People's Democracy

I AM indeed thankful to the organisers for inviting me to the inaugural function of the 61st session of the Indian History Congress. I understand that the current political situation in the country is making it increasingly difficult for such bodies as the Indian History Congress to find venues for its annual meetings. In this context I congratulate the University of Calcutta for taking up the challenge to organise the millenium session of the Congress, despite its financial constraints. I am also glad to learn that the West Bengal government has extended its utmost helping hand for organising this Congress. The Let Front government in this state has always supported the cause of the quest for knowledge, and the help that the government has provided to the present session of the Congress needs to be viewed in the context.

The Indian History Congress carries with it a rich legacy of sustaining historical researches based on scientific methods and bereft of sectarian motives. I have not been a professional student of history. But I have noticed how the historian's craft has undergone a qualitative change in India since our school and college days, how gradually history writing in our country adopted interesting analytical frameworks. Events came to be analysed in terms of historical processes and material changes. This has made the study of Indian history more interesting. Certainly the change has been to quite an extent influenced by Marxism. I remember in this connection the famous remark of Marx in the German Ideology: "The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness is at the first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life." Some of our front-ranking nationalist leaders were also influenced by this scientific method of historical enquiry. Jawaharlal Nehru's The Discovery of India and Letters From a Father to His Daughter may be counted as examples of such writings and we were also impressed by these writings.

Unfortunately, all that is under severe threat in India today, thanks to the tragic upsurge of sectarian and fundamental political forces. Instead of using history as a tool of social progress, attempts are being made to use history to take us backward and mould our intellect with obscurantism and fundamentalist values. At a time our historians should be encouraged to enlighten us on such issues as cultural pluralism in Indian civilisation, pre-colonial political economy, nature of colonial rule, everyday resistance of the common people, character or the freedom struggle, historical context of our civil society, gender question and caste-class convergence, attempts are being undertaken in an organised manner to divert popular attention to the mandir-masjid-church issue. I feel perturbed by the venom being spread against religious minorities and the violence perpetrated against them.

Again, on the pretext of curriculum reform, textbooks are being reportedly rewritten on the basis of communal ideology. At a time when we are speaking of IT revolution, we are also toying with ideas of Vedic mathematics and a course of astrology. I also understand that in some school texts the map of India is even being shown as including not only Pakistan and Bangladesh, but also the entire region of Bhutan, Nepal, Tibet and even part of Myanmar. I wonder what our neighbours think of this. Again, I gather that in a series for the school children the section on Indian freedom movement eulogises Hegdewar and Golwalkar, but undermines the contributions of mainstream national leaders, Muslims and communists. The changes proposed in history texts go against our perceived wisdom and certainly do not rest on consensus. Hindutva, now being assiduously propagated, is a direct assault on secularism, a basic feature of our constitution.

I was also astonished to find that the director of the organisation concerned with educational training has taken pride in the fact that during the 1946 communal carnage he himself led a mob against his Muslim neighbours. This act of the concerned officer was in sharp contrast to the role that myself and my colleagues played in those tumultuous days of 1946 in restoring communal amity and providing help to the victims of the communal carnage. I may add in this connection that we still lack a proper historical evaluation of the role the communists played in linking various strands of protest politics with mainstream nationalism and in organising the relief work during the man-made famine of 1943 in Bengal. I request members of the Congress to address themselves to this aspect of our country's history.

I also wonder how a senior official of the union human resources development ministry can be allowed to cross the accepted limits of bureaucratic discipline to suggest, in a government sponsored journal, the prohibition of conversion and to assert that intellectual freedom in the country suffered with advent of some monotheistic religions having a single holy book, obviously implying Islam and Christianity. I again find it unfortunate when I read in newspapers that a high official in another government body in Delhi has gone out of his way to suggest that the Babri mosque has no religious significance and Muslim should hand over the site to the Hindus.

I am equally constrained to find that even the voice of historians who refuse to toe the government line is being stultified. I have in mind the Towards Freedom episode when the volumes edited by two of the country's leading historians --- Sumit Sarkar and K N Panikkar --- were unceremoniously withdrawn. There is a widespread suspicion that these volumes were not published because they contained documents which indicate the anti-national role of the RSS and other sectarian organisations during our glorious freedom struggle. The government should clear this suspicion. But perhaps the suspicion has gained credibility from recent researches which have pointed to contacts between sections of Hindu nationalists of the 1930s and members of the Italian fascist state. As a Marxist, I, however, have complete faith in people and I am sure the people will ultimately realise what is wrong and what is false. The secular political parties will have to play their expected role in raising the consciousness of the people. Historians will also have to help in a big way to provide the correct and objective information to counter the distortion and falsification of history.

The progress of historiography is, in fact, sustained by constant controversies amongst historians. And, as believers in democracy, we need to take into account every opinion. Let hundred flowers blossom in our historical discourses. But there has to be certain well-defined norms within which historical researches are to be conducted. One such norm is that we have to recognise a historical event, whether we like it or not. For instance, we all know that on the fatal day of December 6, 1992, the five hundred year old historical structure, known as the Babri Masjid, was pulled down by a band of frenzied karsevaks. But there are some who would say that the structure was not pulled down, but it collapsed, or that it was an accident and not organised, as the prime minister Shri Vajpayee personally told me. I may in this connection mention that I have been summoned to depose before the Liberhan commission on January 29 on the Babri demolition issue. I would certainly present myself before the commission and submit among other things an audio tape containing the overjoyous statement of the former UP chief minister that while the contractors would have taken one and a half months to bring down the Babri structure (dhancha as he called it), the karsevaks accomplished the job in five hours.

Despite certain basic imperfections, Indian democracy has sustained itself in the face of many challenges. This victory of democracy also contributed to the evolution of an intellectual tradition which celebrated, what Rabindranath called, the synthetic feature of our cultural life, or what became known as the dictum of Unity in Diversity. But today this very facet of our national culture is being undermined through a systematic misinterpretation of history. Nothing had been so tragic in the 53 years of our independence. To fight this communal and fundamentalist virus, we have to fight a political and ideological battle and develop a counter-communal offensive, for which we require the help and advice of historians and such bodies as the Indian History Congress.

I would eagerly look forward to having a report on the deliberations of the Congress which I think would be particularly important in the context of the present political situation in the country. After all, we should not remain content with interpreting the world; there is also the need to change it. And in this task of creating a better world to live in where, as Rabindranath Tagore visualised, the mind will be without fear and the head will be held high, the intellectual community and democratic and secular political forces shall have to work hand in hand. Only then the study of history will not degenerate into a nation-destroying instrument but can be used for nation-building purpose. With these words, I wish the Congress every success.