The importance of History lies in the lessons it provides for posterity. However,
for posterity to benefit thereby, History should be recorded as it is, that is, objectively. History must not be made a tool for serving political or other ends. During the British occupation of India, for instance, History taught in schools was specially doctored to deprive the ‘natives’ of the knowledge of their own heritage and culture, and on the other hand to inculcate admiration of their rulers. Arun Shourie’s ‘Eminent Historians’, informs the reader that this dangerous trend in the writing of Indian History is still rampant. Shourie provides incontestable documentary evidence for every charge he makes on these ‘Eminent Historians’ who have infiltrated into the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) and who use their power and influence to distort history to suit their political and personal ends. The distorting factor now is not the Union Jack, but a union of the Hammer and Sickle, and the Crescent. The sub-title of the book (Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud’) clearly defines the scope of the book. A brief look at these three facets of our Eminent Historians follows. Their technology, according to Shourie, is to suppress facts and invent lies so that their account of History suits their agenda; and when facts are exposed they rise in chorus protesting that the exposure is a plot to distort history, when it is they who are distorting it. Item: The established notion that the rule of the Guptas was a Golden Age is discarded as a ‘myth’. Every facet of the past of which an Indian can be truly proud is painted black. The art and literature of the time, an Eminent Historian says, ''only reflects the affluence of the upper classes without any mention of the hardships of village folk''! Item: ''Sanskrit literature was mainly enjoyed by the Court and beyond the understanding of the uneducated.'' (Shourie asks, How many of the uneducated masses understood Lenin’s Collected Works or Mao’s ‘Philosophical Essays’?) Item: The great astronomical works of the time are downplayed while Aryabhata’s insights (hundreds of years before Copernicus and Kepler) that the earth rotates on its axis and orbits the sun are not mentioned in this discussion - it does not support their line! Some of the text books prescribed in schools happen to be from the pen of these Eminent Historians and contain material which would destroy the young Indian’s national pride while excluding facts which would nurture such pride. Their Line is transparent: throw the blame for all the ills of society on ‘Brahminism’, and in the process, it does not matter that the Muslim rulers must be shown in a benevolent light even when they destroyed temples and performed mass conversions. Coming now to the third point, Shourie lists numerous instances of blatant Fraud with apparently no one to question! Item: A project on the ‘National Movement between 1857 and 1937’ in 19 volumes, about which the ICHR gives false replies when questioned in the Rajya Sabha; and when the lie is nailed, the fact comes out that of the 16 volumes assigned and the authors advanced Rs. 12000/- for each volume in 1978, only two have been published as on 1998! Item: The English translation of Arif Qandhari’s Tarikh-i-Akbari by a Deputy Director of ICHR happens to be entirely plagiarized! Should the History as distorted by people with such a political bias be sponsored by a National Government? Should they be allowed to misinform us our children about our own nation?