary education really opens up and nearly all of India is going to school, it will not be for a rational, secular education. It will be for a reiteration of a conservative attitude-the ‘great inheritance’ of India is going to be spiritualism, the Vedas, Manu and the like, sugar-coated to make it palatable. We have thought that the control over education has been to build a middle class or Indian identity but it’s more subtle than that. It is definitely to try and act as a lever of control over those who haven’t had the opportunity to think this thing through yet.