History like criminal justice, belongs to the victor. The further back you go in time, more the scope for manipulating historical data. India has long grappled with its history of invasions, occupation and colonization. However unpalatable those events may have been, they too are part of Indian history. While the urge to remove statues of past colonizers from public places and erase their names from Indian streets and cities is understandable, establishment of historical facts ought to be grounded in serious and objective scholarship.
India's history is a multilayered palimpsest of thousands of years of invasions, conquests, settlements and human traffic. Virtually all races, religions and cultures of the world have mingled in India through the millennia. Written Indian history is relatively recent and except for the philosophical / religious texts of the Upanishads and the Vedas, not much of ancient Indian history is on record. Unlike the Egyptians, who left a rich and lasting journal of kings and their regimes on the walls of the pyramids, not many permanent edifices containing such information dating back thousands of years, exist in India. The history of ancient India therefore, is often a matter of some debate. Now that debate has spilled over into the middle school history curriculum in California.
NEW DELHI - In the halls of Sacramento, a special commission is rewriting Indian history: debating whether Aryan invaders conquered the subcontinent, whether Brahman priests had more rights than untouchables, and even whether ancient Indians ate beef.
That this seemingly arcane Indian debate has spilled over into California's board of education is a sign of the growing political muscle of Indian immigrants and the rising American interest in Asia.
The foes - who include established historians and Hindu nationalist revisionists - are familiar to each other in India. But America may increasingly become their new battlefield as other US states follow California in rewriting their own textbooks to bone up on Asian history.
One of the biggest bones of contentions is whether India was settled by invading Aryans who supposedly arrived on horseback and chariots from Central Asia, and whether Hinduism originated from a religious philosophy they brought with them. Hindu-centric scholars believe that Hinduism is a homegrown religion of native born inhabitants of India. The Aryan invasion theory, according to them is yet another devious ploy by Europeans to lay claim to one of the world's great ancient civilizations and religious philosophy.
The hottest debate centered on when Indian civilization began, and by whom. For the past 150 years, most historical, linguistic, and archaeological research has dated India's earliest settlements to around 2600 BC. And most established historical research contends that the cornerstone of Indian civilization - the practice of Hindu religion - was codified by people who came from outside India, specifically Aryan language speakers from the steppes of Central Asia.
Many Hindu nationalists are upset by the notion that Hinduism could be yet another religion, like Islam and Christianity, with foreign roots. "Textbooks must mention that none of the [ancient] texts, nor any Indian tradition, has a recollection of any Aryan invasion or migration," writes S. Kalyanaraman, an engineer and prominent pro-Hindu activist, in an e-mail to this reporter. (H)istorian Meenakshi Jain, a self-described nationalist, says that history is meant to be rewritten, depending on the perspective and needs of the present time.
"Indic civilization has been a big victim of misrepresentation and belittling of our culture," says Ms. Jain, a historian at Delhi University and author of a high school history textbook accepted by India's previous government, led by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party.
"There is no such thing as an objective history," Jain says. "So when we write a textbook, we should make students aware of the status of current research of leading scholars in the field. It should not shut out a love for motherland, a pride in your past. If you teach that your country is backward, that it has no redeeming features in our civilization, it can damage a young perspective."
I say, with my limited scholarly knowledge of history, is it such a big deal even if the latter day Hindus originally came from somewhere else and were not "sons of the soil"? If they continued to live in India for three thousand plus years and populated much of India with their progeny, they ARE Indians. Why is it such an affront to today's Indian identity if the Aryans (or whoever else "civilized" ancient India) were "foreigners" thousands of years ago? I do not know where the Hindus (Indians) came from and frankly, I don't care very much. I am much more interested in seeing modern India get its political, social and economic acts together. So, let the archaeologists, paleontologists and forensic anthropologists get their shovels out and start digging. Then let the chips fall where they may.
I am hardly surprised that ultra conservative Hindus are flexing their muscles in matters of school curriculum. They are playing "follow the leader". Vocal support for Intelligent Design expressed by conservative Christian politicians including the President, has emboldened all religious revisionists. The Hindu fundamentalists too have their alternative scientific theories about the creation of the universe which they haven't yet submitted for consideration to school boards across America. What happens when they do? The Discovery Institute and its patrons will learn a simple lesson in physics - "increase in downward momentum is facilitated by a slippery slope".
Note: Thanks to Sudip Bose for the tip.
I say, with my limited scholarly knowledge of history, is it such a big deal even if the latter day Hindus originally came from somewhere else and were not "sons of the soil"? If they continued to live in India for three thousand plus years and populated much of India with their progeny, they ARE Indians. Why is it such an affront to today's Indian identity if they were "foreigners" thousands of years ago? I do not know where the Hindus (Indians) came from and frankly, I don't care very much. I am much more interested in seeing modern India get its political, social and economic acts together. So, let the archaeologists, paleontologists and forensic anthropologists get their shovels out and start digging. Then let the chips fall where they may.
It's a heated debated. The British used this pretext to justify their colonialism of India. Now communists and leftists use this "invasion theory" for their political ends.
Posted by: the king of ghosts | January 25, 2006 at 02:24 AM
Great post. And you've made really pertinent points. Too many people have this misplaced sense of 'patriotism'.
Good blog you have here. I have linked to your blog (please excuse me for not sending a trackback, was unable to do so for technical reasons) here:
http://blogchaat.com/2006/02/19/confused-sense-of-patriotism/
Keep blogging!
Posted by: witnwisdumb | February 19, 2006 at 07:46 AM