Academics slam ‘Indian culture’ panel

It has no one from the southern and NE states and no women, and seeks to study an era when there was no concept of nationality

A central government committee set up last week to define Indian culture is drawing flak on many fronts. Prahlad Patel, minister for culture, has announced a 16-member committee to study the origin and evolution of Indian culture over 12,000 years.

The committee has no women members, and no members from the southern and north-eastern states. “Also, scholars who have worked on Dalit and non-Hindu subjects are also conspicuous by their absence,” says historian Malavika Binny.

The panel reminds her of the all-white all-British Simon Commission which set out to study and recommend Constitutional reforms in India, she says.

Diversity and history

Diversity is important when studying history, says Meera Iyer, convenor, INTACH Bangalore, because history is not just a series of facts.

“Much of history involves interpretation and understanding the hows and whys of what might have happened. Reasoned deductions have to take place. Two people may interpret the same fact differently. Thus you cannot ignore the lens of identity,” she explains.

Smriti Haricharan, archeologist and assistant professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, is apprehensive a committee made up of upper caste, Hindu, middle class, male members is likely to represent a single perspective of the past.

Malavika adds that history plays a crucial role in national policy making and the preclusion of certain categories of people is unhealthy.

Lack of experts

Another concern is the lack of history scholars in the committee. “Most are either from an archaeological or administrative background and have very little to do with scholarship on ancient history,” says Malavika.

Without the use of rigorous methodology and meticulous analysis, the panel will be more prone to propaganda-based narratives of history, she fears.

She explains that the setting of 12,000 years as the starting point of Indian culture is arbitrary. “This period is not even termed as ancient history by professional historians and is referred to as prehistory, i.e. the Mesolithic to Neolithic era. One should also note that people from those periods had very limited or no sense of territoriality, much less any idea of nation or nationality,” she says.

Prerana Srimaal, history professor, says even 10,000 years ago we were largely in the Middle Stone Age.

“Even the thought of a nation-state would not have been formed at this point. So it’s baffling that this study of ancient Indian culture wants to begin from this point,” she says.

What is Indian culture?

Haricharan explains that the term ‘culture’ is used by archaeologists and historians to classify and understand the past.

“For example, the burials of the Iron Age culture of South India have been referred to as megalithic culture and sometimes the pottery type — such as black and red ware culture — is used in nomenclature,” she says.

The term ‘Indian culture’ is connected to India’s colonial past and was used in modern history, she says. This makes the period chosen for the study more concerning. “Soon, all aspects of Indian history from the Harappan civilisation to the Tinai system in the south, which have nothing to do with Hinduism, would be refracted through a saffron lens. As a historian, I am extremely worried about what our future students will learn as history,” she concludes.

Lack of funding

Smriti Haricharan, assistant professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, says archeology remains underfunded and departments of archaeology are few in number, and understaffed.
Funding existing projects and involving working archaeologists would have enriched the study, she says.

Sanskrit experts

At least five members in the committee are touted to be Sanskrit experts. Other Indian languages are not represented.

Smriti Haricharan, who has predominantly done her archeological work in Tamil Nadu, says that a grasp of the other languages is essential. History professor Prerana Srimaal agrees. “There were no written records 12,000 years ago. The oldest written texts are Ashoka’s edicts, from about 2,000 years ago. Even these were not in Sanskrit,” she says. Instead of defining a 12,000-year span, the government should concentrate on harnessing the disciplines of archeology, anthropology, geology and more, she suggests.