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Journalism of Courage
Those who forget controversies over history are condemned to repeat them, as the current spat between the Kerala Government and one of its more respected historians, A Sreedhara Menon, shows. Menon was commissioned to do a history of the freedom struggle in the State as part of its programme to commemorate 50 years of India8217;s freedom.
Later, he was informed that he had to write this as part of a committee of three, in consultation with Marxist leader E. M. S. Namboodiripad. Not surprisingly, Menon who happens to be the President of the South Indian History Congress, and the author of 16 works on Kerala and Indian history, preferred to withdraw from the project than agree to these conditions. How can history be written by a committee, was a question he quite rightly raised.
The other argument advanced by the Chief Minister, that E. M. S. Namboodiripad having witnessed many of the important historical events of the state first hand, is therefore the best consultant for such a venture, is also problematic. True, Namboodiripad is a respected and recognised figure whose history of Kerala is widely read in the state. But this does not necessarily qualify him for the role of arbiter, especially since he has in the past expressed his differences with Menon8217;s approach to history. Political activists do not necessarily make good historians, not just because they do not have the required skills, but because they lack the necessary objectivity. In fact, EMS often uses history to subserve his political ends.
There are aspects of Kerala history that can lend themselves to sharply differing interpretations. How, for instance, should the Moplah Revolt be categorised? As a peasant movement? A struggle of landless Muslims against Hindu landlords? Or a proto-nationalist skirmish? The stand the Communists took on the Quit India movement too, has created controversies in the past. Revisiting these moments in the past requires the skills of independent-minded, well-trained historians, rather than the passion of revolutionaries, albeit those who have written history.
For too long has historical writing in this country been shrouded in politics. When BJP governments were installed in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh in the early 1990s, one of their first tasks was to revise school history textbooks to perpetrate crude stereotypes. This led to a battle of attrition of sorts, with subsequent governments trying to alter the earlier revisions and so on. All this smacks of a sad lack of historical temper. In this the 50th year of independence, let the nation interpret its past by all means. But let trained historians preside over such a project.
