“WE GIVE IN TO POLITICAL AUTHORITY TOO EASILY”
“If the past is to be called upon to legitimise the present, then the veracity of such a past is to be continually vetted.” “Nations need new identities. Reliable history is critical in that.” “Before we quote tradition, we should ask the question as to whose tradition we are observing—which caste, which class, which religious sect, which region.” At 82, Romila Thapar’s pen is as forceful as ever. India’s premier historian has just written a book that encapsulates the times we live in, The Past as Present, where she urges us to continually question received wisdom, examine the potential of unconventional views, and debate interpretations of history if we are to grow as a society. In the midst of getting ready for a six-week tour which takes her to half-a-dozen universities across America to lecture on her last book, The Past Before Us, Thapar takes time off from telephone calls and cataloguing her fantastic book collection to speak to Editor KAVEREE BAMZAI on why we need to learn from our mistakes. Q. Is the next battle of ideas already upon us, when you have a Dinanath Batra dictating whether we should read Wendy Doniger or not? These are the same people who launched a vicious attack on people like you 15 years ago for the textbooks you wrote. Do we have a leadership that can take on the custodians of the new order? A. Such a leadership is not visible at the moment. But very often alternative routes do emerge when a situation takes an extreme form. Which is why I end the book with the chapter on the agitation against the December 2012 rape, when people literally poured out into the streets. A week before that, if someone would have asked me is there going to be an opposition, I’d have said no. And yet, within hours there was an articulation of a very strong position. I find that extremely impressive. One just hopes that somewhere there is an alternative position that will be articulated. Q. That will only happen if people understand the importance of education not just as a means, as a passport to a job, as you have said. A. Education is not just a qualification. Education is a state of mind. I think that is what is amiss amongst those who are educators, those who have been educated and those who are still being taught. The emphasis should be on what is the state of mind we want to create. Q. As you say in your book, nations need identities and reliable history is critical in that. A. Absolutely. Identities are based on history be- cause people continually talk about the past. Identity is based also on contemporary problems and it’s the way the contemporary thinks about the past that contributes to the identity. But the way you think about the past, if it is garbled history, then you produce an identity that’s not viable. But if it is a history that may be controversial but is discussed, debated, played out, and the origins of ideas are discussed, then it’s viable. Even the general reader has to be taught that you have to question the origin of ideas and you have to question how ideas are imposed. An idea is not something that exists by itself in isolation, it is rooted in society. So it is absolutely essential to look at an idea and ask how did this idea come about, who brought it about, what is its function, how is it being used, can it be used better, where is all this leading to? Q. You say mythology is increasingly being passed off as history. What’s happening right now is precisely that, in this appropriation of icons by BJP and RSS and this war of icons between BJP and Congress, isn’t it? A. The first thing one has to look at when an icon is picked up, like Sardar Patel in Gujarat, is to answer in some detail the question of why these particular icons. There is a process of selection. Why are these chosen? Which of course relates very much to the politics of a person, whether the choice is that of a political party. Then one goes into the question of what did these icons represent when they were living. Q. But there’s not enough knowledge about them, isn’t it? A. There are at least two reasons for that. One is that history is still taught at the school and college level in an extremely out-of-date fashion, which makes it seem irrelevant. Second, it is abused by political parties. A complex character like Aurangzeb, for instance, who had negatives and positives. There is an inability to understand Aurangzeb’s complexities and there is a rush to declare him to be tyrannical and anti-Hindu. And yet, kingship, emperorship in this case, is a highly complex activity where you cannot simply dismiss someone as being good and someone else as being bad. This is bad history. Good history requires far more analysis of the reasons why people in history acted in particular ways. Q. The NDA killed education with far too much attention of the wrong kind, but the UPA perhaps killed it by not paying enough attention of the right kind. A. When has a seriously thought-out educational policy been implemented? We’ve had two to three generations on which to work. The problem is that
even when the government opens schools, in rural areas for example, they are generally in an upper caste area and if the lower caste children go there they are taunted, and many stop going to school. So it is absolutely essential that the best schools be located near or in lower caste areas.
The other problem is that radio and TV are not used for any educational purposes. That is because the importance of education is not emphasised and people today judge you by the amount of money you can flash around but not by the reflection of your education. Q. Do you think the politicians we have are not particularly interested in history? A. It’s not that the leadership has become indifferent merely to history. If you have a leadership that does not value a good general education, it will be indifferent to everything except the immediate political agenda. There is also the question of the quality of the people who are going into politics. It will be interesting to see whether people like Nandan Nilekani can introduce a change. Then we hear a lot of talk about how we have always been a tolerant and non-violent society. Look around you, where is the tolerance? Where is the non-violence? Q. Why does the right wing feel the need to appropriate Sardar Patel or Swami Vivekananda. Why don’t they project the Savarkars and the Golwalkars? A. Being a Hindu nationalist or a Muslim nationalist is a contradiction because being a nationalist in itself implies that you have a broader identity than the identity of your religion or your caste or your region. How do you get around this? If you pick up an icon who is strictly a Hindu icon, like Savarkar, that’s a limited view of the Indian citizen, because Savarkar was very clear that the primary Indian citizen is the Hindu. Q. Why doesn’t the right wing project Syama Prasad Mookerjee? A. Perhaps because he hasn’t left such a trail and perhaps because he hadn’t taken such an extreme position? There’s obviously a feeling now that they’re on the edge of taking over political power as they see it, that they have to make some concessions. Q. If there’s tinkering with history and education as there was in 1999, do you think we would be equipped to deal with it? A. No, we are not equipped to deal with it partly because we tend to give in to political authority too easily. There isn’t enough backbone to oppose and also take a consistent position based on rational thinking to state what we want in our education system. Both rational thinking and sensitivity are required in the process of educating a young person.
“HISTORY IS STILL TAUGHT IN AN OUT-OFDATE FASHION, AND IS ABUSED BY POLITICAL
PARTIES.”