6/19/2015

HistoryWillRemainPainfulUnlessWeInvestInSeriousScholarship|Swarajya

History Will Remain

Painful Unless We Invest
In Serious Scholarship
It is necessary for those sympathetic to an intellectually honest narrative of history to
get a hearing in the academic community. The only way, then, for that to happen is to
supply the market with good quality academic historians.
A couple of months ago, I was at a friends place for dinner with a bunch of other desis.
The discussion veered into making fun of the BJP, as it always does when one wishes
to show his intellectual prowess. A bunch of people made fun of Modis Ganesha and
plastic surgery remark followed by a few other BJP leaders statements, one of which
was related to the Pythagoras theorem.
I asked the claimant about what precisely was the issue with the claim, Pythagoras
theorem was first stated in India. The person started throwing big words, lots of
random names of books were dropped. A clear attempt was made to intimidate me by
jargon. Unfortunately, I knew the evidence on this one too well.
It is well known now that the first known statement of the Pythagoras theorem was
given in the Sulbha-sutras, much before Pythagoras. As noted mathematician and
Fields Medal winner Manjul Bhargava wrote, It should either be an Egyptian theorem if
you look at the standard of just having an idea about it, an Indian theorem if youre
looking for a complete statement of it, or a Chinese theorem if youre looking for the
proof of it
Having known of this article by Bhargava and the general evidence surrounding the
Pythagoras theorem, I could comprehensively debunk the saffornization of education
non-sense.
But I am not a historian. Neither am I a mathematician. Nor am I a student of history
of science. So, evidently, if, by chance, the topic at hand was, for example, Indians
giving first instances of Taylor series, again a fact thats well-known now, I would have
failed at countering similar charges. I was lucky to have read the evidence on
Pythagoras out of interest.

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But in the end, what did I achieve? I merely established that Pythagoras theorem was
first stated in India. Once this is established, goalposts are shifted. Ok, Pythagoras is
just one example, how about ?, the opponents ask. The pursuit is endless.
This is how the strategy of the Idea of India and saffronization of education camp
works. Steer clear of precise allegations while denigrating and casting aspersions on
anyone that talks highly of Indian achievements. Most people arent political and the
charges stick. If we break down the charges to individual claims, like I did, debunking
each of them requires a considerable amount of time, energy and dedication.
I was fortunate that the discussion turned to a precise claim that I knew a bit about.
Most often, it doesnt happen. The lies propagate. Truth has to fight to survive.
I will give yet another example to drive home this point.
We all know that Ambedkar converted to Buddhism along with a huge number of his
followers. Naturally, such a decision wasnt taken at the spur of a moment. He
deliberated at length on whether to convert and if yes, to which religion. Naturally,
theres a considerable commentary on this from that period.
Most people are like me in that they arent aware of any of these details. Therefore, if
there comes a history buff who can throw a lot of names and sell anything in the name
of Ambedkar, very often amateurs like us have to gobble up their claims. Very often, if
we dig a bit deeper the lies surface and we realize what a giant fraud we have been fed
in the name of history.
As an example, see this thread between two twitter users. The issue was whether
Ambedkar claimed converting to Islam or Christianity will denationalize Dalits or not.
The famous biographer Dhananjay Keer has a quote in his book that says so and the
other person accused even Keer of faking a quote. The problem was the quote came
from TOI archives from the 1930s and very few people have access to that. Add to that
the issue that Keer actually did get the date wrong in his book therefore, the user had
to go through many TOI issues from that period to finally obtain a conclusive proof of
Ambedkar having said so.
Yet again, the user merely managed to establish that Ambedkar did indeed say those
things. Now, the strategy is to talk about Ambedkars views on Hinduism to divert
attention.
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HistoryWillRemainPainfulUnlessWeInvestInSeriousScholarship|Swarajya

Yet again, the pursuit is endless. Goalposts are shifted. Evidence is created or
destroyed. People are silenced through jargon or force.
The problem is, when it comes to writing history, history isnt important. Politics is. In
the holy cause of revolution, some lies are fine. Perhaps necessary. For end justifies
the means.
And this is why, more than anything else that Indias only hope for creating an
environment where honest, scientific and rigorous narrative of history is possible, is
the BJP. The BJP needs to get its act together. The intellectual mafia will leave no
stone unturned in creating an impression that the BJP is distorting history. What is it, if
not irony, that Marxist historians are accusing BJP of using history for political
purposes? But how should the BJP act? I will share, what according to me, can be a
decent starting point.
The trouble with trying to correct history is that it is very hard to justify what is correct.
And some people can indeed go too far in giving their imagined history. After all,
claims of us having flown airplanes in Vedic times arent new. Admittedly, they do not
come from the RSS or the BJP, but it is their reputation that gets damaged.
One could argue that it is the sinister media at play in associating every lunatic with
RSS without fact-checking or mocking many factually correct claims by some RSS
people as saffronization. While theres truth in this, having understood the constraint of
having to work in an environment of hostile media, there needs to be a strategy to
counter it intellectually and not capitulate.
Firstly, we must be prepared to accept incidents in history that reflect poorly on some
people or groups we admire. There has never been a flawless person ever and there
will never be. The reason why I stress on this is because, I think, this is the greatest
undoing of the Leftists. There isnt a single admirable thing about Savarkar according
to them.
In the same spirit, Nehru seems to be a modern-day Sri Rama(an anathema himself),
perfect from every angle. If we are to present an alternative history that has our heroes
as impeccable as Leftists creation of Nehru then that version is likely to meet the
same fate which the Left version meets today. No sensible person is ever going to take
it seriously.

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HistoryWillRemainPainfulUnlessWeInvestInSeriousScholarship|Swarajya

The necessary and sufficient condition for ensuring that a political history gets passed
on to generations is intellectual honesty. Studying history entails countless hours of
reading, assimilating and analyzing various sources. It is a job that requires
perseverance, dedication and discipline. The reason why the Right, with some notable
exceptions, has not brought down the Marxist mafia is because most people arent
prepared to dedicate the requisite efforts towards a serious study of history. And that
is understandable. People have to make a living.
It is necessary for those sympathetic to an intellectually honest narrative of history to
get a hearing in the academic community. The only way, then, for that to happen is to
supply the market with good quality academic historians. This is where the government
can and should step in. Directly planting its supporters with questionable academic
credentials is appealing in the short run but is fraught with dangers that go beyond
simply a fall of reputation. We dont have to look too far for an example of how
perverse consequences of narrow-minded revision of history can be.
The question is how to create good quality academic historians?
I believe this can be achieved by incentivizing sharp, analytical students at an early age
to take up history as a profession. This can be done by providing fellowships and
scholarships for students doing well in their Class XII exams, should they choose to
study history in their undergrad and post-grad. For example, providing 5 scholarships
of amounts Rs.10,000 per month for history UG and PG students each year amounts to
about Rs.30 Lacs (5 students, 5 years (3UG+2PG), 12 months). On top of this, 3
scholarships of amount Rs.30,000 per month for PhD students each year amounts to
about Rs.54 Lacs. (3 students, 5 years, 12 months).
For a net investment of about 1 crore a year, an amount that is tiny for the government,
we can hope to attract talented students who have other outside options to take up a
career in history. If we are to do this though, it has to be ensured, at any cost, that only
the meritorious students get the scholarships. The government should, under no
circumstances, be obligated to provide scholarships to people who dont make the cut.
In that sense, probably a private entity awarding these scholarships may be a better
idea as a number of foundations passionate about history will ensure that they dont
fund students who are taking up history purely because of lack of options.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, this is a cleaner route. If the talented pool
that we select does end up having very similar views on history as are prevalent today
we should probably introspect on whether the version of history that we think is
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HistoryWillRemainPainfulUnlessWeInvestInSeriousScholarship|Swarajya

concocted, really biased after all. My hypothesis is that it is extremely unlikely. If we do

end up attracting people who have outside options to take up history through
scholarships, we will see major upheaval in how academic history is taught and
pursued in India.
If this experiment succeeds, non-practitioners like me will not have to defend Indias
contribution in sciences, mathematics, art, culture and medicine. We owe an honest
narration of history to our future generations. Let us plant the trees. The rest will take
care of itself.

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