India: Five things Hindutva historians are obsessed with

Five things Hindutva historians are obsessed with

The new head of the Indian Council for Historical Research wants to re-examine established notions about the country's history.

by Shoaib Daniyal (scroll.in)

Last week, Yellapragada Sudershan Rao was appointed head of the Indian Council of Historical Research. He is also president of the Sangh Parivar-affiliated Bharateeya Itihaasa Sankalana Samithi, an organisation that seeks to write history from an Indian nationalist perspective from “the beginning of kaliyuga onwards”.

Rao, though, goes further back than the kaliyuga: one of his current projects involves affixing a definitive date to the Mahabharata war. His other interests include Vedic literature, bharateeya sanskriti (Indian culture) and Indian mythology (the use of the word “mythology”, given his literalist interpretation of the Mahabharata, is an interesting choice).

This was inevitable. Politics has always used history as a tool and agent. The move is reminiscent of the appointment of Murli Manohar Joshi as human resources development minister in Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party government. Joshi made a number of appointments in crucial academic positions that were criticised by academic historians at the time as attempts to saffronise the curriculum and position Hindu scriptural dicta as academic thought.

Yet, the contest between these narratives of Indian history is not new. A look at five areas where Hindutva historians have sought to rewrite accepted histories.
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