The Indian Left and History

Jaffna,

You present a refreshing perspective with the historical data to back it up. It was an informative and intellectually stimulating post. One does not find such viewpoints expressed too often in India. I liked the difference.

Nice read, Jaffna.

The Indian left could learn a thing or two from their Chinese counterparts who are intensely nationalistic. The inane debate as to whether ancient India had private property or not indicates that the Thapars and Kosambis miss the forest for the trees.....They have idea as to the larger picture.

Typo - I meant to say ..."no idea as to the larger picture".

Jaffna: Wow, fantastic article. You have superbly contested the Marxist deconstruction with the help of three specific examples. This has helped understand the issues even for a novice like myself. As you mentioned, Arun Shourie did a great service by exposing Thapar, Habib et al. I totally agree with you that more people needs to join and expose them. I hope that such a movement gathers momentum amongst serious social sciences specialists.

Indeed Soraya, we rarely come across such viewpoints in Indian mainstream media.

Guha: Heh, in PRC any action such as by our Indian Marxists will result in them being condemned by some "Kangroo" oops read "People"'s court and will switftly led to some re-education camps.

best,

Indeed Rajkumar. Anyone who detracts from the reported achievements of Chinese civilization would be branded a "counter-revolutionary", "bourgeois revisionist", "anti-people" or an "imperialist stooge"! The left in China is very nationalist - almost chauvinist. Just read their claims on how it was a Chinese monk who had allegedly discovered the Americas even before Christopher Columbus had! Or how Zheng He superceded Magellan!

The Indian left by contrast is completely anti-national as Jaffna so eloquently portrays in one academic field - i.e. the discipline of history.

i tend to become cynical of any history that i hear.

i am from andhra pradesh. i was witness to the seperate telengana agitation as a kid.

when i went to study in a university and when some one spoke about telengana armed struggle, i thought i was witness to it and knew it.

unfortunately, the whole history when the nizam's razakar military was opposed and fought by the people of telengana does not find any mention in AP's history text books in school. you cd guess that the movement was led by communists.

no romila thapar, no irfan habib none. but the ap text books of history do not acknowledge that there was something like that. they do talk about the arya samaj, swami ramanda thirtha, the congress's role etc.

i have met men and women who participated in the armed struggle.

and when one talks about history, whose history? and from whose perspective?

While my knowledge of Indian history is woefully lacking, this article resonates with me in that the leftists have infiltrated the teaching of history here, and teach the most unrealistic trash.

History has always been a tool of the present. If you think it has to be accurate, then you are looking at the wrong place for facts.

Balaji,

You mention an important point:

"and when one talks about history, whose history? and from whose perspective?".

This captures the crux of the matter - that history is relative, that different viewpoints need to be presented and that the informed reader could then decide on the merits of each school. This is how history is taught in Europe.

The problem in India is that the Indian left has monopolized the study of Indian history and leaves no room for different interpretations. Their's is a highly ideological take on the subject matter - one that on closer inspection is seen as one-sided.

The left has dominated the history departments in all centers of higher education in India. JNU stands out in this regard.

I liked the reference to Telangana. You hint that it was a left-inspired uprising that led to the Nizam sending in the Razakars to subdue it. I am not too familiar with the material.

This said, the situation was far more complex. It had a lot to do with the integration of princely states into the Indian Union in 1947, the desire of the Nizam of Hyderabad to retain his independence or even join Pakistan, the unleashing of the Razakars to subdue the Hindu population and the sectarian "ethnic cleansing" etc that took place.

All this was superimposed upon a context of acute landlessness, absentee landlords, indebtedness, low productivity, famine and peasant unrest.

So while a peasant revolt was one element of a complex story, there was a lot more to it. This reinforces the point I make in this comment - that history is truly multidimensional. And the Indian left has misrepresented it - the Telangana case being yet another example.

You have inspired me to do another post - either on the origins of the Telangana movement or on peasant unrest. This is relevant in the context of the current Maoist threat.

Best regards

Jaffna:

Cool post. The Marxists only continued the colonial-missionary project to deconstruct and weaken India. Their conclusions could be likened to 'old wine in new bottles'.

Well said, Ruvy. I completely agree.

Excellent analysis. You should've also talked about the stranglehold that the leftists have on institutions like the ICHR and how these 'eminent historians' have exploited their positions to siphon off funds meant for history writing projects, how most of these projects lie unfinished and had their completion dates extended, how through their stranglehold they have controlled public discourse and scholarship, how these 'eminent historians' have used their positions to spread communist ideology through primary school textbooks (completely unnoticed), how certain uncomfortable facts about Islamic rule in India have been whitewashed, how ancient Indian history and religion has been blackened by applying Marxist theory, how the role of the socalled anti-imperialist Communist Party of India in colluding with the British during the brutal suppression of the Quit India Movement has been whitewashed from Indian history books by these 'eminent, objective and rationalist' historians etc. All these have been covered by Mr. Arun Shourie in his brilliant book "Eminent historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud." Looking forward to more such articles.

Atlantean,

Thank you. I agree with you.

The leftist distortion of events continues in its reference to contemporary issues such as Kashmir. Examples include Sumantra Bose, Sugato Bose and Mridu Rai who contest the Indian position on Kashmir in numerous publications. All three are based abroad.

Mridu Rai's "Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Islam, Rights and the History of Kashmir" is one example of a completely one-sided account that ignores Ladakh, Jammu, Gilgit and Skardu. Its emphasis is on a one-sided deconstruction of Dogra rule with a view to legitimize the current insurrection in the state. The role of the Muslim League in 1947 in polarizing religious and ethnic communities is conveniently ignored.

The left in academia and the left in politics work together. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) applauded the Chinese entry into the exclusive nuclear club in the 1960s but opposed India's nuclear tests in 1998. Talk of double standards.

Best regards

Jaffna:

I would like your views on Ramachandra Guha's new book "India After Gandhi: A History of the World's Largest Democracy" published by Picador. He claims that India is "an unlikely democracy" and "an unnatural nation".

Ricky,

I have not read Ramachandra Guha's latest book. However, I did see a discussion on it that appeared in the Indian Express on May 6, 2007. He not only calls India an 'unnatural nation' and an 'unlikely democracy'. He also refers to it as a '50-50 democracy'. He describes himself as a 'liberal' while the Indian Express refers to him as 'a widely published historian'!

Let me read the book and respond later. But I do have an immediate instinctual response. The Indian left and proclaimed 'liberal' both derive its ideology from the European ferment that took place in the 1700s with the 'age of enlightenment'. They inherited shared beliefs and concepts. Positivism is one example which stresses that the only authentic knowledge is rooted in the scientific method.

The Indian 'liberal' however tends to be often fuzzy in his liberalism and is often unschooled in Indic classicism and its epistemology.

If Indian academia was dominated by the left - i.e. the likes of Romila Thapar, the Indian Express, the Times of India, CNN-IBN, Pankaj Mishra and Ramachandra Guha represent the 'liberal' response. The two are inter-related and are both offshoots of the colonial-era world view. There is an element of deracination involved. Many are intellectual heirs to Thomas Babington Macaulay.

Phrases such as unnatural nation and unlikely democracy are easy to bandy about. I would like such terms to be operationalized. How would he in fact describe a 'natural nation'? And a 'likely democracy'? I presume Guha had the Anglo Saxon world in mind! But let us not forget the history of slavery, segregation and genocide linked to Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.

At one point, Guha alleges that Hindu civilization (the latter word is not his) can not explain India's resilience as it "excluded the Dalits and women". I would like to know how Hinduism excluded women any more than any other religion did? Can he justify such sweeping statements?

In certain respects, he is a pop historian for an Indian media that fails to think through. He is somewhat hyped - as is a lot in India.

Best regards

You'll find an excerpt of his work on Outlookindia.com

Thanks Amrita. I will check that out.

Ramachandra Guha's thesis is that India survived as a nation and a democracy despite 'incredible odds'. I am still puzzled as to how he defines a 'natural nation' or a 'likely democracy'. Very few such countries exist in the first place. This makes his premise flawed i.e. that India is an 'unnatural nation'.

The Indian 'liberal' suffers from a similar shortcoming of the Indian 'left' in that he/she attempts to analyze his/her context using concepts exclusively derived from western theory.

Best regards