The Future Of The Indian Past

The full text of  the Seventh D. T. Lakdawala Memorial Lecture delivered at FICCI Auditorium, NewDelhi on 21 February 2004, organised by the Institute of Social Sciences.

I would like to express my gratitude to the Institute of Social Sciences and itsdirector, Dr George Mathew, for doing me the honour of inviting me to deliver the Seventh D.T. LakdawalaMemorial Lecture. Given the eminence of my predecessors, this is a more than ordinary privilege for me. Theperson we are remembering today was an economist with a deep concern for social and economic justice in Indiansociety. For him, as for many others, the protection of the values that accompanied this concern wasessential. These values, necessary to the present, were for him equally crucial to the projection of thefuture. The link between the present and the future was therefore, intrinsic.

In a seemingly contradictory way, looking into the future requires an understanding of the past. Such anunderstanding can illumine the present and enable one to think more meaningfully about the future. History asa commentary on the past becomes essential to this process. How the past is to be understood is one among themany alternatives for the future that Indian society is facing in present times. I shall be speaking about thechoices before us that will determine the future of the Indian past. Such choices are dependent on ourunderstanding of the past, but among other things, are also tied to the shape that we wish to give to thefuture society. What is sometimes referred to as the controversy over history, and on which I am speaking thisevening, is an indicator of this connection.

The tradition of liberal, independent historical writing in India is now under attack from an officialinterpretation of Indian history. Many historians are currently opposing the attempt to use history in supportof an ideology of religious nationalism. The opposition was sparked a couple of years ago by the governmentcondemnation of existing school textbooks in History published by the NCERT. These textbooks were discreditedso as to justify their being replaced in 2003 by a history that would endorse the current political ideology.Historians have been troubled not just by the content of the new textbooks but also by the manner in whichthese changes have been made.

The school curriculum was changed by government fiat, without consulting the educational bodies that hadearlier routinely been consulted, such as, the Central Advisory Board of Education. Such a consultation wouldhave prevented the implementation of what many now regard as a sub-standard curriculum for schools, quiteapart from the rather drastic re-orientation of history.

Middle School students are to be taught the following subjects: a package entitled "Social Studies"consisting of potted versions of history, economics, civics and geography; Vedic Mathematics; Simple Sanskrit;and Yoga and Consciousness. On the completion of Middle School they will be tested to ascertain whether theygo into the academic stream or the vocational stream and the tests will draw on the Intelligence Quotient,Emotional Quotient and Spirituality Quotient - whatever these may be.

An immediate action was the arbitrary deletion of passages from the existing history textbooks. Thegovernment claimed that various religious organizations had demanded these deletions. Their objections werenot discussed by any committee or organization of professional historians prior to the passages being deleted.Discussion in school of the deleted passages was also prohibited. These passages included seminal questions,among them the origin and evolution of caste society in India. In a society where caste remains hegemonic, itis ironic not to allow a discussion on how social hierarchies came about. Other deletions referred to theeating of beef in early India, to the difficulty of dating the Mahabharata and the Ramayanabecause of later additions to the texts, to the mention of a brahmanical reaction contributing to the declineof the Mauryan empire, and so on. The rationale for these deletions remains unclear. It would seem that thesewere random objections made by anyone who chose to and were used to discredit the books. A year later thesetextbooks were replaced by hastily put together new ones, some of which were pedagogically incompetent, apartfrom their slanted history.

One is not arguing against the periodic revising of textbooks but rather, one is insisting upon suchrevisions observing accepted pedagogic procedures such as were observed in earlier years; and also urging thattextbooks should provide updated, refereed, knowledge, and in a manner that encourages students to thinkcritically and independently. In other words, to perform the role expected of textbooks. At the best of times,textbooks raise pedagogical problems as they did even in the last fifty years. But one had hoped thateducational policies would keep addressing these problems and improving on the process of educating students.Unfortunately what is happening now is a series of retrograde steps in terms of structure and content.

One possible amendment to this would lie in the availability of a range of professionally vetted textbooks.Together with this, examining boards concerned with school education, in prescribing such books, should bemade responsible to regularized procedures of discussion among schoolteachers and historians. There isfurthermore, an urgent need for transparency in and information on, what is being taught in schools run byorganizations that describe themselves as religious and cultural, be they the Shishu Mandirs of the RSS, theMadrassas, the schools run by Gurdwara Committees or Church mission schools. As for state schools there is anadditional fear that a sub-standard curriculum will intensify the current bifurcation in education: wherequality education is available in private schools for those that can afford such schooling, and a nearworthless education for those that cannot. We have been far too casual about what is taught in school and arereaping the consequences of adopting a system that is politically malleable.

Textbooks are not just learning manuals. They are also the media through whichsocieties transmit the definition as well as the rights and obligations of citizenship, and these in turn helpformulate identities. Future citizens have to learn to assess the institutions that constitute their state andsociety, an assessment linked to encouraging a critical enquiry in the young mind. Far from making it aninvestment, education is being reduced to a rather meaningless game of scoring marks. When to this is added adoubtful content in what is taught, the system of education begins to annul education.

Not satisfied with changing school textbooks, the government has also claimed the mandate to propose auniform history syllabus for colleges and universities throughout the country. This has been done through thefunding body, the University Grants Commission. There is a hint that non-compliance may affect funding. Theproposed syllabus is seriously deficient as it ignores developments in methodology and historiography of thepast half-century. Some universities are currently teaching far more advanced history courses.

There is now a greater interference in the autonomy of universities, with attempts to centralize admissionprocedures, exams, syllabi and funding, not with the intention of raising standards but to exercise maximumgovernmental control. The state will of course demand the right to intervene in state-funded institutions, butthe intervening should not violate the professional autonomy of the institution. Legitimizing obscurantismthrough introducing Departments of Astrology cannot be a unilateral decision. It has to be seen in the contextof whether the same funding could be used more effectively in other areas, as for instance, in developinglibraries for students. It is claimed by the University Grants Commission that introducing Departments ofAstrology at University level will prove that astrology is India’s contribution to world science and that itcan solve the problems of the world. That many Indian scientists have described it as a leap backwards did notdeter the UGC.

Dismantling the autonomy of universities is being permitted by academics, who either out of apathy, or awish to conform to government directives, do not protest against the changes. One remembers the words ofMiguel de Unamuno, rector of the University of Salamanca in 1936, that at times silence is a lie for it can beinterpreted as acquiescence. The latest attempt of the Government has however, met with some resistance.Various university teachers’ associations have rejected the UGC’s proposed Model Act for Universities ofthe Twenty-first Century in India. It is seen as an attempt to introduce control by the government andcorporate houses and to eliminate democratic procedures, not to mention the responsibilities of the state forfunding higher education.

Attempts are also being made to dismantle specialized institutions of technology (IIT) and management (IIM)by changing the fee structure and the syllabus. Since this impinges in a more observable way on the futureprospects of the middle-class, a small protest is beginning to be heard. But now that the court has validatedthe Government’s objective, the protest may become ineffectual. The objective is that the degree ofself-financing of these institutions - which is considerable - is to be drastically reduced so that theybecome dependent on heavy Government subsidies. There is little logic in this. The funds for these subsidieswould be better spent by the Government on financing primary and secondary education and on providing fullscholarships for impoverished students to be trained in the IITs and IIMs. Nor is the element of greedaltogether absent in these objectives. The wealthy alumni of the IIMs and IITs send funds for the institutionswhere they were trained as a gesture of appreciation. It has been proposed that such funds should now bechanneled through the central Bharat Shiksha Kosh, so that the funds can be used anywhere and not necessarilyon the institutions for which they were intended.

At the level of research there has been the virtual banning of two major publications putting togetherdocuments taken from the National Archives pertinent to the two decades prior to Indian independence. From1970 to 1983, documents from the Archives in Britain referring to these events were published under the titleof The Transfer of Power. Indian historians decided to publish documents from the National Archives inIndia on the same period in a multi-volume project. Some volumes had already been published but another twosets of volumes had just reached the press when the present government decided to prohibit their publication,with no reasonable explanation for this action. The government, it would seem, can ban the publication ofdocuments from the National Archives, even when they are not time-barred.

An atmosphere has been created in which any group can object to a book, and threats can lead to the banningor the withdrawal of such books. Organizations claiming the right to arbitrarily decide what is intellectuallyand culturally permissible now resort to physical attacks on persons and books. The recent incident when themajor Sanskrit library, the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute was ravaged by such an organization, hasreceived little condemnation by the self-appointed protectors of Sanskrit and the Vedic tradition. Books arebanned because they question the political agendas of certain groups, and the banning becomes a demonstrationof power. The other side of this is that these books continue to be published outside India. If the banning ofbooks becomes a habit in India there will be different histories read inside and outside India. The differencewill not be because of academic views but because of the dictate of politics and the suppression of freeexpression.

We may well ask why there should be a fear of independent historical writing. The reasons behind the fearneed investigation. Reducing history to the lowest and most doubtful common denominator means that this is notonly an attempt to wreck the discipline, but has wider social implications. Since the earlier textbooks aredismissed because they are said to be not only Marxist in their orientation but also anti-national, anunderstanding of this allegation has to begin by briefly reviewing the history of nationalisms in India.

Nationalisms sometimes require a demarcation between the Self and the Other through constructing narrativesthat define each. These are not permanent categories but are projected as such. The reformulation of culturalidioms creates a contest over who does the reformulating and with what intention. Defining the Self and theOther is a complex process and inevitably varies in time and in the requirements of the particularnationalism. It is also worth investigating the point at which the Other becomes the Enemy.

Colonial societies, emerging from colonial experience and its policies, have known more than a singlenationalism. In India there were two recognizable forms, generally distinct but occasionally over-lapping. Onewas inclusive nationalism dating from the late nineteenth century. This kneaded together the segments ofIndian society and opposed colonial power. For this anti-colonial nationalism, the Other - the one to becontested - was the colonial power. The focus was on the sovereignty of an Indian identity, based ondemocratic and secular institutions.

Nationalism attempts to knead together the segments of society that were characteristic of earlier times.This gives primacy to particular features. Anti-colonial nationalism also focused on what shape the futuresociety should take after independence. Implicit in this was a liberal, secular, democratic society, althoughwhat this entailed in terms of re-orienting society was not worked out in any detail. But there were otherkinds of nationalism that made religion the keystone. There was an assertion that there should be a return to‘traditional culture’. But this in effect did not and cannot happen. The encounter with Orientalism,produced a new interpretation of Indian history, religion and culture, reflecting in part the perspective ofOrientalism and in part a reaction against some of these perspectives. The Indians that dominated intellectuallife in the nineteenth century were responding to both a colonial discourse about India and a nationalistconstruction of what was viewed as a traditional discourse. The colonial discourse gave primacy to history asa component of that reformulation.

In the early twentieth century two new nationalisms acquired visibility. The earlier nationalism wascontesting aspects of current imperial views of history, whereas these later forms were more rooted in thecolonial discourse. These were groups drawing on a religious identity - either Hindu or Muslim - and for whomthe identity of an independent nation-state derived from the religion of the majority community in theproposed state. This kind of nationalism drew substantially on the inheritance of identities moulded bycolonial policy and the colonial interpretation of Indian history. Discussions in this context highlightedformulations equating community and religion. These nationalisms projected imagined, uniform, monolithicreligious communities and imbued them with a political reality. Both nationalisms took shape almostsimultaneously in the early twentieth century and have become virtually mirror images of each other - eachmaintaining the viability of separate nation-states. For religious nationalists, the Other, the one to becontested, was not the colonial power, to which they pledged loyalty, but the followers of the other religion,as also those who opposed religious nationalism, such as Mahatma Gandhi whom they assassinated. Politicalparties propagating this nationalism claimed to speak for communities as defined by religious labels - eitherHindu or Muslim. The focus on the Indian citizen faded in their vision.