States: Kerala; Writing Rights

India Today, November 30, 1998
Nov 30, 1998

KERALA
Writing Rights

An ICHR member lashes out at the panel of editors chosen to write the cultural history of the state.

By M.G. Radhakrishnan

In Kerala, attempts to write history often end up stirring a controversy. In April last, the state Public Relations Department had plans to publish a history of the freedom movement in Kerala but it failed to materialise when historian A. Sreedhara Menon, who was assigned the job, hastily pulled out of the project. The reason: the public relations director "asked" him to write the book in consultation with veteran CPI(M) leader E.M.S. Namboodiripad who passed away earlier this year.

Now the state Culture Department's Rs 50 lakh project for a four-volume cultural history of Kerala in Malayalam and English too has run into similar trouble. Eminent historian M.G.S. Narayanan has launched a scathing attack on the project, dubbing it as an attempt to "write history by party hacks". Narayanan, who is said to be pro-BJP, alleges that all the historians selected to edit the different volumes are CPI(M) sympathisers. A member of the newly constituted Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), Narayanan has taken particular exception to the choice of P. Govinda Pillai, a CPI(M) ideologue and editor of one of the proposed volumes. "He is only a political propagandist. How can one who is not a professional historian edit a book on history?" asks Narayanan.

In fact, Narayanan was selected as the editor of the first volume but he had turned it down as early as in August saying the volume he was entrusted had to do with the period before 9th century while he specialised in the period after that.

"Narayanan had earlier described as ignorant historians who sympathised with the Marxists, even persons like Irfan Habib, Romila Thapar and a whole lot of historians. I think I am flattered to be put in that august company," responds Pillai, a writer and chairman of the Kerala Film Development Corporation. He also wonders why Narayanan, if he was so much against political activists writing history books, had no qualms about joining the newly constituted ICHR with "other pro-RSS historians". "He has long stopped studying or teaching history and makes a living by displaying and selling his highly lucrative anti-communism," says Pillai.

Rajan Gurukkal, another historian involved in the project, says, "Whatever be the editors' political beliefs, this project is purely academic and Narayanan's fears are unfounded." Apart from Pillai, the four other editors are professors of history and are also known leftists. The other editors are K.N. Panikkar, history professor at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, M.R. Raghava Warrier, K.N. Ganesh and Gurukkal. Incidentally, most of them were students of Narayanan when he headed the history department at Calicut University.

"It was Pillai who mooted the project and even suggested Narayanan's name as the editor of its first volume," says K.K. Thankappan, director, Department of Cultural Publications. According to him, none of the volumes is to be written by just one man or the editor himself. "It would be a collective venture of many scholars and experts," says the project report. "A scholar of eminence in the field may be selected to be the general editor of each volume and a team of about 30 expert historians must be mobilised to contribute on their specialised topics and periods." According to Pillai, it was because Narayanan's resignation in August went unnoticed that he has now raked up the issue by raising the partisan bogey.

Many historians known for their anti-CPI(M) stance have come out in Narayanan's defence. "He is absolutely right. Party hacks cannot be entrusted with a government project," says Sreedhara Menon who had a bitter experience with the ruling Left Democratic Front Government earlier. Former vice-chancellor and history professor T.K. Ravindran says Pillai is a historian only as much as the accepted fact that all human beings in a way are historians. Clearly, the pro-and anti-left debate is bound to dog the history project even after its completion.

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