Allowing RSS ideologues to write history will be disastrous: Guha

Dharwad, Jan 20: Expressing grave concern over historians with right-wing ideological affiliations playing a decisive role in chronicling our past, acclaimed historian Ramachandra Guha said that true historian should overcome all kinds of chauvinism.

Speaking at an interactive session at the Sahitya Sambhrama here on Friday, Mr. Guha said Marxist historians, who ruled the academic institutions earlier, may have been “imperfect, flawed, limited and narrow minded”, but replacing them with RSS ideologues would result in “not just bad history, but also street violence”.

He cited the controversy and violence over the release of Padmavat as an example of it. Mr. Guha said there is an effort to physically silence writers and scholars, which is a dangerous and new trend in India. In the past too there were attempts to prosecute people with dissent by way of exclusion, censoring, and bigotry of certain type. But such attempts never reached the extent of physical attacks. The BJP government is more hostile to writers, scholars, and film-makers than any government in the past, said the historian.

The former Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee said “Kitab ka jawab kitab se hota hai ”. “But this is not Vajpayee’s BJP any more, and it is a deeply worrying matter,” said Mr. Guha.

Talking about intolerance of caste and religious groups, he said it started when Rajiv Gandhi banned Satanic Verses and it has continued with the Maharashtra government banning a book on Shivaji; and Hindutva groups opposing Padmavat.

He said history cannot be answered by ideology or by abuse. “Do not use truth or falsehood of history to settle political debate today. Past history must be separated from present democratic politics, which is run by values of the Constitution,” he said.

He said the four forms of chauvinism prevent a historian from interpreting history in the correct perspective: They are chauvinism of discipline, method, identity and ideology.

Guha said Marxist historians, who dominated academic institutions post-independence in India, had committed blunders while writing history. However, replacing them with RSS ideologues and allowing rightwing groups to play a decisive role in writing history will be disastrous and will lead to street violence, he said.