Frontline
October  2000
Interview

“The present government is pursuing a well-planned project in close collaboration
with the members of the sangh parivar” -- KN Panikkar 

At a prestigious international conference in Montreal, a group of Indian delegates led by none less than the ICHR chairperson conducted themselves in such a fashion that the organisors "had to caution them that they are not in India and that such unruly behaviour was not tolerated in academic circles in Canada." This was preceded by the successful attempt by the GOI to put pressure on the Canada-based Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute to withdraw Sahmat’s posters from an exhibition at the Harbour Front Centre, in Toronto. Back in India, academic institutions like the Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR) are being transformed into agencies of the sangh parivar. Attempts earlier to ban Fire, to prevent the shooting of Water, to censure artists are examples of growing cultural intolerance.

In this background of growing attempts to stifle academic and cultural freedom, Communalism Combat spoke to renowned historian KN Panikkar, whose paper, ‘Outsider as Enemy: Politics of Rewriting History in India’, was the main cause of saffron heartburn in Montreal.

At the recent round-table conference on the re-writing of history held at Montreal, and at which you were one of the main speakers, the chairperson of the ICHR, BR Grover reportedly tried to disrupt the meet. Could you give us some details ?

To begin with, let me state what actually happened at Montreal. A round- table was organised by Prof. Dolores Chew of Concordia University as a part of the International Conference of North American and Asian Scholars (ICANAS) held at Montreal between the 27 August and 1 September on the ‘Rewriting of History: Intellectual Freedom and Contemporary Politics in South Asia’. I was invited to participate in the round table and make a presentation, the title of which was: Outsider as Enemy: Politics of Rewriting History in India.

The organisers had put out a flier explaining the background and the names of the participants. Since a large number of delegates attend the conference, it is a common practice to highlight important events. The chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), BR Grover, and three other delegates interpreted it as a "vilification campaign launched by Prof. KN Panikkar of J.N. University, India, and some of his camp followers in Montreal against national institutions of research and learning, such as ICHR, the government of India as well as intellectuals and academics who do not subscribe to their ideology". (I am flattered that I have camp followers in Montreal!).

They approached the president of the conference, Prof. Charles Leblanc to stop "this malicious propaganda and abuse of this august body of eminent international scholars". The president obviously did not oblige as the round table was held as scheduled; though Grover’s men made a desperate attempt to disrupt it by questioning the authority of the moderator, Prof. Keith Meadowcroft.

There are two rather unfortunate dimensions to this clumsy effort. First, the chairman of the ICHR, a national body, has lowered the prestige of his office by being a signatory to a letter, which to say the least, is defamatory and influenced by political motives. However, I am not surprised, as his role during the last one-year has been that of a foot-soldier of the sangh parivar. Secondly, by their behaviour, Grover and his men brought the country into disrepute in an international gathering of scholars.

In fact, irked by the persistent attempt at disruption, Prof. Chew had to caution them that they are not in India and that such unruly behaviour was not tolerated in academic circles in Canada. The foreign scholars were appalled by this unwarranted and unruly show, particularly because none of these delegates had anything to say about the facts and arguments I had presented. In fact, Grover was constrained to say that he agreed with most of what I said.

I wonder why Grover and company were so exercised about my participation. They assumed that I would speak about the attempt of the ICHR, with the approval and support of the present government, to curb academic freedom in India. Any discussion on this matter would have been embarrassing to the government, which was trying to project a moderate and liberal image in North America. After all, this government is wooing America as nobody else did in the past.

It appears not insignificant that this was preceded by the successful attempt by the GOI to put pressure on the Canada-based Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute to withdraw Sahmat’s posters from an exhibition at the Harbour Front Centre, in Toronto. Your comments?

There is a method in this madness. The withdrawal of support to the Sahmat exhibition is not solely an expression of the ignorance and arrogance of a bureaucrat. It may as well be. The Indian high commissioner who remarked that the paintings of MF Hussain, Vivan Sundaram, KG Subramaniam, Arpita Kaur and, in fact, almost all outstanding painters of India, are devoid of aesthetic quality is either an illiterate or has no powers of judgement.

But then it was evidently done under the instruction of the government, striving to further the Hindutva interests. The Indian bureaucracy is no more made of the same mettle as before. In both these cases, two trends are apparent. First, an attempt to equate the government with the nation and, secondly, extreme intolerance of any criticism of the government.

It is likely then that the interest of the nation is invoked to curb intellectual freedom and academic independence. If this trend continues the dissenting voices may not be heard at all. It is necessary to recognise the political implications of this tendency. It will create an intellectual climate conducive for fascist possibilities. By attempting to suppress critical opinion the present government is creating an atmosphere of fear and conformism. I wonder whether the intelligentsia has adequately taken note of it.

Even earlier political dispensations in India have not been the staunchest supporters of free inquiry, critical examination and creative debate. How then are the current levels of ‘interference’ in any way more ominous and dangerous for academic freedom?

That is very true, but it is a statement that deserves some qualification. Liberal intellectuals and journalists have been making this comparison and in the process providing, even if indirectly, rationalisation and even legitimacy to what the parivar is doing. There is a qualitative difference between the earlier regimes and the present one. The latter is pursuing an agenda set by the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) to turn India into a Hindu state. The attempts to rewrite the history of India and to refashion the education system are parts of this agenda.

The present government is pursuing a well-planned project in close collaboration with the members of the sangh parivar. The earlier regimes had no such plan, even if their policies were geared to the interests of the ruling classes. In fact, what is happening today is not just governmental interference, as it indeed happened in the past, in matters cultural and academic. Today there is a concerted attempt to marginalise the secular intelligentsia and to control academic institutions in order to realise the political goals of the RSS.

The recent attack on historians through false allegations by an RSS ideologue like Arun Shourie has a wider meaning: to discredit the secular intelligentsia and thus undermine their influence in society. Since Hindutva derives most of its legitimacy from a communal interpretation of history, historians have become a preferred target.

The arbitrary withdrawal by the ICHR of two volumes of ‘Towards Freedom’ jointly authored by Sumit Sarkar and you generated much controversy. Where do things stand now? Do you attach any specific importance to the fact that these two volumes were the ones withdrawn and not others?

At present the two volumes are under dispute between the Oxford University Press and the ICHR. Instead of resolving the issue through negotiations, the ICHR has taken recourse to legal action against the OUP for the latter’s refusal, and rightly so, to return the manuscript. Consequently, the Delhi High Court has appointed an arbitrator to decide their claims. Strangely, both the parties have neither consulted us nor taken into account our rights as authors.

These volumes have been prepared from thousands of pages of documents, with general and sectional introductions and explanatory notes. They are academic works involving our professional expertise and judgement. Therefore the copyright of these volumes rests with us and not with the ICHR. The ICHR along with the National Archives of India has only facilitated the work. Therefore, neither the OUP nor the ICHR can unilaterally take a decision on the publication of these volumes. We have initiated judicial proceedings to claim our rights.

The ICHR has so far taken an un-academic view, possibly because of political reasons. One would expect the ICHR to consult the authors if they had any reservations about the contents of these volumes, which they did not. But then their objection perhaps is to the authors as much as to the contents. After all, Sumit and myself have been voicing our concern about the way the parivar has been distorting history and have also been critical of the political culture the parivar represents.

Can you cite other instances of the sangh parivar’s attempt to capture academic institutions and to police culture?

There is a general atmosphere of cultural and intellectual surveillance. The institutions sponsored and supported by the government are generally following an agenda set by the parivar. More importantly, the parivar itself is trying to enforce a Hindu code in society. The attempts to ban Fire, to prevent the shooting of Water, to censure artists like MF Hussein etc. are examples of cultural intolerance. Academic institutions like the Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR) are being transformed into agencies of the parivar.

Recently the ICSSR set up a research institute in the name of late Deen Dayal Upadhaya, an RSS ideologue and leader of the Jansangh. Befittingly, it was inaugurated by another RSS activist, P Parameswaran, who runs an organisation actively engaged in spreading communal hatred.

The first activity of the institute was a memorial lecture, which was delivered by none other than Bangaru Laxman, the new president of the BJP! This is the same ICSSR once managed by great scholars like Sukhumoy Chakraborty, JP Naik, Iqbal Narain and others. And imagine, except for a handful, social scientists of this country remained silent when their premier research organisation was being turned into an RSS shakha.

The lack of secular reaction to the steadily increasing cultural policing and interference in the intellectual realm worries me. Not that there are no protests. In fact, on the ICHR issue there was an unprecedented nation-wide protest. The action against Fire and Water also raised some public outcry. Yet, the secular forces, particularly the political parties, did not succeed in halting the parivar’s cultural and intellectual interventions. Nor was there a concerted attempt to do so. This is possibly because there is no powerful secular cultural movement. I think that such a movement is an immediate need for countering the parivar’s cultural agenda.

‘Difference in ideology’ (the ‘leftwing’ vs. the ‘rightwing’/‘nationalist’) is the only major defence of the supporters of the current political establishment to justify replacing academics who held ‘leftist/marxist’ views with ‘their’ people. Do you not feel that reducing the debate to a battle of ideologies does grave injustice to the real issue on hand? The issue of a multi-dimensional examination of the past and present, of a methodology that encourages different viewpoints rather than those of the dominant sections alone and moreover one that stifles creative examination?

The ideological divide is only a convenient pretext and justification for capturing cultural and academic institutions. Not that the divide is not real. But that is not the real issue. Take, for instance, the reason given for filling the ICHR with RSS activists and sympathisers. It is said that the council was earlier full of Marxists. But, in fact, out of eight past chairmen of the council only two were Marxists. The rest were liberal, nationalist and even very conservative historians. This is true of the members of the council also.

The point is, when the council is reconstituted by the BJP it is not just the substitution of one set of historians by another. It is an attempt to privilege the Hindutva view of history to the exclusion of all other views. Whether this will qualitatively affect the profession of history only the future can tell. But there is no doubt that it spells danger to the discipline. Similarly, the BJP’s policy of controlling the cultural and intellectual field may considerably affect its plural character.

Do you not agree that states that have been dominated by Left-wing ideology in India — I refer especially to West Bengal — have also done a grave disservice to history and social studies learning by sanitising it in tune with the ‘politically correct’ position?

Equating what is happening today under the BJP dispensation with what has happened in West Bengal and other states is not proper. It is true that certain distortions of history are present in textbooks used in all states in India. The NCERT had set up a committee to review the textbooks and its report gives innumerable examples of distortions and mistakes. Some of them are part of the colonial baggage, which by sheer inertia, indifference and incompetence we have not given up. Many of them are also unconscious mistakes.

In West Bengal, some of the biases against the minorities have been eliminated or some historical incidents which might create communal feelings have been avoided. Whether it is proper to do so is a debatable issue. But these are not the same as the deliberate distortion and falsification that the parivar is attempting. For the parivar, the falsification of history is part of its political agenda. I feel that the liberal tendency of equating the two does considerable damage to the secular cause.

I may end with my recent experience in the Silicon Valley. Among the group of Indians I addressed at Stanford, there were a large number of people influenced by communal propaganda on history and related subjects. Although they were well ‘educated’ — most of them were engineers and other professionals — they had uncritically internalised the Hindu communal argument.

The expatriate Indians, it is well-known, have been supporting the Hindu communal movement, morally and materially. A professor of history at the University of California told me that the students opting for the course on Indian civilisation attend only the ‘ancient period’ and stop coming to the class once the ‘medieval period’ starts.

I think the expatriate Indians face a cultural and intellectual problem. Placed in an alien milieu they seek to define their cultural identity and try to relate to their intellectual tradition. Hindutva has come as an easy solution to their cultural crisis. I wonder whether the innumerable secular groups active abroad have been sensitive to this issue and have taken initiatives to bring to their notice an alternate explanation of culture and tradition through community-based programmes.

The secular forces in India, too, have to take this into account as the financial support of the expatriate Indians have considerably boosted the Hindutva movement in India, as is evident from the history of the rise of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.


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