Skip to main content

India's communal forces have very little respect for methods of history writing

By Dr Abhay Kumar

It is a matter of great concern that the communal forces are distorting Indian history and changing the content of textbooks to create an ideological justification for their sectarian politics.
Since the communal forces have been in power, they are fast implementing their sectarian agendas. The secular educational and research institutions are being attacked and their progressive characters are being changed.
The sole agenda of the communal forces is to keep the fire of Hindus versus Muslims aflame.
All those who disagree with their narrow and sectarian politics are being demonized as "anti-national". To justify their position, the communalists are trying to paint India as the land of “Hindus”.
The communal forces have very little respect for the methods of history writing. In their conception, history remains frozen and it is projected in a binary. The communalists are trying to erase all contradictions. They love to operate within stereotyped images of Hindus and Muslims.
This poses a serious challenge to the secular character of India. The secular scholars, therefore, have no option but to wage an intellectual battle against the saffronisation of history writing.
In an article published in the Urdu daily Inquilab (September 20, 2022), I discuss some of these issues.
For more, click this video file.

Comments

TRENDING

Xi Jinping’s visit to USA: Recognition that China can't be contained?

By Vijay Prashad   President Xi Jinping’s forthcoming visit to the United States must be understood as more than an encounter between two heads of state, but it must be seen as an encounter between two possible futures. In one future, the United States imposes a spiral of confrontation against China. Trade disputes harden into economic warfare, then economic warfare intensifies into technological blockades, technological blockades produce military encirclement, and finally military encirclement creates incidents, and incidents the danger of becoming an unimaginable war.

Swaminarayan, untouchability and the 'we are not Hindu' argument

By Rajiv Shah   Following my blog on why the Eiffel Tower authorities should take all the blame for giving in to the Swaminarayan sadhus ’ bizarre demand to “invisibilise” women, including its female staff, during their visit to the internationally renowned Paris tourist centre on September 5, an interesting comment by one of the top academics drew my attention to something I vaguely knew about one of India’s most powerful and richest religious sects.

From margins to microphones: The rise of Dalit hip-hop in India

By Tersina Maria Toppo*  A protest does not always arrive as a slogan shouted from a street corner. Sometimes, it arrives on a beat. A microphone replaces the megaphone, a music video becomes a public square, and the smartphone becomes the space where a history once pushed to the margins is narrated, debated, and shared.