India: 'Intellectuals will be silenced': historians express fears . . . (Report in The Guardian)

The Guardian - 30 October 2015

'Intellectuals will be silenced': historians express fears of Indian government

Leading Indian historians, including Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib, join writers and film-makers in protest against a ‘climate of intolerance’

Indian writers and cultural activists march outside Sahitya Akademi in October, following the murder of rationalist scholar MM Kalburg. Photograph: Altaf Qadri/AP

Alison Flood

More than 50 Indian historians have detailed their collective “anguish” at the “highly vitiated atmosphere prevailing in the country”, just weeks after dozens of Indian writers returned their literary awards in protest over what they called India’s “climate of intolerance”.

The historians, who include eminent scholars Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib, write in a joint statement published in full on the Indian news website Scroll that, in India today, “differences of opinion are being sought to be settled by using physical violence”, and that “arguments are met not with counter arguments but with bullets”.

In August, the rationalist scholar MM Kalburgi was shot dead. The historians also cite the death of the 50-year-old Muslim labourer Mohammed Akhlaq, who was killed by a mob which believed he had eaten meat from a cow, as well as the protests surrounding the launch of former Pakistan foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri’s book in October, during which the event’s organiser was doused in black ink.
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Following the decision two weeks ago by more than 40 Indian writers to give back their literary awards from the Sahitya Akademi (the national academy of letters), over the attacks on intellectuals, and the announcement yesterday that prominent Indian film-makers are also set to return prizes given to them by the government, the historians said that the situation is “particularly worrying” for them, because “we have already experienced attempts to ban our books and expunge statements of history despite the fact that they are supported by sources and the interpretation is transparent.”

The attacks come after Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept to power last year. “When writer after writer is returning their award of recognition in protest, no comment is made about the conditions that caused the protest; instead the ministers call it a paper revolution and advise the writers to stop writing,” the historians say, referring to India’s minister for culture Mahesh Sharma, who told reporters: “If they say they are unable to write, let them stop writing.”
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“This is as good as saying that intellectuals will be silenced if they protest,” the historians write.

“What the regime seems to want is a kind of legislated history, a manufactured image of the past, glorifying certain aspects of it and denigrating others, without any regard for chronology, sources or methods of enquiry that are the building blocks of the edifice of history,” they write, urging the state to “ensure an atmosphere that is conducive to free and fearless expression, security for all sections of society and the safe-guarding of the values and traditions of plurality that India had always cherished in the past”.

“It is easy to trample them down, but it is important to remember that it will take too long and will be beyond the capacity of those who are currently at the helm of affairs, to rebuild it once it is destroyed,” the statement ends.

The author Salman Rushdie has also supported writers’ decisions to return their prizes. He tweeted: “I support #NayantaraSahgal and the many other writers protesting to the Sahitya Akademi. Alarming times for free expression in India.” And he told a local television network that: “What has crept into Indian life now is a degree of thuggish violence which is new. And it seems to be given permission by the silence of official bodies, the silence of the Sahitya Akademi … by the silence of the prime minister’s office.”

Following protests outside the Sahitya Akademi’s Delhi headquarters, over its initial silence about the murders, academy member Krishnaswamy Nachimuthu said it “strongly condemns the killing of writer Kalburgi and appeals to the state and central government to take steps to prevent such incidents in the future”.