Over the past year, Left historians have gone hammer and tongs at the NCERT’s new textbooks on history. While criticism of factual errors is wholly justified, there can be little doubt that much of the motivation has been ideological rather than altruistic. Regular press conferences and ceaseless media hype are not conducive to honest dialogue and debate over the discipline of history.
Be that as it may be, one of NCERT’s new history books – Medieval India for Class Eleven by Dr. Meenakshi Jain – has received a very different response. Though out for nearly seven months, it initially met with a grudging silence. But notwithstanding the factually correct and non-rhetorical narrative, Left historians have found it difficult to accept as it differs sharply from their own ideological perspective. The book has now been covered under the Index of Errors brought out by the Indian History Congress (IHC) on the new NCERT books. The section on Medieval India is attributed to Prof. Irfan Habib.
Prof. Habib is a formidable scholar, but he ranks among intellectuals who deny legitimacy to the Hindu civilizational ethos and its place in national life. This school has sought to keep civilizational issues out of history books and to whitewash the horrors of the medieval era. NCERT’s new book on Medieval India has upset it, even though the author has relied solely upon the published works of renowned historians in India and abroad. But even this has proved unacceptable to the Indian History Congress, which has tried to challenge virtually every fact in the book, even where the information is culled from the published research of renowned Left academics.
Some examples will show how far intellectual integrity has been compromised before political ideology. The IHC Index of Errors refutes the author’s contention that Guru Gobind Singh was a devotee of Goddess Chandi. But the renowned historian, J.S. Grewal, quotes the Guru quite explicitly: “Having created Durga, O God, You destroyed the demons. From You alone did Rama receive His power to slay Rawana with his arrows. From You alone did Krishna receive His power to seize Kansa by the hair and to dash him on the ground” [The Sikhs of the Punjab, The New Cambridge History of India, Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 76]. The IHC also challenges the contention that Guru Gobind Singh was murdered by an Afghan, possibly connected with the Emperor Aurangzeb. But Grewal is unambiguous that: “…he was stabbed and badly wounded by an Afghan, connected with either Wazir Khan or an imperial officer” [ibid, p. 79].
Even innocuous facts are refuted, with the intent of showing the writer in poor light. Thus, it is claimed that Alauddin Hasan, the founder of the Bahmani kingdom, was not an Afghan. Yet in the (new replaced) NCERT textbook by Prof. Satish Chandra, it is clearly said that: “Its founder was Alauddin Hasan, an Afghan adventurer” [p. 89].
In another place, the information that the famous Iron Pillar was brought to Delhi from Mathura is questioned. This is adequately established by the historian Percy Brown: “…And in front of the centre of the sanctuary was erected the famous Iron Pillar, but deprived of its crowing figure of Garuda, this remarkable example of indigenous craftsmanship having been torn from its original setting near Muttra where it has already stood for over 600 years” [Indian Architecture. Islamic Period, Taraporevala’s, 1956, p. 10].
The IHC also claims that Sufism and orthodox Islam did not converge in the twelfth century, as a result of the efforts of al-Ghazali and others. Obviously, the attempt is to perpetuate the untenable claim that Sufism was part of the Bhakti stream and built bridges with the Hindus. Yet, Aziz Ahmad is emphatic that: “In India, because of the challenge and the risk of disintegration into Hindu mysticism, Sufism took special care to resolve its differences with orthodoxy… in India…Islam was propagated mainly by Sufis with a firm emphasis on the observance of the tenets of the sharia” [Studies In Islamic Culture In The Indian Environment, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1964, p. 131].
This is not to insist that the book has no errors at all. Muhammad Ghur should correctly be called Muhammad of Ghur and Muhammad Ghazni designated Muhammad of Ghazni. Bakhtiyar Khalji has been described as a slave when he was a free man, and the historian who commented adversely on Muhammad bin Tughlaq was Badauni, not Barani. But to quibble that the Dastur-ul Amal-i Alamgiri was not an official document when it was a compilation of official documents, shows how forced the whole exercise is. To my mind, the only meritorious idea in the entire Index of Errors was the suggestion that the discussion on Emperor Akbar’s abolition of the jaziya should state fully that the jaziya was first abolished in 1564, re-imposed nominally in 1575, and finally abolished in 1579. Certainly none these points merited listing in an Index of Errors; they could have been forwarded to the NCERT Director for inclusion in the next reprint.
Sahara Time, 26 July 2003