An eminent historian and a distinguished writer were recently ejected from the Prasar Bharati ... Two volumes of history, long commissioned by Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) as part of the "Towards Freedom" project, have been recalled from the printing: press, reportedly at the behest of the HRD Ministry. The humanities and the social science are the terrain which is seen to harbour potential for ideological use, either inimical or congenial to the fascist enterprise ... Ideology is perceived by the saffron satraps as the primary site of battle. Ideological and theoretical considerations pertaining to concepts such as the nation-state, civil society, rights and polity in general are considered central to the work in humanities and the social sciences. The suppression of such intellectual output is one easy way to score a victory.
At a time when reviews are sought to be made of major definitional constructs and of the Constitution itself, historians, social scientists, litterateurs and cultural workers come to occupy centre-stage whether they like it or not ... Thus, it is not for nothing that ministries that relate to such areas of thought are handled by hardcore RSS loyalists. A look back at the report of the first ever Education Commission, written by S. Radhakrishnan, illuminates the crux of the ideological contention today. Radhakrishnan wrote: 'We know what Hitler did in six years with the German youth. The Russians are clear in their minds about the kind of society for which they are. educating and the qualities required in their citizens ... Our education system must find its guiding principle in the aims of the social order for which it prepares".
A holistic enunciation of that "social order" was to be enshrined in the Indian Constitution. The pillars upon which it stood were parliamentary democracy, federalism, social and economic justice, self-reliance, protection of the minorities, and the right to profess, practise and propagate religious beliefs within a multi-cultural and multi-religious nation. Whatever may be their sins, secular historians and social scientists - including avowedly leftist ones – have functioned within the nation-building framework postulated both in the Education Commission Report and the Constitution over the last five decades.
Instead, our present day fascists seem to want to pick up Radhakrishnan's text and give it their very own twist: they want to do in six months "what Hitler did with the .German youth in six years". Every recent move and occurrence initiated by the Sangh Parivar over the last year through State power, and from satraps from the outside, conforms to that aspiration: the desire to displace parliamentary democracy with a centralised authoritarian leader, conversion of the multi-cultural, multi-religious polity into one nation, one culture and one people, subversion of institutions (from the office of the President itself) and of democratic practices.
Added to this is the selective use of State apparatuses to foster ideological allies and tyrannise designated ideological 'enemies', letting loose gangs to terrorise artists, intellectuals and writers who do not see eye to eye with them. In other words, there is an effort to spawn a militarist national psyche among the populace at large, and create adversaries within and without to justify such militarism. And to round off this exercise, they employ substandard hacks to erase the history of secular and democratic struggles and substitute them with venomous revivalist myths. (Source: The Hindustan Times, 23 February, 2000)
