It’s story-time, folks

DRUMS beat announcing the dawn of a new era — the era of knowledge and Indian awakening. The raving and ranting against Dr M.M. Joshi must cease, for he is the sole custodian of our ancient values and heritage. While some of his cabinet colleagues grapple with global issues, including the escalation of terrorism and its ramifications on our region, he marshals his resources to face the intellectual terrorism unleashed by left-wing historians. Today, the high priest of Shastri Bhavan is busy chanting a new mantra that might change the country’s intellectual landscape. The signs — from Kashmir to Kanyakumari — are that the great Indian renaissance has been ushered in under the aegis of a physicist-turned-politician.

Fortunately, the Shastri Bhavan-controlled bodies and their hand-picked men have fallen in line. Their collective wisdom, for which they deserve accolades, has already yielded tangible results. As the proud inheritors of the vast corpus of knowledge from Vedic times, we are now adequately equipped to share it with the rest of the world. Some hotheaded Marxists may contest the view, but the widespread acceptance of astrology and Vedic Mathematics has amply vindicated Dr Joshi’s stand. His magic formula has worked, raising the prospect of a resurgent India drawing strength and sustenance from its ancient pool of knowledge and wisdom.

His detractors unfairly tarnish Dr Joshi’s image. Turn to his predecessors in the education ministry. Maulana Azad, free India’s first education minister, vaguely talked of liberal education reflecting India’s pluralist and multi-religious ethos. His successors, notably M.C. Chagla and Syed Nurul Hasan, were hotheaded secularists lacking in vision and perspective. Dr Joshi’s blueprint is, on the other hand, characteristically new and different. Imbued with a mission firmly anchored in Hindutva, he repudiates old-fashioned notions of liberal humanism, intellectual dissent and tolerance. He consults nobody, except the RSS stalwarts.

In his pursuit of truth he invokes their worldview rather than the relevant provisions of the Constitution. So, please do not be surprised if he decides to include M.S. Golwalkar’s Bunch of Thoughts in our college curriculum, a book, so argue its avid readers, that is far more patriotic in its content than the texts produced by Gandhiji or Jawaharlal Nehru. Reading habits must change in order to reflect the political climate in the country.

Consider, from Dr Joshi’s vantage point, the enormous damage caused by the reading of Marxist historians in India. Claiming to be ‘‘objective’’ and ‘‘scientific’’, they question our understanding of the wonder that was India. Why does Romila Thapar, whose books are unfortunately widely read, question the theory of Aryan race? Why does R.S. Sharma, whose scholarship on social and economic history is (regrettably?) widely acclaimed, question conventional wisdom about the status of women and the Shudras in ancient Indian society? Besides reducing our heroes to regional or local potentates vying with each other to seize power and authority, such historians introduce elements of caste and class strife in our land of honey and sugar.

They even refer to Jain temples and Buddhist stupas and maths being destroyed, and to Buddhism being banished from the land of its birth. In this way, they keep tarnishing India’s fair name the world over. Why did Irfan Habib write the Mughals’ agrarian history when all that was required was to catalogue the atrocities perpetrated by the Muslim rulers? And this fellow, Bipan Chandra, goes on and on about colonialism, economic nationalism, the popular character of the nationalist movement, and the divisive aspects of communalism. Finally, what’s this blasphemous talk of subaltern history, people’s history, Dalit history, and gendered narratives?

With their blatant misuse of history, for which they have received worldwide recognition from our enemies, Dr Joshi’s assault on left-wing writers seems justified. One may not be able to revive the Jacobin methods of dealing with adversaries, but a case can certainly be made out for placing the Marxist historians under detention, for they are, so says the NCERT director, a threat to the stability of the nation. Suddenly a few superannuated historians, having written their textbooks more than two decades ago, endanger the nation’s well being. So what if other societies value their historians? Dr Joshi is nurturing a new breed of historians whose identity will be revealed to the world after the UP elections.

Besides redoubling efforts to construct the real or imagined glory of the ancient Indian history past, the consensus is to concentrate less and less on the medireview period from the 13th to the mid-18th century.

Already, the NCERT curriculum has decided to reduce the history content. So, the easy way out is to detail the heroic deeds of Prithviraj, Rana Pratap, Sivaji and Ranjit Singh (to mollify the Sikhs), and forget the rest of the story. It should be easy to drop, with the help of an obliging NCERT director, references to Amir Khusro, Malik Mohammad Jaisi, Akbar, Dara Shikoh. Demolishing the Taj Mahal may not be such a great idea, for it may well be construed by George W. Bush as an act of terrorism, but one can at least try convincing our kids that the Taj had been built on a temple site.

Indian history is read all over the world, and social scientists have access to facts to interpret our history and draw their conclusions. Still, the NCERT is justified in deleting certain objectionable passages. What’s wrong in claiming that Jainism existed before Mahavira? In fact, Buddhists could be encouraged to make a similar demand. Religions predating the birth of their founders or prophets can add to the collective weight of our ancient civilisation. In short, on the strength of the ancient beginnings of our history we can quite easily solve all our present-day problems of poverty, hunger, illiteracy, caste oppression and gender inequality. Dr Joshi, heir to the great brahmanical tradition, knows it better than any one of us.

The Jats and the Maratha ransacked Delhi, the Sikhs sided with the British during the 1857 revolt, and the RSS/Hindu Mahasabha stayed aloof from the anti-colonial struggle and avoided going to prison. These are documented facts, and yet they must not be brought to light. Indeed, if I lived in the land of Nathuram Godse’s birth, I may have insisted that he should not be mentioned as Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin. This is what respecting popular sentiments is all about.
Several medireview rulers, including Mahmud of Ghazni and Aurangzeb, destroyed and desecrated temples, and forcibly converted to Islam scores of Hindu groups and families. These are irrefutable facts. What if Muslims feel offended by such references? Rest assured, Dr Joshi will consider their sentiments whenever the process of deletion starts afresh.

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