People's Democracy

Why Fascists Can’t Stand Romila Thapar

Nalini Taneja

THE last few years have seen systematic attacks on secular historiography by an education ministry led by the RSS leader Murli Manohar Joshi and by various institutions now filled with RSS sympathisers and activists. Institutions that were created to defend secularism in this country, and to promote scientific temper and research, have become the agencies and funding bodies for promoting sectarian, right wing politics. Individual historians have not been spared either. Vilification campaigns and threats from RSS linked right-wing Hindutva outfits have become routine.

Historian Romila Thapar has for long been designated ‘enemy’ by them. The latest in connection with her is a most malicious campaign by the RSS and its sympathisers, both in India and abroad, after the Library of Congress in Washington recently named her the First Holder of the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the South. Activists of the Hindu Right have been running a petition against her appointment.

The holder of the chair, which is located in the John W Kluge Centre of the Library of Congress, pursues research on the regions of Africa, Latin America, West Asia, South and Southeast Asia, or the islands of the Pacific including Australia and New Zealand, using the immense foreign language collections in the specialised reading rooms of the Library of Congress. Romila Thapar is to spend ten months at the John W Kluge Centre pursuing 'Historical Consciousness in Early India' as her area of research.

As we all know, Romila Thapar, like many of her colleagues, has written and spoken against the systematic onslaught on the secular foundations of the educational system by the forces of the Hindu Right. Her writings on early India expose the hollowness and absolute fraud involved in the Hindutva view of ‘history’. The main contentions of the RSS identifying Indian civilisation as essentially Hindu, Indus valley civilisation as Aryan civilisation, and Aryans as the original inhabitants of India, and the entire presentation of Indian history as a clash of separate and homogenous Hindu and Muslim communities, and of movement in history as dictated by the ‘clash’ of these ‘two’ ‘antagonistic’ civilisations is rejected in her writings. Her book History of India (Penguin) has been continuously in print since 1966. Her latest publication is 'Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300', an enlarged and revised edition of the earlier book, which in effect is a new book bringing in a lot more material and new questions and themes. Among her other recent publications are 'History and Beyond' and 'Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History', a collection of her essays. Romila Thapar has pioneered both the study of early Indian texts as history and the integration of the critical use of archaeology with written sources.

The RSS linked outfits have, always opposed her. But it is a measure of how they perceive themselves today that they do not think twice about campaigning openly and in an organised fashion against an honour conferred even by institutions outside this country, which are autonomous and independent, and which certainly do not need permission from the RSS to decide who they should confer honours on. If nothing else, this campaign points towards the strength of the Hindutva forces in the US and their links with the right wing outfits in India, and also the encouragement that organisations such as the ‘Friends of the BJP’ have received from the BJP government, particularly from the prime minister himself and the home minister Advani.

This campaign must also be seen in conjunction with the circular emanating from the ministry of human resources development, which requires that permission from the Education department be sought for inviting any foreign scholar for a seminar or lecture, and that in the case of a scholar wanting to do field work or give lectures he/she must also furnish the synopsis of the study to be conducted or the contents of the lecture. And of course scholars from Bangladesh and Pakistan must also have a home ministry clearance. The honour conferred on such a respected historian from India, such as Romila Thapar is, should have elicited a congratulatory statement from the government. Instead there is no support for her from the over active Education Department of this country. If anything, there is tacit support for the vilification campaign from the so-called guardians of our culture. After eliminating secular historians from effective positions under their control, they now want to use their influence abroad to project a sectarian view of Indian culture abroad by somehow ensuring that ‘intellectuals’ of their persuasion rather than a secular mind set represent India in all institutions concerned with Indian/south asian studies.

The petition circulating on the Internet against the appointment of Professor Romila Thapar alleges that she is a Marxist and anti-Hindu and it is a waste of US money to support a Leftist. It goes on to say: “It is a great travesty that Romila Thapar has been appointed the first holder of the Kluge Chair. In regards to India, she is an avowed antagonist of India's Hindu civilization as a well-known Marxist. She represents a completely Euro-centric worldview. I fail to see how she can be the correct choice to represent India's ancient history and civilization. "She completely disavows that India ever had a history. The ongoing campaign by Romila Thapar and others to discredit Hindu civilization is a war of cultural genocide. By your unfortunate selection of Thapar, America is now aiding and abetting this effort." And further… “Hinduism is the world's most ancient, ongoing and largest cultural phenomenon. Such a long-lived civilization surely has a lot to teach the world. So why support its denigration?”

The right wing campaign has created considerable consternation among all those who prize secularism and democracy. There has been a worldwide support for her, congratulatory messages to the Library of Congress, and a strong condemnation of the Hindutva campaign. The Library of Congress has responded to this support through individual e-mails from Professor Gifford, which says: ‘Thank you for your e-mail in support of Professor Romila Thapar. We are receiving so much positive e-mail that I can acknowledge them only briefly.

One can see from this campaign and counter campaign what are the issues at stake, and what the fight for a secular historiography is all about. History has always been linked with politics, and the struggle over retrieving/constructing a past has significant implications for the kind of future we envision and work towards. There is a need to widen the struggle for the defence of secular historiography to include all concerned citizens, to realise that everybody has a stake in secularism.