Incredible India’s credible history

When the practice of history by professional historians becomes a casualty of the popular narrative, the field of education is also compromised.

The recent debate on ‘WhatsApp history’ versus academic history is not the first time academic historians have been put in the dock. However, the critique this time is not mounted by the right-wing and communal formations, but by a well-known practitioner of popular history. At a conference organised by a publication, author William Dalrymple said that academic historians, and particularly Marxists, writing history that is not accessible to the public are responsible for the spread of WhatsApp history. 

This is mostly not the case, and many academic historians in India have taken their work to the public as part of a social and political commitment. This would include efforts like writing in Indian languages and publishing low-cost editions. Historians are joined by students and teachers who have floated initiatives, including History for Peace, National Movement Front, Aligarh Historians Society, Karwaan and the Indian History Collective. This adds up to a cache of public history more substantial than Dalrymple’s popular history, reaching only a discerning reading public comprising an English-educated elite.

One cannot but wonder why Dalrymple picks on the Marxist academic historians, given that they are a favourite target of the right wing. A quarter century ago, communal forces mounted an assault on left historians. Epithets like ‘The enemies of Indianisation: Children of Marx, Macaulay and Madrasa’ and ‘intellectual terrorism unleashed by the left’, which was ‘more dangerous than cross border terrorism’ were freely bandied by RSS and BJP leaders. These were used to delegitimise the eminent historians who had written the school history textbooks that were subsequently withdrawn. The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) had persuaded these globally renowned authors to write textbooks, which would correct the existing colonial and communal bias in history books, on the recommendation of the National Integration Council. They were the foremost professional historians who undertook this task of taking the best scholarship to the public in the form of school textbooks. 

The NCERT books, taught in the 1960s, were written by R S Sharma, Romila Thapar, Bipan Chandra, Satish Chandra and Arjun Dev, all associated with propagating secular and scientific history, a bugbear to the RSS. It was secular and scientific history which posed a threat to the communal worldview. Bashing of the left was a convenient ploy often adopted.

However, the distorted history in the textbooks from the RSS stable during the National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA) first term in power, which replaced the ones by the pilloried secular historians, did not gain widespread acceptance by teachers, students and parents. The biased history came into its own with the spread of social media, when one and all set themselves up as practitioners of history. Social media was full of claims of a thousand years of slavery, equating the British and the Mughals, and a glorious ancient past in contrast to the negative portrayal of the Mughal period. Religious gurus, political leaders and amateur authors were at par in providing the content. 

Significant casualties 

Professional historians continue to cry themselves hoarse that history-writing must be left to the experts trained in the discipline. 

If the practice of history by professional historians is a casualty of the vulgarisation of history, a more significant casualty is the entire field of education as we know it, and particularly education based on reason.

Others have pointed to this, but Romila Thapar puts it across loud and clear: “This isn’t an issue of Left-Liberals versus the Hindu Right, as has been the contention in the history controversy. This concerns a fundamental principle on which many disciplines are based. If the NCERT is going to cut away the foundational principles of reasoned intellectual thought, then there will be nothing left of education, barring knowing the alphabet and numbers 1 to 10.”

In 2023, the NCERT announced massive deletions from the history and political science textbooks. It dropped sensitive topics such as the Gujarat riots of 2002 when the Prime Minister was CM of Gujarat, as well as caste oppression, which questioned the glorious Hindu past. This is the crux of the issue: The distinction between professional history and amateur fiddling. 

Society accepts that engineers require degrees, as do management professionals. Still, the terrain of history is the happy hunting ground of the dilettante, the amateur, and the uncle who ‘lived through those years’. This writing may be more accessible, entertaining, and engaging, but it is not history as we understand the discipline, professed by experts, backed by evidence. Professional historians train in the academy and field to acquire expertise in handling material, whether in the excavation pit or in the archives. 

Vested interests

History has moved from a reification of objectivity to a self-reflexive narrative with a place for the subjective. This has enhanced its appeal and widened its scope. Yet, that has not taken away from the rigour that binds the practice. When an eminent historian hosts a television series that reaches primatology or culinary traditions to the public, she conforms to the same standards of professionalism that marked her writing.  

‘WhatsApp history’ is not history; there is no methodology of verification in place or any requirements for acceptable standards of credible history. It caters to those who willingly accept versions of the past which massage the egos of their communities and castes. This feature makes it highly suitable for the spread of communal narratives. 

It helps that the narratives emanate from the political leadership at the highest levels. Examples of this are the Prime Minister’s reference to a thousand years of slavery and scientific achievements of the ancient past.

The Prime Minister also lent his authority to the proud claim: “We worship Lord Ganesha. There must have been some plastic surgeon at that time who got an elephant’s body on the head of a human being and began the practice of plastic surgery”. This was in October 2014, while he was inaugurating a hospital in Mumbai. None in the audience called him out. The list of those present was a who’s who of doctors, actors and business leaders. The newspaper report of the event was repeatedly carried on social media, giving credence to claims made by “Vedic science”. 

This reveals how communal discourse is manufactured, given authority and popularised on social media. There is a large contingent out there orchestrating the effort. These are backed by the armies on the streets fanning the fires. And a political class reaping the whirlwind. The alleged limited reach of a few professional historians cannot account for the raging communal discourse on social media. A popular historian must surely see that. 

(Sucheta Mahajan is a former professor of history at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)