let us remember that history is as much a professional subject as any other discipline, and if one has to feel close to its ripples in our vast and ancient land, we must have a rigorous and disciplined approach to it, without prejudices, argues DIlIP K CHAKRABARTI
The fact that only 53 of the few thousand history teachers of the country have expressed dismay at the supposed tide of intolerance in India, is a joke, and raises the simple question: Are these people professionally any good and can they claim on this basis that their comments on the country’s affairs are worth taking seriouslyIJ The professional status of the historians in question, except for a handful who have still kept themselves busy in empirical historical investigations, leaves much to be desired.
Not being a part of science-technology consortium and thus basically weak in drawing funds, historical subjects are not greeted with open-arms warmth by the institutional authorities in most parts of the world. India is an exception in the sense that here, universities are fully funded by the Government, which set up even a funding body exclusively for historians in 1972. That the character of Indian historical research has not significantly improved since then, is due exclusively to the skulduggery among the many historians themselves.
The professional classes enjoy a certain amount of back-biting among themselves, but the fact that the study of history in Indian universities has not attracted, comparatively speaking, bright students for many years, has told heavily on the quality of research and teaching of the subject. It has essentially been a subject of IAS-aspirants. A PhD student of mine, whose name figures as that of a professor in the concerned ‘list of 53’, failed the IAS entrance test thrice, and turned to research. Another PhD student of mine, currently an aspirant for a vice-chancellorship in Delhi, has apparently every reason to feel dissatisfied with the way the Government ignored her — and thus she became a signatory to the intolerance document!
The second major factor is the politicisation of the subject since the early 1970s, when the communists took over the charge of writing history on behalf of the Government and began to vitiate the entire history profession with a ruthlessness that is difficult to imagine. I see no improvement in the scenario unless the brighter elements among the present-day history teachers put the so-called senior people into limbo.
The third factor is the professional inability of the historians at the helm of the university departments and elsewhere to take the subject to new grounds and make it exciting. Possibly, the only significant exception is the domain of modern Indian economic history, which has culminated in a regularly published excellent journal. Archaeology also became a new field, but here the progress was seriously handicapped by the lack of a well-planned science infrastructure and some bizarre thought of India having always been a ‘colony’.
The fourth factor was the serious neglect of political history studies, damaging in turn studies of ancient Indian coins and inscriptions. Very few universities have expert people on their staff and the current state of these studies is despairing, although the study of coins seems to be in better hands than the study of inscriptions. The Sanskrit departments of the universities can play a lead role, but apparently they have more weighty matters such as Aryans on their hands!
The fifth factor is a singularly lop-sided development of the different branches of the discipline. Currently it is disproportionately dominated by the study of ‘modern India’ — the study of modern Indian politics being a hot favourite in many history departments. The study of ancient and mediaeval India is plainly ignored in these set-ups. In Kolkata, the study of ancient and medieval India (not to mention archaeology) got kicked into the background, and bright Bengali gentlemen with a specialisation in the price of jute and indigo in British India, used to go to Oxford to get a PhD! I note the presence of one such gentleman in this ‘list of 53’.
In the 20th century, Rabindranath Tagore wrote about the necessity of relating history to the land. In all my years I have not heard any serious discussion on the matter and the necessary approach to it in the Indian universities. On the other hand, I can think of so many persons (many of them figure in the list of 53) who can rattle off Western theories of all kinds, whether related or unrelated, in any academic historical discussion. One gentleman’s life-time work seems to be the elaboration of the term ‘early mediaeval’ in the context of ancient India, and another character (this time a woman) seems to have edited a book on this unnecessary concept. Both are signatories to the document we have been discussing!
let us remember that history is as much a professional subject as any other discipline, and if one has to feel close to its ripples in our vast ancient land, we better have a rigorous and disciplined approach to it.
(The writer is Professor Emeritus, South Asian Archaeology, and a member of Indian Council of Historical Research)