Eminent Historians

Title: Eminent Historians – Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Author: Arun Shourie

Publisher: ASA Publications, 1998 (First)

ISBN: 8190019988

Pages: 271

The cover says it all. An ostrich made of the hammer and sickle burying its head in sand to gloss over inconvenient facts! But there is more to it, as Arun Shourie narrates in very fine detail. Scholars having strong bias towards the Left control our premier institutions and media even to the level of hijacking it. They produce history of India in conformity to Marx’ ideas stated way back in the 19^th century such as the human past is a long story of class struggles. This has gone to ridiculous lengths as when one historian lamented that the hardships of village folk were not reproduced in the paintings of Ajanta caves! This book flays them alive, showing their true colours and how they have lost anchor when the socialist system humiliatingly collapsed in the 1990s in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. This book attempts a three-pronged approach to isolate the politicized historians – Shourie calls them ‘eminences’ derogatively, always in inverted commas – for their misuse of public funds earmarked for research, whitewashing of the medieval period in Indian history and reviling the ancient period and thirdly, for blindly following the outdated political ideology of Marx and Lenin. None other than Shourie can produce a work of this sort, which is full of vitriolic but effective diatribe against opponents. Having served as an economist, journalist, parliamentarian and a minister, Shourie’s credentials are impeccable.

The leftist historians and academics act as a clique to malign the country’s cultural heritage and the author tries to expose their stranglehold on the nation’s academic institutions and media. They unabashedly produce work committed to Marxist theories that reek of totalitarianism and irrelevance to Indian conditions. The leftist academics became fashionable during the time of Nehru. Our first prime minister was overly susceptible to the latest intellectual ‘fashions’ in Europe. Unfortunately for India, the latest fad going on in the thinking circles of London was Fabian socialism. So, Nehru anointed these people on the higher echelons of state organizations concerned with education and historical research. The historians thus appointed found it expedient to propagate Marxian propaganda through the text books taught in India’s schools and colleges, thereby poisoning the minds of impressionable childhood and adolescence. The Jawaharlal Nehru University in the capital became a hotbed of armchair revolutionaries in this way. The masters selected and pruned their descendants carefully. Meanwhile, the Congress party which continued its rule in Delhi chose to ignore this contentious phenomenon as the party didn’t have an alternate ideology to put before the people. All this changed with the advent of BJP to power. For right or for wrong, the party has an ideology that is diametrically opposite to that of the communists. The Sangh Parivar wanted to control those institutions which the leftists had made their personal fiefs.

Shourie exposes a typical element of the leftist tirade that may be labeled misinformation. The guiding principles contained in the Memorandum of Association of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) propose to ‘give a national direction to an objective and rational presentation and interpretation of history’. When the BJP reconstituted the ICHR in 1998, the notification was found to include the word ‘national’ appearing for a second time in place of ‘rational’. This was trumpeted as an affirmation of the Sangh Parivar’s ‘wicked’ attempt to saffronise history. On the first look, it looks like what the critics say is correct. Omission of the word rational could only come about by a deliberate attempt. However, Shourie made a detailed analysis of previous notifications and comes up with the startling observation that the term rational was changed to national in 1978 as the result of a typing error. For two decades, nobody paid any attention till the time when the leftists raised a hue and cry. Communism thrives by selectively masking information or withholding it in its entirety from the public eye.

The so called ‘eminent historians’ show a reverential attitude to Islamic fundamentalism. Shourie produces copies of instructions issued by the West Bengal government’s education department asking teachers not to mention in the classrooms the brutalities committed by medieval sultans and their soldiery like forced conversions and destruction of temples. Historians follow a set procedure to deal with acts of a violent kind. If the sultan had destroyed a temple, it is obviously to get at the jewels and gold heaped there and not for religious reasons. If he imposed Jizya on the Hindus for the right to live as second class citizens in their own motherland, it is for economic reasons the tax would bring to the state treasury. If he forcibly converted Hindus, it is because in a battle, the sultan cannot afford his enemy ranks to swell and not for any religious motives. Thus, the historians find all of their actions quite justified. But what about the wanton destruction of temples and placing the smashed remains of stone idols on the walkway in the nearby mosque so that believers can tread on it everytime they worship there? What about desecration of the temples of the defeated by butchering cows inside them? This carnage cannot be explained by economic reasons, so the ‘eminent historians’ choose to censor them and teach a sanitized version. The author reproduces numerous quotes from texts with the original and sanitized versions which prove his case.

Besides these, the ‘eminent historians’ are experts in the grand old art of financial embezzlement. Several occurrences are pointed out where they collected considerable sums from ICHR for producing books on various projects, but end up with neither doing the work nor returning the money. Foreign seminars and conferences form another milch cow for the unscrupulous politicized historians. Since these people form the cream of the hierarchy, such theft could be concealed effectively. It is only when the government effects a major overhaul of the apparatus on radical lines do the chance of exposure arises. One of the reasons for raising the slogan of saffronizing may be this secret agenda of keeping their embezzlement secret. When the project for translating the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan series on the history and culture of India was initiated, the committee of ‘eminent historians’ distributed the task among themselves and appropriated many lakhs of rupees in the bargain. Even the work of EMS Namboodiripad, a Marxist politician from Kerala was masqueraded as learned opinion, showing the ideological tilt of the nation’s premier institutions on historical research which are expected to steadfastly remain impartial.

The book sums up the issues by revealing the real motive behind such deliberate falsifications. Shourie coins the term ‘religiofication’ to explain the curious case of even intelligent people making a dumb following of the teachings of Marx and Lenin. They demarcated five stages of social development that every society must pass through, such as primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism and socialism before it reaches the promised land of communism where milk and honey flow. Everywhere in the world, left-leaning historians attribute the history under their study to follow this dictum by the Master, just as in a religious discourse. It has been established that Marx’ observations themselves were on many occasions – such as the extent of slavery in ancient Greece – found to be in error or based on insufficient material, since many later findings from the field have supplemented the edifice of knowledge on this issue. Scholars who follow the party’s official line are not expected to express any divergent opinion, however slight the differences may be. Opinion of those who are believed to be against the party is not taken into account at all. This blind adherence to commands from authority figures is the hallmark of religion and hence the word ‘religiofication’. Shourie hints that the striking resemblance in obedience to the Master may be what prompts the leftists to defer to Islamic hardliners who follow their religious precepts with equal ardour.

A serious drawback of the book is that it has assumed that whatever is severly criticized by the ‘eminent historians’ is inherently good. The charge against them is that they unduly berates the ancient period while keeping mum on the acts of violence perpetrated during the sultanate and Mughal periods. But the remedy to this malfunction is not to eulogize the ancient past, but to continue the investigation with the same critical sense during the medieval period as well. The enquiring mind should be free of slavery to any political or economic ideology. Historians use the term Brahmanic to the ancient period, that is also being taken offense of. However, this may be treated as an attempt to distinguish it from modern Hinduism. Shourie’s assertion that Buddha, like the tenets of Islam, asked the idols of other faiths to be pulverized (p.89) does not seem to be based on solid evidence.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

My Country, My Life

Title: My Country, My Life

Author: L K Advani

Publisher: Rupa & Co, 2008 (First)

ISBN: 9788129113634

Pages: 986

Lal Kishenchand Advani, more popularly known as Lal Krishna Advani is the architect that led the Bharatiya Janata Party from humble beginnings in 1980 to power in 1998. A party attaining power in a multi-party democracy is nothing new or noteworthy. Advani’s real mettle lies in transforming Indian democracy that centred on the Congress in a unipolar system into a bipolar polity in line with true democratic norms. His mesmerizing leadership helped the BJP to shed its image as a communal outfit which was shunned by the so called secular parties. He was straightforward in attaining this because he didn’t put the party’s core ideology on the back-burner at any stage. Nehru is sometimes credited with moulding Indian democracy in its infancy. In the same vein, Indian democracy must thank Advani for guiding it towards its maturity as a true two-party system. He did all the dirty work for the party while the moderates sat idle, polishing their masks. It must have been a tremendous moment of achievement for the aged leader to see his party in power after a mere 12 years subsequent to its shockingly poor show in the 1984 elections with only 2 seats in Parliament. He presents his life dedicated to the service of the motherland from his birth in Karachi in today’s Pakistan till the day when he introspects on his past life after his party was unexpectedly ousted from power in 2004. Six decades of Advani’s political life coincides with that of the country after independence and in this sense, the book is a summary of Indian politics till 2008.

Advani is totally devoted to and adores Sindh, the province from which his family had to flee in 1947 to escape religious persecution. Pre-independence Sindh is said to be a place full of communal harmony between all religions. People used to visit the holy places of all religions without any discrimination or reduced ardour. Sindh’s strong Sufi tradition was a determining factor in this kind of marked syncretism. Advani’s family was particularly devoted to a Sufi saint Sain Qutab Shah, and frequented his dargah. Even now, his family members are said to be visiting Pakistan regularly, to pay their respects at the dargah of Sain Nasir Faqir, another widely respected Sufi saint. The author says that he was unaware of the distinction between Hindus and Sikhs in Sindh and only came to know about the differences much later in his life. He thought the Hindus and Sikhs to be the unbearded and bearded followers respectively, of Guru Nanak. This open admission of ignorance helps to enhance his image as a bridge between the two prominent religions in India. Every word in the autobiography is calculated to add weight to his stature as a great leader accessible and affiliated to people of all faiths. Advani also says that caste differences were not so prominent in Sindh and that he was astonished by its prominence in the rest of India. However, lower castes definitely existed in Sindh and it is an open question whether he had them in mind when he declares that literacy rate among Karachi Hindus was almost 100 per cent. The author portrays Sindh as a kind of Garden of Eden, whose atmosphere was vitiated by the arrival of immigrant Muslims who had to flee from India.

Indira Gandhi, who was the third prime minister of India, plunged the country into the depths of corruption and nepotism as part of her leftist policies that sought to rein in free enterprise. All major banks and insurance companies were nationalized in one stroke. The government was conceived to be totally inefficient and partisan to the interests of a few powerful politicians and industrialists. Widespread protests sprang up in all corners of the country under the leadership of Jayaprakash Narayan, popularly known as JP. He advocated the unity of Indian opposition parties whereby all warring factions planned to join him on the same platform. Indira Gandhi, who had an indelible streak of insecurity in her character, felt threatened at this and invoked Emergency provisions in the Constitution in 1975. In a span of roughly two years, the entire opposition was crushed, its leaders jailed and the morale of the masses pushed to its lowest ebb. Advani is remembered for playing a prominent part in the heroic struggle against Emergency. Even though jailed at Bangalore and Rohtak for the full 19-month term, he fought a brave legal battle along with fellow prisoners. Probably because of this, the book displays an aversion bordering on contempt to Indira Gandhi. Not only is she flayed for the excesses during the Emergency and her propensity for dynastic succession, the honour rightfully due to her on account of the historic victory in the 1971 war with Pakistan is withheld. Rather, the author praises General Manek Shaw, J S Arora and J F R Jacob for the military victory. Of course, the soldiers deserve credit, but going to war was a political decision in the first place, taken by Indira Gandhi. The book presents the fiasco of the opposition parties joining hands together to oust the Congress but falling prey to personal ambitions of its leaders. The Jana Sangh, which had the largest contingent among the legislators of the unified party had only three cabinet berths. But they accommodated the claims of other parties in a commendable way. But when the others raised the issue of dual membership as a way to target it, the party had no option but to part ways and form the BJP, which rules the country now.

Demolition of the disputed structure at Ayodhya was the event that catapulted Advani to fame and which proved to be the breakthrough for the BJP to get out of the political wilderness. The book devotes prominent space to that episode. He begins with comparing the temple construction movement to that of renovation of Somnath Temple in Gujarat during Nehru’s first cabinet by asserting that the birthplace of Lord Ram, believed by devotees to be at Ayodhya is similar in stature and significance to Somnath. A temple dedicated to Ram was destroyed in 1530 by Babur’s military commander and a mosque was built on the site. Similar acts of desecration was done at Mathura and Varanasi too, the other two most sacred places of Hindus. Ayodhya witnessed many struggles and communal riots over the four intervening centuries since a mosque was forcibly built. The place was not used for Islamic worship, and from 1949 onwards, worship of the idol of Ram was in vogue. Advani buttresses the Hindu claim with the argument that the mosque was just an ordinary one like any other for the Muslims, but one of the holiest places for believing Hindus. He never regrets his role in the movement, but claims to be proud of being associated with it. He was an eye witness at Ayodhya on that fateful day when the structure was forcibly pulled down by irate karsevaks (volunteers for a religious purpose) who were tired of frequent agitations not yielding any concrete results. The defied all calls of the leaders and brought the edifice down in a matter of a few hours. Advani termed the day the saddest in his life. Curiously, he shifts a part of the blame on the governments of Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao, who respectively allowed the foundation stone laying and the karseva (religious construction) to take place. He vouches that most of the leaders, including V P Singh and Narasimha Rao were privately not averse to the idea of building a temple at the site. The anti-Islamic surge that helped to fertilize the movement is believed to be the result of Rajiv Gandhi’s humiliating submission before Islamic hardliners in the Shah Bano case. A Muslim divorcee named Shah Bano was awarded alimony by the court, but radical Muslims objected to it on the grounds that sharia does not enjoin the husband to pay any maintenance to the divorced wife. Rajiv Gandhi yielded to their demand that the law of the land be made subservient to religious diktats. He brought in legislation to sidestep the court verdict using his massive majority in parliament. This helped to consolidate Hindu sentiment throughout the country.

Advani was the second in command in Atal Behari Vajpayee’s cabinet. Their relationship was always a topic of speculation for the media. It is not common to see two stalwarts each having immense popular appeal working in tandem. They were long term friends and dedicated to each other. It was Advani who proposed Vajpayee for the post of prime minister in the run up to the elections in 1996. The relationship that lasted more than half a century should serve as a model not only for politicians, but in all areas where commitment to the organization should exceed petty personal ambitions. The foreword of the book is penned by Vajpayee. The book is however, written in an unemotional way, with the events presented in a matter of fact way without any punch at all that makes it dry reading. Probably this is in consonance with the author’s temperament in which he wishes to include more wit and sparkle. In the response to a question from a reporter, he expresses his desire to have the capacity to indulge in small talk. This is the reason why the book is written in a colourless, but serious way. Normally, the readers would expect a lot of anecdotes and lighter moments in a book of this genre, but Advani belies this hope. At 986 pages of text, the book is humongous, which could easily be cut down to a more manageable 400 pages by omitting several too detailed descriptions and verbatim reproductions of reports and speeches. His Ram temple rath yathra is in fact eclipsed by the long, state wise report of his less contentious and hence less remarkable Swarna Jayanti Rath Yathra in 1997.

On many occasions, readers feel that Advani has not been candid and frank. Ousting of Balraj Madhok from the presidentship of Bharatiya Jana Sangh is one such incident where he simply stops the narrative with the bland remark that his leadership caused serious destabilizing problems for the party. In 2005, after his controversial speech in Pakistan that praised Jinnah for his comments in that country’s constituent assembly guaranteeing the state to be secular. Severe criticism arose from both within and outside his party. He had to resign as party boss following this incident in response to the clamour from all quarters. Advani says he was told to step down without elaborating further. Who told him to resign? Senior party leaders, or his inner voice, or the RSS? This question remains unanswered.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star

The Last King in India

Title: The Last King in India – Wajid Ali Shah

Author: Rosie Llewellyn-Jones

Publisher: Random House India, 2014(First)

ISBN: 9788184005493

Pages: 314

An excellent snapshot of a transitory era taken with the right set of focus, depth and exposure.

The 19^th century was a crucial period of transition in Indian history when the country rather suddenly in the space of a half-century shed its medieval coat and embarked on its road to modernity. The sultans and kings, who symbolized extravagance in the western media were either deposed or made vassals of the English East India Company, which then began a century of colonial exploitation. This shift in the ruling pattern of the land naturally caused unrest. Even though the people were worse off under the kings and sultans, they were their compatriots and the bond of tribal affiliation prevailed over rational considerations. The First War of Independence or the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857 was the direct outcome of tension brewing over a few decades. The annexation of Awadh (Oudh) in 1856 was a major source of discontent for the company’s Indian soldiers in the Bengal Army, who belonged to this province. This book tells the story of the king Wajid Ali Shah, who was the last king that ruled in Lucknow and was deposed but in spite of that, was spinelessly obedient to the British. He moved with his entourage to Calcutta where the company’s headquarters was situated. He entrusted his sick and aged mother to plead his case before Queen Victoria and the imperial government in London that proved to be a futile exercise in the wake of the Mutiny. Shah spent two years in the company’s detention for no obvious reason. After his release, he lived three decades in the Garden Reach area till his death. His sole source of income was the pension granted to him by the British which was handsome but not sufficient for the spendthrift ex-king. The book describes the political conditions prevailed in India during that period and how the British kept the native rulers on the leash. It provides a glimpse of court life in Lucknow under the Oudh dynasty where life was in perpetual glory for the few lucky courtiers and courtesans. Art and cultural forms developed enormously during this period. It also mentions the miserable failure of the court to transplant the Lucknow culture in Calcutta’s soil where everyone lived under that illusion till the death of the king in 1887. The British disposed of his estates and property through auction and divided the money among his descendants, thereby wiping the slate clean off the dynasty’s legacy in India’s history. The story is told by the able Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, who is an expert on Lucknow and its praised culture. She has authored several books on the subject.

The book paints the picture of absolute despotism being practiced in Awadh. The kingdom was deemed and treated like the king’s personal property. The king’s whims and fancies constituted the first call on the kingdom’s resources. Land revenue was the primary source of royal income. The sovereign spent the money like water, but only for his personal gratification. Wajid Ali Shah lavished his resources on women, musicians, construction of palaces, collection of wild animals, lending money on easy terms to the East India Company and being a Shia, for charity work in Iraq. The king and his predecessors were liberal in bestowing provisions on Shia holy places in Iraq. The fourth nawab of Awadh, Asaf-ud-Daulah built a canal at great cost in Karbala and it is still called the Asafi Canal. One of the very first acts of Wajid was to distribute money in plenty for Shia pilgrims in Baghdad. Najaf and Karbala witnessed grand construction projects with the Awadh tax-payer’s money. Not only that, he commissioned Iraqi workmen to build a shrine in Lucknow, which was the exact replica of the ‘Shrine of the Two Imams’ at Kazmain near Baghdad. Similarly, the royal party that visited Britain to plead against the annexation of the state that included Janab-i-Aliyah the queen mother, lived in style and pomp on the hard earned money paid by the humble farmers who could not manage even one square meal a day. The East India Company expanded its dominions using money borrowed from native princes, who were more than willing to oblige the company’s every need. It fought the war against Nepal, using the money supplied by Wajid Ali Shah.

India was racked by the agitation for building a temple dedicated to Lord Ram at Ayodhya where an earlier temple stood at the site was destroyed by Mughal emperor Babur’s military commander and had built a mosque. The movement was spearheaded by Hindu nationalist parties like the BJP. In 1992, the volunteers of the movement dismantled the disputed structure and built a temporary temple there. Main line media and secularist political parties had accused the agitators for fomenting trouble and raking up an issue which was non-existent as far as the residents of Ayodhya were concerned. This book negates this argument and proves that the place had seen many communal riots on the same issue during the 19^th century too. Coming from an impartial author, it is sufficient evidence that the temple issue was a burning topic in Ayodhya, that was in the Awadh province last ruled by Wajid Ali Shah (p.110-112). Shah Gulam Husain, a Sunni leader, assembled a large force of Muslims at Ayodhya (Faizabad) in 1855 and was determined to destroy and ruin the Hanuman temple. To defend their temple and themselves, large groups of armed Hindus had gathered. Around 140 people of both faiths were killed in the ensuing riot. The Hanuman garhi was built on the conjectured site of the birth of Ram. The mosque came to be known as Babri Masjid only at the beginning of the 20^th century. As a Shia, Wajid could afford to stand aside from theological disputes, but as a ruler, he had to intervene to prevent strife. A new and more dangerous leader then emerged in the person of a Sunni maulawi called Amir Ali, who collected around him a large number of people. The king invited him for discussions and proposed that one more mosque could be attached to the temple, which was vehemently opposed by the Hindus. Amir Ali marched his troops to Faizabad where the king’s army intercepted them and an estimated 300 – 400 men were killed. Isn’t this proof that the place was a flashpoint even in the 19^th century?

Wajid Ali Shah was a renowned playwright, poet and a worthy connoisseur and patron of music and dance. The traditional dance form of Kathak witnessed a grand revival in the Lucknow court under him. He is said to have created several ragas (rhythmic meters) in the Hindustani system of classical Indian music. Coincidentally, another great royal composer and patron of Carnatic music, Swathi Tirunal, was ruling at around the same time in the southern princely state of Travancore. Shah has authored many poems and plays including Radha Kanhaiyya ka Qissa, Darya-i-Tashshuq and Ishqnamah. But in personal life, he was the epitome of debauchery and extravagance. He married 375 women, exploiting every loophole in the Shia law where mut’a system allowed the male to marry women for a limited time and in payment of a limited sum (p.155). He had 52 recognized children and even long after he was declared impotent, his numerous wives and concubines continued to bear children! After settling in Calcutta, Shah found his means constrained on a British pension and he could no longer lavish the poor taxpayer’s money. He became utterly selfish, even going to the extent of separating his wives after their attraction faded due to old age. He refused to allot them money out of his generous pension. In order to free himself from claims on his income, he divorced many wives – as many as 27 on a single day! Being inept in financial management, he was easy prey to greedy courtiers. They bought merchandise themselves and resold it at double the rates to the king. Shah maintained a large menagerie at his residential complex that became a headache to the municipal authorities on account of escape of tigers from the ill-kept cages. He spared no effort and money in getting his animal collection expanded. In this regard, he declared that he didn’t care any more about his wives and children than about the animals in his custody.

The British extended an outwardly respectable attitude to Wajid Ali Shah, partly in fear of antagonizing public opinion at the cavalier treatment to an ex-king whose kingdom was snatched from his hands without a single shot being fired. But they didn’t treat him on par with the honourable courtesy extended to the family of Tipu Sultan who were also accommodated in Calcutta. The author attempts to bring this dichotomy for inspection. The huge contrast between the circumstances that forced these two royal families to seek asylum is unmistakeable. Tipu Sultan died a hero’s death, defending his palace and kept fighting till the moment he was shot down on the battle front. Jones hints that the British respected such heroism and had no regard for the cowardly Wajid Ali Shah who seemed a wretch when compared to the antics of Tipu. Shah surrendered his kingdom meekly and his correspondence with the British authorities reeked of excessive use of flowery expressions indicating servitude to the foreigners. When the then Governor General, Lord Hardinge, visited Lucknow, he insisted that the king shall not wear country-made shoes and must be attired in a pair of British patent leather shoes if he wanted to meet him in person! Jones uses sympathetic expressions regarding Indian sentiments whenever it is challenged by a British act against a native ruler. Sometimes, this has reached extreme levels, like the king’s preference for women without considerations of the class to which they belong to. Her comment that it ‘helped to widen the gene pool’ (p.143) is somewhat atrocious even to explain this manifestation of Cophetua syndrome!

The book is a delight to read and the author has narrated the historical events in a hearty way with lot of anecdotes. It opens a window to what was India before the sweeping changes of modernization catapulted her to where she is today.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star