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Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
February 16, 2024
India: Forging Communal Space: Negotiating Streets and Practices in Delhi, 1922–65 | Saeed Ahmad
Abstract
This paper examines space-making in the Jangpura-Bhogal locality of Delhi by documenting communal conflicts in the late 1920s and 1950s. First, it addresses the production of a Hindu religious space by disavowing Muslim ritual practices under a colonial regime seeking to control religious conflict. Second, it unpacks the diverse mechanisms used to produce a Sikh political space during a nascent postcolonial state’s management of linguistic subnationalisms. Grounded in power relations and cohesions around multiple social registers, these variegated spatial claims were made through political and religious processions, petitions and physical violence. These communal geographies highlight the importance of neighbourhood histories.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00856401.2024.2303836
February 03, 2024
Mill, Market, Mandir, Masjid: The Geographies of Communal Conflict in Colonial Bombay, c. 1929–39 | Prashant Kidambi
Prashant Kidambi's "Mill, Market, Mandir, Masjid: The Geographies of Communal Conflict in Colonial Bombay, c. 1929–39"
Abstract
This article reframes a crucial period in the history of popular politics in colonial Bombay. Focusing on Hindu-Muslim antagonism between 1929 and 1939, it highlights the centrality of everyday urban spaces and places in shaping the context, dynamics and nature of communal conflict in a putatively cosmopolitan city. The first section shows how recurrent communal discord in Bombay was the outcome of two spatially contingent political developments that occurred concurrently in the years between 1929 and 1933. On the one hand, intra-class tensions engendered by industrial strife in tandem with the rapid ascendancy of the communist-led Girni Kamgar Union in the mill districts resulted in a communal backlash. On the other hand, the launch of the Congress’ Civil Disobedience movement deepened Hindu-Muslim differences in the market areas of the Indian town. The second section focuses on clashes over religious places and processions, which became a chronic feature of urban life in the 1930s. Through a range of examples, it underscores how local disputes over sacred sites and religious rites became integral to the political construction of communal identities in late colonial Bombay.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00856401.2024.2282918
Business as Usual? Bazars and Communalism in Colonial Delhi, 1913–32 | Anish Vanaik
Abstract
This paper uncovers a hitherto unnoticed pattern of communal segregation among establishments located in some of Delhi’s most important bazars. It demonstrates that this pattern, emerging between 1913 and 1932, was driven by structural features of the ways in which Delhi’s trade and retail interacted with communal violence in the 1920s. Those features include the dislocating effects of communal violence on bazars. More strident political activity by merchants, however, was important fuel to this fire. Merchants did not, also, restrict themselves to repeating communal tropes developed elsewhere. Their self-organisation gave shape to a conception of ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ trades. Rather than see a communal ‘pre-Partition’ in the 1930s, this evidence suggests that communal segregation was already well on the rise in the 1920s. Business as usual, then, was a source of deepening communal antagonisms rather than, as is sometimes assumed, a source of everyday bonhomie.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00856401.2024.2283683?src=exp-la
January 22, 2024
January 07, 2024
September 03, 2023
May 18, 2023
India: Hindutva activists falsify research dissertation for claims over Hindu religious gatherings in Tribeni, West Bengal in the antiquity
Toxic agenda
No one should be shocked. This is just one more instance of the peddlers of Hindu supremacy being unscrupulous in pursuit of their goals
Alan Morinis Published 18.05.23
February 26, 2023
India: Hindu Nationalist Circles and the Politics of Inventing a ‘Genocide’ | Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Inventing a ‘Genocide’: The Political Abuses of a Powerful Concept in Contemporary India
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25785648.2022.2153974
February 17, 2023
Is the Modi govt inventing history via ICHR? - Report in Hindi in The Wire
क्या आईसीएचआर के ज़रिये मोदी सरकार नए इतिहास का आविष्कार कर रही है
November 16, 2022
The Return of Fascism - On Mussolini, Moonje and Meloni | Ravi Joshi
by Ravi Joshi
(Deccan Herald, Oct 28, 2022)
It was one hundred years ago, to this day in October 1922, Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy by ‘Marching on Rome’ with about 30,000 men from his goon squads. Earlier, in a speech before thousands of his supporters, Mussolini had declared, “Either the government will be given to us, or we will seize it by marching on Rome.” As tens of thousands of ‘Black shirts’, the uniform of his fascist youth organisation converged on Rome, Prime Minister Luigi Facta wanted to declare a ‘State of Siege’ and advised King Victor Emmanuel III to mobilise the army. Instead, the King caved in and asked Mussolini to form the government.
Mussolini, who was supported by the military, the business class, the Church and right-wing political forces, was sworn into office on October 29, 1922. Only a year before that, in 1921, Mussolini had formed the National Fascist Party without any clear programme. In front of a crowd of 60,000 people in Milan on October 24, he had declared “Our programme is simple. We want to rule Italy.” Ambition could not have been stated in simpler terms.
Mussolini thus captured power ‘legally’, with no apparent violation of the Italian Constitution. The transition was made possible simply by the surrender of public authorities to fascist intimidation.
Inspired by Mussolini, Hitler gained power in Germany in 1933 but added the idea of an Aryan ‘master race’ to his fascist state. It would be much easier to eliminate the Jews, he figured, if the German people were made to believe that there was such a thing as the Aryan ‘master race’, and that the Jews did not belong to that race, and were therefore sub-human.
Today, variations of fascism thrive in a number of countries and ‘neo-fascist’ groups have come to power through the electoral process in several democracies. These groups typically preach ultra-nationalism and spew hatred on racial or ethnic minorities. From Hungary to Sweden to France, the trend in Europe is clear – the extreme right is on the rise, as it was in pre-Second World War Europe.
Not many are aware that a prominent Indian, the then head of the Hindu Mahasabha, was so inspired by European right-wing parties, especially Mussolini and fascism, that he travelled to the continent, and to Rome specifically, to meet the dictator personally and learn about fascism and its pre-eminent party – the National Fascist Party. He brought and implanted those ideas and fascist organisation onto Indian soil, which started bearing fruit in the 1990s. That man was B S Moonje.
Balakrishna Shivram Moonje
Moonje, born in 1872 at Bilaspur, Madhya Pradesh, was a doctor in the Bombay Municipal Corporation. He left his job to take part in the Boer War in South Africa as the King’s Commissioned Officer. Moonje was initially part of the Indian National Congress, but following the death of Bal Gangadhar Tilak in 1920, moved away from Congress. He disagreed with the two main principles of Gandhi: non-violence and secularism. His association with the Hindu Mahasabha increased and he was also the mentor of K B Hedgewar, who founded the RSS in 1925.
Moonje was the president of the Hindu Mahasabha from 1927 until he handed over charge to Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1937. He attended the Round Table Conferences (RTC) in London in 1930 and 1931, despite strong opposition from Congress leaders against his views.
In 1931, after attending the second RTC, Moonje travelled to Italy, where he met with Prime Minister Benito Mussolini and was given a guided tour on the militarisation of society through organisations such as Balilla, the Academia Della Farnesina and others. His most important visit was to the Italian fascist youth organisation, the Opera Nazionale Balilla.
As he himself noted in his diary, Moonje was deeply influenced by the fascist organisations, in which he saw an opportunity to militarise Hindu society to fight against both internal and external threats. After returning from Italy, he set up the Central Hindu Military Education Society in 1935 and the Bhonsala Military School in 1937, both at Nasik.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Singh (RSS) later appropriated this model on a larger scale and built itself up on the lines of the Balilla in recruitment and organisational setup.
Though we were under colonial boots at the time of the founding of the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS, the nationalism and militarisation of the Hindu youth by these organisations were not directed at the British. An internal ‘enemy’ was needed for the success of the militarisation project. And that enemy was identified in Savarkar’s book ‘Essentials of Hindutva’, published in 1923. Those who do not consider ‘Bharatvarsha’ as their ‘pitr-bhoomi’ and ‘punya-bhoomi’ are aliens in our land and have to be thrown out. Obviously, they were Muslims and Christians, for their ‘punya-bhoomi’ was in Mecca and Bethlehem, respectively, even if their ‘pitr-bhoomi’ was in India.
Giorgia Meloni
Today, Italy has come full circle as Giorgia Meloni, leader of the ‘Fratelli d Italy (FdI) or ‘Brothers of Italy’, which traces its origins to the National Fascist Party, was sworn in as Prime Minister on October 22. Meloni started as a journalist and became a member of the Chamber of Deputies in Italy in 2006. She has led ‘Brothers of Italy’ since 2014. Her party leader declared proudly on the day of its election victory, “We are the heirs of Il Duce.”
Meloni describes herself as a Catholic–Christian and a conservative and says she defends “God, fatherland, and family”. Opposed to the immigration of non-European migrants and multi-culturalism, she is seen as xenophobic and Islamophobic.
Despite her party’s fascist origins, Meloni is seen as distancing herself from openly aligning with the old fascist organisation. Fascism is still a dirty word in Europe, though xenophobia and Islamophobia are not. Media analysts are now saying, “She is no Mussolini but a Trump”. Hardly comforting.
What is worrying, however, is that the heirs of Moonje and the cadre that came out of his organisation and later the RSS Shakas, with all their admiration for Mussolini and Hitler, today control the levers of power in India. They don’t call themselves fascists, of course; they call themselves ‘nationalist’ and ‘Hindutva-vadi’.
Postscript: More than a decade ago, Peter Martland of Cambridge University discovered that Mussolini was paid 100 pounds a week by Britain in 1917, equal to about 6,000 pounds today. It remains to be seen, when more archival material comes out, as to who paid for Moonje’s trips to London and Rome. He was, after all, a King’s Commissioned Officer and fought for the British Empire in South Africa.
(The writer is a former Cabinet Secretariat official)
Source: https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/comment/mussolini-moonje-and-meloni-1157505.html
October 22, 2022
India: History, Communal Narratives and Sectarian Politics | Ram Puniyani
https://countercurrents.org/2022/10/history-communal-narratives-and-sectarian-politics/?swcfpc=1
History, Communal Narratives and Sectarian Politics
Ram Puniyani
Last few decades have seen the rise of communal politics in India. Similar politics has been dominating Pakistan from a much longer time. This politics draws heavily from history; rather it uses History as the major tool for spreading hate against the ‘other’ community. The target community in Pakistan is Hindus and in India it is Muslims. In these narratives the religion of medieval kings is highlighted in a way to suit the present needs of the sectarian political streams. The signal is that the Muslim kings’ atrocities are reflected on today’s Muslims. The other side of this coin is that Hindus were servile to the Muslim kings, who were majestic. In this presentation the Muslims and Hindus are shown as uniform communities, and selective events are projected to either demonize or glorify the Kings and its reflection on today’s Hindus or Muslims.
In India the narrative which is dominant part of the social thinking is that Muslims Kings did brutal attacks, imposed Muslim rule, destroyed Hindu temples, spread Islam by force and inflicted atrocities on Hindu subjects. The Muslim communal narrative glorifies the Muslim King’s rule as the peak achievement of Islam. In this the Hindus are also presented in the negative light, weak, in this narrative.
While the country is suffering the majoritarian communal onslaught, its propaganda is the most prevalent one; the minuscule Muslim communal forces have also their own articulation. This came to surface when AIMIM’s Shaukat Ali, in a video going viral stated that “Muslims ruled over the country for 832 years, the Hindus were bowing in front of the kings with folded hands and the Muslims also made likes of Jodhabai as the Queen of India!” This statement is typical of the Muslim communal understanding that Muslims ruled over Hindu and also ‘took over’ Hindu women (Jodhabai).
Both these understandings and propagations are part of the communal historiography, which was introduced in India by British to pursue their policy of ‘divide and rule’. They realized that to pursue this policy the major divide which can be created was between Hindus and Muslims, those belonging to the two major religions of India. Roots of ‘Kings’ Religion’ centric understanding of History began with James Mill’s “History of India’. (1818). This book periodized the Indian History in to Ancient Hindu Period, Medieval Muslim Period and Modern-contemporary period as British Period. Interestingly Mill characterized earlier rulers with religious identity, he did not use the word Christian period for British rule.
This historiography was taken further by eight Volumes ‘History of India as told by its Historians” by Elliot and Dawson. This book picked up from the books of the Courtiers who generally glorified their rulers as being great as they are doing things for their religion. The rule of Kings had power and expansion as the central motive but this version made religion as centre of Kings rule.
This was supplemented by selective presentations, like destruction of temples by Muslim Kings which were highlighted and the destruction of temples by Hindu kings was put under carpet. This underlined the destruction of temples by Muslim kings while keeping silent on donation of Muslim kings to Hindu temples.
The major part which it hid was that most of the administrations of Muslim and Hindu kings were a mixed one. Akbar had Raja Mansingh as his commander in Chief and Birbal and Todarmal were part of his Navratnas. In Shivaji and Aurangzeb conflict Shivaji had many Muslim generals with him while Aurangzeb was represented by Raja Jaisingh.
While the spread of Islam is attributed to the sword of Kings, the core point of people embracing Islam was to escape the tyranny of caste system (as pointed out by Swami Vivekananda) is nowhere to be found in these propagations. Shaukat Ali feels proud that Hindu woman Jodhabai had to be married to a Muslim king. He forgets that this was part of the culture of the time where kings used to marry the daughter/sister of the king with whom they were making political alliances.
The third and the major narrative which prevailed and promoted fraternity can roughly be called as ‘National Historiography’. Many outstanding scholars like Romila Thapar, Harbans Mukhia and Irfan Habib have done brilliant work on that but currently they are being looked down upon for undermining the civilization ethos of India. The popular presentation of this way of History is clearly outlined in the writing of Mahatma Gandhi (Hind Swaraj) and Jawaharlal Nehru (Discovery of India). These narrations focus on the integrative aspects of communities, their social and political interactions.
Gandhi in Hind Swaraj points out “The Hindus flourished under Moslem sovereigns and Moslems under the Hindu. Each party recognized that mutual fighting was suicidal, and that neither party would abandon its religion by force of arms. Both parties, therefore, decided to live in peace. With the English advent; quarrels recommenced… Should we not remember that many Hindus and Mohammedans own the same ancestors and the same blood runs through their veins? Do people become enemies because they change their religion? Is the God of the Mohammedan different from the God of the Hindu? Religions are different roads converging to the same point. What does it matter that we take different roads so long as we reach the same goal? Wherein is the cause of quarreling?”
On Similar lines Nehru in Discovery of India points out “She (India) was like some ancient palimpsest on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie had been inscribed, and yet no succeeding layer had completely hidden or erased what had been written previously… Though outwardly there was diversity and infinite variety among our people, everywhere there was that tremendous impress of oneness, which had held all of us together for ages past, whatever political fate or misfortune befell us.”
While during freedom movement and till much later this ‘Nationalist history’ was the major discourse, it is unfortunate that last three-four decades have seen the rise of communal narratives in a more assertive way. This narrative is the one which crates social divides leading to polarization of communities on the grounds of ‘religious identity’. Where will impact of such sectarian narrations will lead us from the fate which Pakistan suffered, is a foregone conclusion!
August 17, 2022
February 02, 2022
January 18, 2022
India’s apex historical research body is now dominated by members of an RSS affiliate Akhil Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Yojana (Ayush Tiwari - newslaundry- 17 Jan, 2022)
One big family: The Hindutva takeover of ICHR is fuelled by nepotism
India’s apex historical research body is now dominated by members of an RSS affiliate. However, jobs at the Indian Council Historical Research – from deputy director to xerox operator – are secured not just by ideology, but also family ties.
October 21, 2021
India: For BJP leader Tejasvi Surya, Some History About the Language & Attire of Hindus | Sohail Hashmi
For Tejasvi Surya, Some History About the Language & Attire of Hindus
The BJP leader forgets that Urdu is not an alien language in India, even for the region he represents in Parliament.
Published:
September 01, 2021
July 02, 2021
India: Government Apparently Invites Suggestions for Removing Distortions in our History Text Books [ Can readers confirm ?]
o o o
SEE also news report from January 2021
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/remove-unhistorical-references-from-school-books-house-panel/articleshow/80207444.cms
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