BJP TODAY

September 16--30, 2005 - Vol. 14, No. 18

Someone has very aptly remarked that classics are those books which everybody praises but no one reads. Whether it is true about other classics or not this definition very accurately defines Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru's book 'The Discovery of India', which his opponents may be reading but his followers seem to have forgotten completely. Nehru, besides being a politician, was an author of sufficiently high caliber. As a historian he had a much more balanced approach towards history than many of the so called "scientific", and "neutral" and "eminent" historians can ever claim to possess. This is clear from a comparative analysis of 'Discovery of India' with the new school text-books of distorted history that are again thrust upon this country despite their grave errors and innumerable shortcomings.

For the last five years or so the subject of education has been in the focus of debate at the national level. Despite this debate the UPA government is hell bent upon imposing the 'distorted history' books. They have made certain changes but these changes are only in reference to such points of history about which the ruling politicians are afraid of strong public reaction in their vote banks. For example they have improved upon the earlier version of Guru Teg Bahadur's martyrdom at Delhi at the hands of the cruel Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. In most of the other matters the books strengthen their old stereotypes of the Anti Hindu History in which the real heroes have been cast as villains and the villains have been portrayed as heroes.

It would be of interest to know that Pt Nehru showed remarkable sense of history. One may have a difference of opinion with him but his intellectual honesty cannot be doubted. The new history books which the NCERT published during the NDA government and which were blamed for saffronisation had also quoted Pt Jawaharlal Nehru's sense of history in a positive manner.

The present Union Minister for Human Resource Development Arjun Singh, who takes pride in being a staunch follower of Pt Nehru, seems to have made up his mind to remove these books without even seeing them. Otherwise the references to Nehru's views on historical problems could not have escaped his eyes. On the other hand, the books written by leftist historians did not even once consider Nehru's views good enough to be taught in the history class. Not only there were many references which were opposite of what Nehru wrote in his books, even the rude and ill-mannered language of those books could not have suited either Nehru's or Indira Gandhi's sophistication. But Congress today is intellectually not in a position to think on these lines. Congress has no historians whom it may it call its own and even if there are some, the intellectual bankruptcy and political contingencies of the party will not allow them to become Nationalist or true historians.

Among other problems, Nehru had written about the role of history in the process of evolution of a nation. In that context he criticized the British colonial history writing as "a barely veiled contemptuous account of what happened here in the millennium preceding it." This is exactly where the leftist historians have followed the British point of view and unfortunately it is a Congress government, which is patronising them. Nehru wrote: "Indeed, real history for them (British) begins with the advent of the Englishman into India; all that went before is in some mystic kind of way a preparation for this divine consummation. Even the British period is distorted with the object of glorifying British rule and British virtues. Very slowly a more correct perspective is developing." With slight modifications, the leftists began the glorification of the Soviet Union and the communist movement, and rest remained the same.

The leftist historians' view has been determined by the vote bank politics of appeasement and that is why they have gone too far to appease Muslims even putting other 'secular' leaders to shame. One example can be cited here. Prof. Satish Chandra maintains in his book Medieval India (New Delhi, NCERT, 1990, ed. 2005; which is a text book for class XI) that the reason for the success of the Muslims against Hindus in India was, their superior social organisation. Prof. Satish Chandra writes, "Thus, the superiority of the Turks was more social and organisational. The growth of the feudalism, i.e., rise of the local landed elements and chiefs had weakened the administrative structure and military organisation of the Indian states. ...On the other hand, the tribal structure of the Turks, and the growth of the iqta and khalisa systems which shall be discussed later, enabled the Turks to maintain large standing armies which could be kept in the field for a long time."

On the other hand Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru held an entirely different view, which was more balanced and neutral. He wrote: "The Muslims who came to India from outside brought no new technique or political and economic structure. In spite of a religious belief in the brotherhood of Islam, they were class bound and feudal in outlook. In technique and in the methods of production and industrial organisation, they were inferior to what prevailed then in India. Thus their influence on the economic life of India and the social structure was very little".

Another example, which can clearly expose the Anti-Hindu mindset of Prof. Satish Chandra can be cited about Shivaji. He has portrayed Shivaji as a plunderer and a hypocrite. He has called Shivaji's movements as Maratha national movement a term, which probably he himself has coined. There is almost a consensus that Shivaji was a Hindu nationalist leader who on the basis of Hindu resurgence developed the concept of all India Hindu Empire generally called Hindu Swarajya. Prof. Chandra has written about Shivaji's coronation, "It was also an important step in the further growth of Maratha National sentiment." To one's best knowledge there has never been any Maratha nationalist movement and the Marathas have been one of the greatest champions of the Indian Nationalism. Trying to fill hatred about Shivaji in children's minds, Prof. Chandra has sought to portray Shivaji as a hypocrite and a plunderer. He writes: "Although Shivaji had assumed the title of 'Hindava-Dharmoddharak' (protector of the Hindu faith), he plundered mercilessly the Hindu population of the area."

On the other hand the description of Shivaji in Pt. Nehru's Discovery of India is much more accurate. He wrote: "Shivaji was the symbol of a resurgent Hindu nationalism, drawing inspiration from the old classics, courageous and possessing high qualities of leadership. He built up the Marathas as a strong unified fighting group, gave them a nationalist background, and made them a formidable power, which broke up the Mughal Empire. He died in 1680, but the Maratha power continued to grow till it dominated India."(Discovery of India, Page No. 273)

The communist historians not only continued to enjoy the State patronage but also increased their influence many times during Indira Gandhi's administration. Whether Indira Gandhi inherited a sense of history from her father or not may be point of academic interest, but politically she was more dependent on the communists than her father. That is why the new university in the name of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and a few other institutions like the ICHR etc virtually went as a dowry in the marriage of political convenience between the Congress and the Communists. Later, during the emergency, a history capsule was buried in front of the Red-fort. During the Janata Party Government it was dug out and the lies written in it in the name of history were exposed, and since then no communist historian ever speaks about it. The files related to the project are nowhere to be found in the Government of India.

Another controversy related to history text books which surfaced is also very interesting to note. Some highly objectionable paragraphs from the text books written by leftist historians were removed by the Congress led Delhi government. The Delhi Legislative Assembly removed these paragraphs unanimously when the BJP members were not present there. The book 'Ancient India' by Prof R.S. Sharma, one of the most noted communist historians, was banned by the Delhi Legislative Assembly and certain very highly objectionable portions of Medieval India by Prof Satish Chandra were deleted. The MLA who proposed these changes is now the education minister of Delhi. The Congress never cared to explain that how the State leadership opposed and removed the books which the central government was supporting and is now bringing back to the classrooms all over the country. Some of the sympathisers in the media tried to ward off the matter as the ignorance of Delhi education minister Arvinder Singh Lovely, thereby accepting that Congress could make an ignorant person a minister and that too the one dealing in the very same department about the affairs of which he does not know his party's central leadership's views. But this seems to be highly improbable because the State Congress leadership took these steps just before the Punjab elections and the objectionable portions were against the Sikh Gurus.

Congress probably wanted to and was successful in exploiting the Sikh votes in Punjab. Later it just kept quite and tried to kill the issue with silence. Due to political exigencies and its own intellectual bankruptcy, the UPA alliance in the centre is forced to bring back these books. What they are calling "detoxification" is really poisoning the minds of the young students by red-slavery. The elements of patriotic nationalism are being given a good-bye. History is directly linked with the national sentiments of a people. The classroom teaching of history has to be a balanced appraisal as to the facts of history. If the account of past to be taught to our students is not unbiased, it can cause a whole nation to move in the wrong direction. The communists for their political purposes have sought to use the discipline of history. It is necessary that the swadeshi stream of history writing, which stopped abruptly, should be recognised and encouraged.