Launching a full-on attack on India’s eminent historians, PM Modi said that historians had reduced the history to “struggle for power, succession wars and violence related to it.” PM Modi was in Kolkata to inaugurate four renovated heritage buildings- Kolkata – Old Currency Building, the Belvedere House, the Metcalfe House and the Victoria Memorial Hall- on the first day of his two day scheduled visit.
He also slammed the Nehruvian, Marxists, and Leftist historians who eulogized the Mughal Empire, and made every effort to negate the fact that the Mughal rulers were ‘outsiders’. Invoking Rabindranath Tagore, PM said, “Some people came from outside, killed their relatives, brothers for the sake of throne… is not our history. This was said by Gurudev himself.”
He also took a dig on the ‘darbari historians’ who ignored the plight of the people during the Mughal Empire and British Raj. PM reminded the people about what Gurudev said: “In this history, it is not mentioned what the people of the country was doing. Didn’t they have any existence?”
PM Modi also suggested that one of the two closed galleries of Victoria Memorial should showcase the contribution of revolutionaries to freedom struggle. “Out of the five galleries in Victoria Memorial, two are closed for a long period. This is not right. Efforts are going on to open them. The revolutionary contribution of Bengal during the freedom struggle should be showcased in the third gallery. Leaders including Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Aurobindo Ghose and Khudiram Bose should find space,” said PM Modi.
Indian history is severely distorted as foreigners ruled us for almost 800 years. First, Muslim invaders came to the country and established their rule. They interpreted the ancient Indian history by their standards and made it the official version.
After the British took over from Mughal, they started rewriting Indian history to suit their narrative. The transition of the British East India Company’s rule to the rule of the British crown further magnified the need to introduce a British inclined education system. This education system was used to create human resource required to aid British imperialistic rule over India. Different commissions were set up for this purpose.
T.B. Macaulay, who is considered to be the for-bearer of the western style of education, had indicated towards the biases that still prevail in the Indian education system. “We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, -a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population,” said Macaulay.
After the British left India, the Marxist historians took over and inserted Marxist bias. The most prominent Indian historians whose book is standard textbook on Indian history have accepted that they belong to Marxist school of historiography. Romila Thapar (Ancient History), Satish Chandra (medieval history), and Satish Chandra (India’s struggle for independence) have certified themselves as Marxist.
Indian history is inserted with Mughal, British, and Marxist biases. We need to reclaim Indian history and write it from the Indian perspective. Significantly, PM Modi is personally concerned about India people reclaiming their history from the Mughal, British, Nehruvian and Marxist apologists, who did not gave due significance to the Indian people or the revolutionaries who fought for its independence.