June 29, 1998

There is nothing "scientific" about studying the past

Swapan Dasgupta

For a nation that is so casual about the preservation of its rich heritage, it is extraordinary that there are interminable controversies over history and historians. The recent outcry over the new executive council of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) is the latest chapter of a saga that began in 1990 when rival historians presented conflicting evidence over the pre-history of the Babri structure in Ayodhya. At stake, however, is not the legitimacy of either a Ram temple or a mosque. In the guise of a sectarian dispute, we are really witnessing a rather pedestrian tussle. The Left's existing monopoly over jobbery is being threatened by the Right.

Of course, at the heart of the dispute is a seemingly profound question: is history a science given to certitudes? The leftist historians who are beleaguered by their exclusion from the ICHR feel so. Ironically, their opponents think no differently. Both insist on using the past to rationalise political approaches to the present.

The concerns of the "secular" and "communal" approaches are revealing. The "communalists" focus on proving that there was no Aryan invasion and that Vedic civilisation was essentially indigenous. The "secularists" are equally rigid in asserting that there was no real Hindu-Muslim tension in medieval India and that disputes were on account of realpolitik. There are even some fanciful projections of Mahmud of Ghazni and Alauddin Khilji as early communists. Likewise, when comprehensible, the Subaltern historians seem intent on puncturing the claims of Indian nationhood. Finally, a set of incorrigible empiricists have leaned on archival evidence to show that the Raj was an aggregate of elaborate compromises with existing power structures, and that there was no grand imperial design.

These divergent approaches and fierce conflicts have indicated quite conclusively -- what should have been apparent all along -- that no side has a monopoly on the truth. In fact, that there is no truth at all and conclusions depend on the biases and assumptions of the historians themselves. This is why historians of an earlier age shied away from treating their subject as a "science". It was lumped under the protective umbrella of the liberal arts and was marked by rich narrative and captivating prose. Both are casualties in the furtive search for a scientific temper. Compared to the now discarded Vincent Smith and R.C. Majumdar, Irfan Habib reads like an accountant and Bipan Chandra a rapporteur. And Colonel James Tod did more for Indian history than all the resolutions of the Indian History Congress put together. If only today's historians paid as much attention to form as they do to their voting intentions.

Needless to add, these are subjective preferences and certain to be contested by professional historians. That precisely is the point. History is too alive and enthralling to be left to dogmatists and the politically correct. It is not merely a study of impersonal structures and lifeless statistics. History is a study of man and his blundering evolution. Like the present, there is a large degree of irrationality about the past. That is its inherent charm. For the past 25 years, the Left has taken the soul out of history; the Right should avoid compounding the blunder. Let's get back to enjoying history before persisting with its propagandist thrust. If ever there was a time for discarding fashionable gobbledygook, it is now.

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