NEW DELHI, June 7: The Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry's order appointing 18 historians to the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR) council has kicked up a storm. Several prominent historians have accused the Government of attempting to hijack historical research to serve its political ends.Not without reason. Many of those nominated are proponents of the Sangh Parivar's view of Indian history and have vocally supported its claim for a Ram Mandir at Ayodhya. And one of them even had represented the Parivar during the discussions on the Ayodhya controversy.Among the nominated historians are Prof B B Lal, former director general of the Archaeological Survey of India, Prof B R Grover, former head of the history department at Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, Prof K S Lal Former head of the history department at Hyderabad University, Prof B P Sinha, former head of the archaeology department at Patna University.A senior historian at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, said that the onestrand common among Grover, B B Lal, K S Lal and Sinha is their vocal propagation of the view that there existed a Ram mandir at the site of the Babri Masjid and that it was destroyed to build the masjid.Interestingly, Grover was one of the three historians (the other two being Prof S P Gupta and Devindra Swarup) who represented the VHP during discussions initiated by the Chandra Shekhar Government with the Babri Masjid Action Committee in December, 1990. B B Lal and K S Lal have over the years strongly supported the VHP stand on the Ayodhya dispute in seminars, articles and journals.According to historian Bipan Chandra, the reconstitution of the ICHR only confirms the BJP government's resolve to spread the ideology of communalism. "Viewed in the larger perspective, this is just one small step in the BJP's agenda to monopolise thought control and spread its one-sided interpretation of historical events," he said. K S Lal, an expert in medieval history, says that there is nothing wrong with thereconstitution of the ICHR. "I am neither a secularist nor a hypocrite.the objective of ICHR should be to ensure true history is written and nothing is suppressed," he said. B B Lal and Grover are abroad and were not available for comment.
