It is still disturbing that so many people are prepared to say that the BJP-RSS should now have 'their turn' rather than insisting on greater administrative and institutional rectitude and impartiality.

The fact that many in the Indian elite ... can be swayed by this argument indicates just how much confusion there is about the relationship between history and politics, especially nationalist ideology and politics.

Can history writing and interpretation be separated from the clamour of politics? Tot his the only honest answer is an ambiguous one - yes and no. Yes, there is such a thing as truer and better histories; more accurate accounts which better respect the controls provided by evidence and plausibility of interpretation. Historical accounts can never be bias-free but all biases are not equal. Some accounts and approaches are worse and more error-filled than others. Indeed, too much of history influenced as it has been by a 'feel-good nationalism' contains myths, half-truths, outright lies, and inventions because the construction of modern nationalist self-images almost always involves "getting history wrong" at least some of the time ...

When the nationalism of a country and of its dominant elite is relaxed, confident, generous, humane, and democratic the chances of writing and understanding one's own history better becomes more likely. All this is the exact opposite of what has been happening over the last fifteen years in India. Today's national elite is in the main more belligerents, intolerant and self-righteous than ever before ... An elite suffering something of a collective identity crisis makes it much more susceptible than ever before to the attractions of a history reconstituted by a particularly narrow-minded and dangerously intolerant brand of identity politics - Hindutva.

Since history is always a dialogue between the present and the past, it also cannot be fully separated from the politics and concerns of the present. So new questions are constantly being posed and new ways of connecting the past and present regularly need to be uncovered. This is neither problematic nor undesirable provided the primary purpose of such reinvestigations - reinterpretations is the unveiling of better histories, correcting older biases and weaknesses, exploring new directions, using hitherto untapped or little-used sources, making better use of older sources, applying the lessons of theoretical advances made by history and other social science disciplines, etc.

All this is far removed from the preoccupations of the Sangh combine ... A history-telling which is reduced to, or dominated by instrumentalism cannot be a meaningful history though it can certainly be meaningful politics, which indeed is precisely the ambition of the Sangh !.

So history may not be separable from the passions of politics at any given time but this must never be made into an excuse for promoting either relativism (anything goes) or myth-making as history ... India had an enormous flowering of history writing and research that, for all its pre-Congress and nationalist biases and weaknesses, was not only far superior to colonialist histories but in its range, depth and general quality the envy of all post-colonial countries and many an advanced one as well.

In all this the contribution of historians-scholars-ideologues aligned with, or influenced by Hindutva, has been utterly negligible. But the influence of Marxists and Leftists has been considerably greater though never near as much as made out by the Hindutva brigade Nobody should claim there is no space for newer and better approaches to history writing, research and teaching.

But it has to be better! Even as the strengths of earlier nationalist historiographies need to be overcome. The Sangh, however, given its ideological predilections, cannot hope to do this; it can only reinforce its most central weakness. This was always in the domain of cultural histories where elite nationalism from the mid-nineteenth century was strongly influenced by a Western paternalist Orientalism that was obsessed about 'civilisational essences' and 'essential differences' and therefore promoted a Brahminical-philosophical centred view of Hinduism, Indian society and culture. It is ironic but entirely accurate that the Sangh, self-proclaimed defenders of indigenist 'authenticity' are the most faithful offspring of Western paternalism in historical research, understanding and writing.

(Source: The New Age, 21-27 November, 1999)

Report on Saffronisation in UP Schools

The education department in Uttar Pradesh (has) instituted a series of measures towards the saffronisation of education in the state.

March 1998: Directive from the state's education minister, N.K. Gaur, to make the recitation of Saraswati Vandana and Vande Mataram ... compulsory.

September, 1998: ... Kulp Yojana ... was made compulsory for all primary schools in the state. It was aimed at the 'moral and physical development of the child'. Through it, schools have been directed, especially in rural areas, to involve the RSS pracharak in 'naitik shiksha' (moral education). Aim of the scheme: To orient all state-run schools in UP along the lines of the RSS-run-Saraswati Shishu and Bal Vidya mandirs.

While announcing the scheme in UP the minister said that 'kulp' was being introduced to 'enhance the qualitative standard of education' in schools and to ensure that 'teachers are an intermediary between school, family and society'. Contents of the scheme: Hinduising education and educational institutions ...

(Source: The Indian Currents, 13-19 September, 1999)