The Congress party’s sense of history having eroded as sharply as its sense of identity under the present leadership, it was perhaps not surprising to find it joining the Left parties in Parliament to prevent Human Resources Development Minister Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi from replying to the substantive issues involved in the withdrawal of two volumes of the Towards Freedom series from the publisher. However, as the matter concerns the nation as a whole, it is gratifying to find the BJP-led government handling it from a national perspective, even though the party is aware that it may not derive direct political mileage from the manner in which the freedom struggle is ultimately recorded by genuine scholars.
Discerning readers would have noticed that though much venom has been poured over the BJP and RSS over the past few weeks, Left politicians, historians and fellow-travelers in the media have alike avoided all pertinent issues in the debate. They have relied upon lung power and the almost unlimited column space available to them in the press for a one-sided campaign based on hysteria and wild charges; but the contest is hollow and lacks sustainability. For instance, the attempt to link the Indian Council of Historical Research controversy with ‘saffron intolerance’ over Deepa Mehta’s film, Water, has fallen flat with credible allegations surfacing that the script may have plagiarized an award-winning novel.
With so much heat generated over ICHR’s decision to challenge the academic absolutism of a pampered group, it may be instructive to scrutinize the genesis of the project and understand its original purpose. Tracing its peculiar twists and turns through the corridors of history, we may uncover facts our Leftist friends are loathe to bring to the light of day.
It is well known that Towards Freedom is an Indian response to the publication of the “Transfer of Power” series by the British. The full story, however, is that in May 1966, the then British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, informed his country’s Parliament that his government proposed to bring out an official history of the process under which Britain withdrew from the colonies, and that the first country in this series would be India. This sparked off considerable political and academic concern in India that the British would misrepresent the freedom struggle as a ‘transfer of power’. Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia proposed that India counter the misleading Pakistani and British propaganda on the events leading firstly, to Partition, and secondly, to Independence.
This point is significant, because in the events leading up to August 15, 1947, Partition and Independence are so intricately connected that they simply cannot be de-linked. That is why the project was originally conceived in this manner as well. And since many of our modern-day problems as a nation are critically linked to the circumstances and aftermath of Partition, a responsible recording of this sensitive period would have been a sterling service to the nation. Perhaps that is why the mischief began here, but more of that later.
Since many Indians were of the view that the British presentation of official documents would be ‘selective’ and ‘incomplete,’ the concept of Towards Freedom was discussed at the Indian Historical Records Commission session at Patna in January 1968. It was decided to repudiate the British version of the events leading firstly to Partition and secondly to Independence, in a chronological manner, with official documents. As is evident, this was a nationalist project to chronicle authentic history for future generations, based on incontrovertible documents, through a presentation that could not be accused of bias. This is also why the National Archives of India (NAI) was included in the project from its inception.
The original project envisaged covering the period from 1939 – 47 in three volumes, as 1939 was the year in which the Congress provincial ministries resigned in protest against the British refusal to negotiate freedom in return for support during the Second World War. It was conceived as a five-year project, from 1971 to 1977, and was sanctioned a budget of Rs. 40 lakhs under the Fifth Plan.
The project actually took off in 1972, with NAI engaging thirty-odd scholars to collect documents nationwide. Interestingly, NAI alone collected nearly two lakh documents (apart from those collected by ICHR staff) and forwarded them to the editors, yet this has gone unacknowledged, with some distinguished editors pretending they did their own collection. Unfortunately, Towards Freedom appears to have been dogged by duplicity from the start, beginning with the creation of the ICHR in 1972. The ICHR was set up at the instance of prominent Leftist historians with close ties with the ruling Congress party, on the plea that Towards Freedom would have greater credibility if executed by a non-governmental agency.
A nationalist project was thus successfully hijacked, and from then onwards, the project was tinkered and tailored to suit their predilections, safe from public scrutiny and accountability. To begin with, the proposed three volumes were expanded into a ten-volume study, and the time-frame changed from 1939-47 to April 1937–47. The justification given was that April 1937 was when the Congress ministries began functioning under the provincial autonomy experiment. At the same time, non-official documents were also brought into the purview of the work (though the private papers of political leaders were already available at Teen Murti), but these were the least of the changes.
The real mischief can be traced to the December 1975 meeting of the ICHR Editorial Board under the chairmanship of Prof. R.S. Sharma. Although the project was still only at the document-collection stage (and even today most volumes are nowhere in sight), Sharma managed the unique intellectual feat of noticing that “the emphasis in this project has been more on India’s attainment of independence than on its partition.” So he suggested that ‘partition’ be removed from the draft guidelines. What is more, he also suggested (sic) that ‘focal points’ be identified in each volume. In this manner, a nationalist project to honestly recapitulate history was captured and converted into the current neither fish-nor-fowl version over which the Left is crying foul, because it has been caught red-handed.
The reader may well wonder why Partition was so cleverly culled out of the project. In a Freudian slip, the Leftists themselves gave the game away when they alleged that the BJP-led government wanted to build up the role of the RSS in the pre-Independence period. The fact of the matter is that any honest documentation of the events leading to Partition entails an attack on the Muslim League; exposes the non-existent role of the Communist Party in combating ‘communalism’ (of the Muslim League); and shows how far removed Congress leaders, including Gandhi, were from the ground situation through the mind-blowing horrors of 1946. What is more, and this is what is truly indigestible to the canny Leftist scholars, anyone reading an honest rendering of the agonizing story of Partition will view of the role of the RSS and similar bodies in a very different light from that forced down our throats by Nehru and his ilk.
This is the true danger of honesty; this is why the truth must not be told, and the lies perpetrated at all costs. This is also why Congress must go along with the deception, even if it entails belittling its own very real contribution in that immensely significant period of Indian history.
The Pioneer, 14 March 2000