India's Tryst with History

April 28, 2023

India's Tryst with History

The archaeological gallery dedicated to Buddha in the Bihar Museum, Patna was more deserted than the classrooms of Ramjas during fests. The experience never fails to haunt me, for I was the only person in the gallery. This particular head of Buddha, made of schist stone, had been brought from Bahlol, India (now in Pakistan) and dates back to some 100BC. It was finely polished, refined - probably, a jewel had been forcefully removed by the Islamic invaders in the north-west frontier province. But, those eyes; those eyes stare into your soul and snatch away everything from it. While clicking the picture, I realized the existence of that gloomy stare and couldn't move for about three minutes. Once I gained some confidence, I ran out of the room with tears in my eyes. The scream was loud and brought as many as five security guards into the room.

A Mauryan Era chariot wheel, clicked by me at Bihar Museum, Patna.

The upheaval brought up by the invaders still remains a matter of taboo in classroom discussions, where instead of discussing the circumstances, we are taught what their courtiers had to write about them. The topic remains relevant. Indian History made it to the global news a few weeks ago as well; this time, due to certain omissions in the NCERT (National Council for Research and Education Training) textbooks. The NCERT Director, Dinesh Prasad Saklani called it a “lie”. He stated that the change had been brought up due to the rationalization process in accordance with the New Education Policy, 2020 and to drop an “unnecessary burden” that wouldn’t affect the knowledge of the students. Omitting does not augur well for any civilization in the long run. While Mughals still find their place in the NCERT History textbooks, despite all the chaos surrounding them, it leaves some space for us to ponder about the necessity of changes in our history textbooks, and the approach to go about them. Although the former becomes a topic for mainstream debates, the latter finds itself greased with the combination of elections and haste. Hence, this short essay would find itself diving into the grease and examining the issue in brief.

The purpose of teaching history is to make the future leaders of the country aware of their past. Very often, it is used to instill in the minds of the young generation, the feeling of patriotism towards their motherland. To a large extent, we can say that the latter purpose of history outweighs the former. Allusions to historical figures prominently feature in their speeches, and they are always directed towards their core voter base. When the Indian National Congress (INC) leader Rahul Gandhi after his disqualification from the Lok Sabha, in his press conference mentioned Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, in a negative connotation, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray faction), despite being a major ally of the INC, had to explicitly warn the INC leader for his words because it impacted their impression in front of their core voters, who in turn, eulogize Savarkar. Of course, I wouldn’t get into the factual inaccuracy of Rahul Gandhi's comment, because it would diverge from my current essay and push me into the irrational marsh of electoral politics, but this recent instance helps me point out how history impacts the routine political action in India.

The significance of history often arises in popular contexts and it is often argued that it shouldn’t be our priority, then, the above instances help me put across my defenses. History is a cohesion for any civilization, and especially, in a diverse nation-state like India, it helps the citizens in discovering a common identity.

In his essay, “Bharatbarsher Itihas”, Rabindranath Thakur (Tagore, being the anglicized surname) writes:

“The history of India that we get to read and memorise in order to pass our examinations, is merely the account of a nightmare from a dark period when India’s sun had set. Certain people arrived from somewhere, a chaotic fight and massacre ensued; fathers and sons and brothers began competing with each other for the throne; no sooner had one group exited this chaotic scene than another arose out of nowhere.”

Thus, this debate is not new. The Nobel Laureate advocated for a change in how history should be taught to students. History is dynamic in nature; with new discoveries and fresh interpretations, history remains a subject which shouldn’t find itself restricted to centuries-old interpretations. Sometimes, it is realized that the facts are distorted due to ideological interests of the political parties as well. This is not a new phenomenon. Rulers have rarely trusted people, who don’t subscribe to their principles with writing accounts of history. Sometimes, accounts used to be twisted to suit the interests of the rulers. Thus, history in its most fundamental form remains a biased or one-sided account of events.

During the Nehruvian Era, importance was given to the post-Tilak Independence movement and the contributions of the well-connected revolutionary network in India were omitted. Furthermore, Bipan Chandra, one of the most celebrated Marxist historians went on to term Bhagat Singh a “revolutionary terrorist” in his chapter on Nationalism post-1915 in his book, “Modern History of India”. Although I don’t disagree with the magical impact of Gandhi on the Indian masses, I still find it troublesome to not find major significant revolutionaries and events in the books that had been taught to us in ISC (Indian School Certificate) Class 11. Students find themselves unaware of the significance of Anushilan Samiti, Hindustan Republican Organization (HRA), and are taught the usual Attenborough representation of how India attained her Independence. I asked a friend about the Kakori Train Incident, Ashafaqulla Khan, and Bismil, and all she could remember was the plot of Rang De Basanti, a 2006 Bollywood movie that confused Michael O’Dwer with General Reginald Dyer, amongst its other historical inaccuracies. No wonder why Sachindra Nath Sanyal, one of the founders of HRA had an inkling of these circumstances when he wrote in his book, “Bandi Jeevan” (A Life in a Prison, the 1920s) that “the reason for his writing the book was not merely to inspire contemporary revolutionaries, but also to leave behind a personal testimony for future generations.” (Sanjeev Sanyal, 2023)

In 1956, the British Prime Minister at the time of India’s independence was in West Bengal and had a long conversation with the then-acting Governor of the state, Justice PB Chakraborthy, where Attlee held the impact of Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army (INA) to be extremely important with respect to the Independence of India, and uttered “minimal” when asked about the contributions of Mohandas Gandhi (Ranjan Borra, 1982). Of course, we shouldn’t take the words of a British politician at face value, but I don’t believe that there’s any disagreement with the fact that our history books have become hagiographies of selected leaders, that keep changing every time we see a change in the Central Government.

Medieval history finds itself extremely central to Delhi. I don’t find any problem with the extent of Timurid history that we study because they ruled a vast extent of the subcontinent for a very long stretch of time and we have several manuscripts to understand their regime. But, we just read about the various battles we lost, and it is considered to be taboo to talk about the destruction that those Central Asian invaders brought to India, and as Sanjeev Sanyal never fails to mention, there has to be a reason why we, id est, our civilization still exists. We won several wars as well. The Third Battle of Panipat where the forces of Maratha Empire had won against Ahmed Shah Durrani of Afghanistan does not find its mention in the history books as elaborately as the former wars in that city. We don’t know much about the Vijaynagar Empire and the Ahoms who existed about the same time as the Timurids.

It was in class six that I had come across a quiz question where I was asked to name the Napoleon of the East; the answer to which was Samudragupta. That left a question to wonder about - why give an Emperor who existed hundreds of years a sobriquet after a person who came hundreds of years after him? It was to instill in the minds of people that no matter how vast the Empire of the Conqueror of the Ocean, Samudragupta was, the English with their power could bring it down to knees, as they did with Napoleon. It was a subtle symbolism. How much do we know about Samudragupta?

Events happening just a few hours ago in front of live television could be distorted by the media; why should we trust accounts written years ago under the funding of the State with enormous censorship powers? The approach is something all of us need to discuss. I had the honor of asking this question at the Delhi University Literature Fest, held a few weeks ago, and my question was highlighted by Carvan, a media group as well:

“If not all, most of us here agree with the fact that history must be rewritten. There could be several ways like quoting the primary sources directly, but that would make history a boring subject for many of us. We can also put across different interpretations of any particular event, but that would make things lengthy. So, what according to you is the right approach to go about it?” Mr Sanjeev Sanyal emphasized the importance of being factual. “The first problem with our textbooks is,” he said, “the facts themselves are actually wrong, and we being Indians, should take a national perspective of history.”

Why should we limit our understanding of Indian history to the political history of kings, battles, and policies? Why shouldn’t we be studying the history of culture, architecture, literature, science, and entertainment? We limit ourselves to political history and for some, the subject becomes monotonous, which leads them into believing that history is a boring subject. To put an end to this constant change of historical perspective after every election, we need to have a consensus about the right approach. The echo chamber should break itself and allow every other person to voice their opinion, howsoever vague it may sound. Can we expect it for now? I cannot say. It would not allow the political parties to divide voters based on their historical beliefs. Perhaps, it would take some more years. Perhaps, it would take some more mature voters, or generations. Would there ever be a day when we wouldn’t require history to be changed based on the interests of any political party? In a democratic country, we would never know.