Hindu. Who? Epilogue

Meenakshi Srinivasan

21 May 2008, 17:08

Continued from “Hindu. Who? Part Five

Researching the Hindu. Who? series, I linked on and on in this amazing thing called the internet when I hit upon an entire collection of Arun Shourie’s essays on the web. One of the comments on one of my posts asked who these “historians” were, by name. I did not have a clue (apart from Romila Thapar’s). Now I do, I also have an idea of how much they were paid to write books on Indian History that were never “submitted” for publication. We can conclude that they were never written. A small excerpt below:

Here, in the words of the ICHR (Indian Council of Historical Research), is a list of the period to be covered by the volume, the scholar to whom it was assigned, the money the scholar collected,
the result:


Reading this article made me feel ill in the stomach. How can anyone do such a treacherous act towards their own country that paid them princely amounts in the 70’s when the Indian Rupee had more value? How could they compromise their academic integrity, hoping they will never be caught? How can they take credit for work that was not theirs? And worst of all, how can they have the temerity to tell the world that Indian History is but the arrival of a bunch of horse-riding nomads from Central Asia?

I wonder what other truths will be made public with the RTI (Right to Information) Act? I feel such a deep sense of betrayal, that I am unable to formulate my thoughts or even write in an objective manner. Please all of you read the article by Arun Shourie. The one good thing that Arun Shourie did not anticipate during his journalistic days was the power of the internet and the inverted structure of information dissemination! Power to the net, I say.

Footnote: While our friend Romila Thapar has cited 67 books (more than its share of Western authors) in her book (according to Amazon), her book has been cited in 133 books, mostly written by non-Sanskrit knowing “scholars” who rehash “non-Sanskrit” based “Brahman Orthodoxy” bashing by Romila Madam. She has not picked one book published by the Bharathiya Vidya Bhavan, one of the outstanding publishing houses of India which has faithfully kept the integrity of Indian texts in their original language, primarily Samskritham. All their authors are great scholars of repute in ancient Indic texts and literary traditions. I wonder just how much of Samskritham this lady knows. The drivel she writes in her book (read a few excerpts offered by Amazon), it is evident that she knows not what she writes. Pity the other “authors” quoting her.

Comment

  1. Yet another fanatic rants against Romila Thapar! One would wish that these fanatics could at least be coherent.

    Pray, what’s the link between historians not submitting works they were paid for and Romila Thapar? Did Romila Thapar fail to submit a work she was paid for? I fail to understand the point being made.

    So Romila Thapar has not quoted from books published by the Bharathiya Vidya Bhavan. So what? That don’t mean she ceases to be the best historian India has ever produced. For the benefit of those not familiar with the ongoing ruckus in Indian historical circles, ever since the rise of Hindu fundamentalism in India (since 1992, after Babri Masjid was demolished), fanatic Hindu fundamentalists has been trying to discredit mainstream Indian historians. Romila Thapar is their pet target. In 2003, Romila Thapar was appointed to the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the South at the Library of Congress. Rabid Hindu fundamentalists in the US launched a signature campaign against Romila Thapar on the ground that she is an “avowed antagonist of India’s Hindu civilisation”, a Eurocentric Marxist, and too prejudiced or “ignorant” to be able to contribute to understanding Indian society and culture.

    Read this article on Romila Thapar by Praful Bidwai:

    http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2010/stories/20030523004911500.htm

    — Anup Misra · May 22, 15:14 · #

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