IndiaStar: A Literary-Art Magazine

India Abroad' s Brood ofOpinion Writers--Analysts or Ideologues?

by Ramesh N. Rao

[Editor's intro: "Ramesh N. Rao is an
associate professor of Communication
at Truman State University, Missouri,
and serves on the Consultative Committee
on Indic Traditions and Conflict
Management at Columbia University.
He worked as a copy editor at
The Hindu and completed a Ph.D.
in Communication at Michigan
State University." -- c.j.s. wallia]

Since the installation of the BJP-led government, India Abroad
has published some vicious and vindictive diatribes couched as "scholarly
articles" for a readership that has as yet, as far as can be made out from
letters to the editor, not understood the history of these "historians" and
the scientism of the "social scientists" who regularly vent their anger and
spill their vitriol in the Op-ed columns. That such attacks get the space
they do in the op-ed columns of the largest circulated newspaper to the
Indian clientele in the U.S. makes one wonder about the editorial stance of
India Abroad. Is it a centrist paper as some think?

Is India Abroad being "politically correct" by being overtly anti-BJP,
anti-Hindutva, and anti-Hindu nationalism? There has not only been
a studied silence on the shenanigans of the Congress, but also of the mockery
of democracy by the likes of goon-buffoons Laloo Prasad Yadav, and his
proxy Chief Minister and wife Rabri Devi. The newspaper is sanguine
about Sonia Gandhi and her party, ignoring the fact that it was the
Congress-I that cost the exchequer Rs. 1000 crores by toppling the
United Front government and the calling of new elections. To understand
the mindset and ideology of opinion writers that India Abroad favors,
I counter two articles published in the last two months. The first,
published in the May 22nd issue, was written by Itty Abraham, the
program director of the South Asia Program at the Social Sciences
Research Council in New York. The article was titled "Euphoria over
Tests is seen as a result of ignorance." The second, published in the
July 24th issue, was written by Arvind N. Das, a "commentator on
political affairs." That article was titled "BJP is more comfortable
with mythology than history." I believe that unless these articles are
dissected carefully and shown for what they really convey we will
continue to be inflicted by these ideologues whose eyes are shut to
reality (however fashionably they might want to describe reality,
polysemic, multicultural, etc.), and for whom the endgame is
obliteration of those whom they oppose, or at least driving them
into corners from which they either are forced to lash out or have
a difficult time defending themselves.

Itty Abraham's article, in which he baldly and boldly proclaims that
Hindus cannot be trusted is an exercise more in disingenuity than a clear
analysis of the past and prevailing conditions in the "nuclear arena."
Let me point out, as I did in a letter to India Abroad on June 6th, that
Itty Abraham's characterization of Hindus as untrustworthy would
have sent alarm bells ringing in any editorial office. That it did not do
so at India Abroad shows how easy it is to attack Hindus than any
other group, religious or otherwise. Mr. Abraham claims that South
Asia was, until the nuclear tests this past May, at last catching "the bug
that had infected the rest of the world: if not a peace virus, then at least
the disease of detente." If indeed there has been a peace or detente bug
floating around I wonder where. Did the collapse of the Soviet Union
and changes in East Europe indicate the presence of such a bug?
What a simplistic reading of the complex dynamic of economic, social,
and global military forces that burst the bloated bubble that the Soviet empire
had become, and the cold and brutal calculation of the Reagan presidency
that reduced Afghanistan from a ruble economy to a rubble state and thus
got to the underside of the bloated Soviet belly. If this is how detente
works I wonder what realpolitik looks like! Mr. Abraham may point
out to the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations and proclaim, "See, that is the
effect of the peace bug." Unless one is living on another planet, I don't
see how one can with a straight face say that the Israeli-Palestinian
relationship has improved. Is an assassin's bullet that took the life of
Israeli prime minister Rabin indication of the presence of a peace bug?
Is the cornering of the PLA by Netanyahu's government indication of an
improved relationship? Is two years of dithering and the macabre dance on
the edge of the cliff of failed talks indication of detente? Let us look
at other areas of the world: How about Sudan and Rwanda in Africa? What
about Iran and Iraq in the Middle East? What about Sri Lanka? What about
Tibet or Myanmar or Kampuchea? Any progress?

Abraham finds fault with the Indian public's "broad pro-nuclear
sentiment," and asserts that such a sentiment is rooted in disillusion,
despair, and lack of information despair and disillusionment from the
slow and unsteady pace of social and economic change in society, and lack
of information about nuclear matters. The lack of social and economic
progress has disillusioned many of the educated middle-class no doubt, and
no doubt that in a country with about 500 million illiterate people one can
find that information about complex nuclear issues is not easily available
or disseminated. But are they the only reasons for broad support of the
nuclear program? The three wars with Pakistan, the one disastrous defeat
at the hands of the Chinese, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the company
of poor and unhappy neighboring states, and the hegemony of a few powers in
the world arena could also explain why Indians support the nuclear program.
Mr. Abraham's sanguine take on the state of the world is merely a clever
rhetorical stance to beat up on India, not a balanced reading of world affairs.

Next, Mr. Abraham characterizes the BJP as pro-Hindu and right wing.
This from a "social scientist" who describes Hindus as untrustworthy!
I could simply point out and say that Mr. Abraham is anti-Hindu, hysterical,
and a demagogue. The labels "conservative, reactionary, fundamentalist,
fascist, etc.," that have been crudely used by some marxists, liberals, and
feminists in India to characterize the BJP and drown out civilized debate,
bandied about by every goon and a buffoon of a politician who doesn't
belong to the BJP, used simplistically by ignorant and lazy Western
journalists, and hungrily swallowed by some greenhorn graduate students of
literary criticism, political science, or sociology are more an indication
of ignorance and ideological posturing than an effort to educate and inform
society or seek reconciliation among political groups in India. Marxists
have been good at propaganda, and those homegrown in India have
successfully covered their own shameful and schizophrenic ditherings on
Indian and global affairs by throwing everything, including the kitchen
sink, at the BJP, or as Mr. Abraham does, at all Hindus.

Finally, Mr. Abraham concludes his article by claiming that the
nuclear powers have acceded to the CTBT, the revival of Article 6 of the
NPT, etc. I don't know when Mr. Abraham last talked to Senator Helms,
but let me tell you it ain't going to be easy for the President of the United States
to convince the U.S. senate to ratify CTBT! And what about those Western
powers like France, who till about two years ago bombed to smithereens
the atolls in the Pacific! How morally or ethically strong is their position
on CTBT? Sure, some countries like Japan, New Zealand, Australia,
Germany, or Canada have taken a consistent stand on testing. But aren't
these countries hypocritical when they accept the nuclear umbrella that
the U.S. and NATO provide them? Would India have sought to go nuclear
if the U.S. had heeded India's request for a "nuclear umbrella" in the 1960s
immediately after China exploded a nuclear bomb? Mr. Abraham does
not address any of these basic issues but spends all his energy
lambasting India, Hindus, and the BJP.

Similar in tone, but a rather aimless and wildly polemic essay is
contributed by Arvind Das in the July 24th issue of India Abroad.
He begins by asking: "Why is the BJP so afraid of history?" He characterizes
the BJP ideology as antediluvian, and that it is more interested in legend
and myth rather than in "an actual engagement with the past." Now, let us
look at how he answers the question he poses and substantiates the
characterization he gleefully begins with.

Mr. Das states that "...the BJP-led coalition recently packed the
Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) with historians who are seen
as being in agreement with the party's world view...." Does he
substantiate this claim by giving the names of those historians who share
the BJP "world view"? (And what is that world view anyway? Have we any
clear, detailed description of it? This rhetorical ploy, often used
insiduously by some politically correct Indian commentators, is a crass
attempt at belittling a group/a stance without rigorous analysis or
substantiation.) For those interested in the ICHR issue, I direct them to
a recent column by Arun Shourie titled "Fabrications on the way to the Funeral"
dated June 27th in which he provides all the details that Mr. Das does not.
Shourie analyzes an article in Outlook magazine that alleges the ICHR has
not only been packed with pro-BJP historians but that certain key words in
the ICHR Memorandum of Association has been changed to fit the BJP's
nationalistic, pro-Hindu agenda. It would take too long here to summarize
the investigation that Shourie carried out to find out if indeed the
allegations were true, but I will just point out two things: one, there was
no conspiracy to change the word "rational" to "national" in the Memorandum
of Association but that it was a typographical error that was made 20 years
ago and so continued to appear in every new printing of the Memorandum;
second, that the ICHR was always packed by a "Red and Green" brigade of
historians R.S. Sharma, Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, Bipan Chandra,
Muhammad Habib, D.N. Jha, S. Gopal, Ravinder Kumar, Sumit Sarkar,
Parthasarthi Gupta, Mushirul Hasan, K.N. Panicker, and others whose
agenda was to gloss over what was not convenient in their scheme of things
(for example, in the multi-crore research project to publish a record of
the Freedom Struggle from the Indian point of view).

As Shourie states:
"Twenty seven years have gone by. Not a few lakhs, instead
two crores of Rupees have been spent. The project is lost in
the wilderness one of the major scandals of Indian academia.
Not just that. These were leftists. At various stages, the leftists
had done their best to thwart the Freedom Movement.
Salivating at the thought that by doing so they would attract
Muslim youth to their fold, the Communist Party had supported
the demand for the Partition of India. And so, the dedicated
historians who had been conveniently handed the project, did
everything to suppress documents, and derail volumes which
could not but have brought the facts about the left on record.
That is history. That is objective history...."

Of course, there are many who hate Shourie and dismiss his careful
research because he does not belong to the group of fashionable and
politically correct but lazy academics. For those whose sensibilities do not
allow the mention of Shourie, how about V.S. Naipaul? In an interview
with The Hindu, on July 5th this year, he was asked: "You have been
rather vehement about Marxist, leftist interpretations of history.
What did you see as a major flaw in their arguments? Naipaul's reply:
"Probably not so much the Marxist interpretation of history as Marxist politics
which, of course, is entirely criminal. Such disrespect for men. (Long pause).
I think that is enough; that is condemnation enough. This lack of regard
for human beings."

Mr. Das quickly shifts from his allegation that the ICHR is now packed
by a saffron brigade of historians without ever naming names, without ever
mentioning the works of these "pro-BJP historians." Why? Because if he
did, he would have no case. That is the ploy of commentators and
"scholars" of his ilk. Allege, blame, label, pontificate, polemicize, and
never substantiate that is the name of the game that Mr. Das and those
70s-trained Jawahar Lal Nehru University (JNU) sociologists, political
scientists, and historians play.

From claiming that JNU has now been "overtaken by the saffron surge"
to blaming a variety of research and academic institutions (like the ICSSR,
ICPR, and ICHR) for their apathy, under-production, bureaucratization,
etc., Mr. Das then editorializes that while the Congress Party patronized
their own they also accommodated the "heterodox" in these institutions, the
BJP has just loaded these bodies with "saffron" scholars. Again, there are
no names, no affiliations of these scholars. Just claim that this is so,
and you are supposed to believe! The only names that Mr. Das mentions are
that of B.B. Lal, K.S. Lal, and B.R. Grover, who he alleges are BJP
supporters but who also prospered under the Congress. It is time to
squelch this canard too.

Let me draw the reader's attention to an article by B.B. Lal (retired Director
General of the Archaeological Survey of India) in The Hindu titled
"Facts of history cannot be altered" written in response to The Hindu's
allegations that Prof. Lal had refused to hand over his field diaries to the
ASI, and that he, Lal had begun "echoing the Sangh Parivar and even
claimed to possess clinching' evidence suggesting the Babri Masjid stood
on the ruins of a Hindu Temple." Once again, it would be impossible to
summarize all of Prof. Lal's point by point reply toThe Hindu, but let me
give you the gist of it. Prof. Lal is accused of changing his stance on the
historicity of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. His reply: "In 1988
the ICHR organised an international seminar in New Delhi at which
I presented a 60-page paper entitled Historicity of the Mahabharata and
the Ramayana: What has archaeology to say in the matter?'
Finding in it something that went counter to their views, the then
authorities of the ICHR withheld the publication of the paper. Thereafter,
when another journal published it, there was a great hue and cry, as if the
heavens had fallen."

So much for Das' claim that Prof. Lal was "accommodated" by the ICHR
during Congress rule! Regarding his alleged withholding of the diary from
the ASI, Prof. Lal says: "...The Survey is the custodian of all the documents,
including field diaries, plans, sections, photo negatives, and the entire
excavated material; and as my information goes, the Babri Masjid historians
did see the same a few years ago. Why all this fuss now?"

Finally, Mr. Das tries to pontificate about the nature and effects of
history. Like any greenhorn graduate student whose first encounter with
secondary sources summarizing the turgid, boring, predictable, and
pretentious meanderings of continental philosophers, Mr. Das pays
obeisance to Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Bakhtin, et al., and lectures that
"History, in particular, is a complex matter and the mere appointment
of academic bureaucrats cannot either mythologize it or trivialize it to
the Sangh's satisfaction." What balderdash and what a clever but lazy
escape clause!

If history-writing is "clearly linked to the discourse of power," pray what
power is or does? Is power "out there" in some abstract, nebulous other
world? Power is exhibited in many ways ideological, institutional,
relational, individual, and in real and concrete forms (buildings,
armaments, literature, music, et al). And power is and has both negative
and positive characteristics and affirmations. That Mr. Das chooses to
take silly potshots at academics (whom he does not name) by invoking the
works and names of some dead and some alive white men, and white men only,
I suspect that he has little or no serious and rigorous training in the
humanities or the social sciences, and has even less of an interest or
knowledge of matters and material Hindu and Indian. Mr. Das says that
"the Sangh Parivar as a whole neither has, nor can possible have, a consistent
view of history." First of all, I would like to draw attention to the use
of the words "sangh" and "sangh parivar." To make these words "demon
terms" and so to demonize the character or works of people in such groups
as Mr. Das does is the worst kind of demagoguery. Mr. Das may believe that
he and people of his ilk somehow have the right and a monopoly in usurping
and claiming the moral, intellectual, and political high ground, and all
those they survey from such dizzying heights are moral, intellectual, and
political pygmies. Dream on! My next point is that myth and illusion have
been dealt with great insight by Hindu philosophers and sages (like
Shankara, for example), and Mr. Das need not expend his energies on
castigating those historians, archaeologists, and scholars for a nuanced
understanding of those matters. What he should look at seriously is his
own lack of rigor and interest in analyzing the works of those others whom
he castigates as "pathetic specimens" of "...cynicism, pseudo-scientificism
combined with sheer bigotry." It is a sad commentary on the 70s and 80s
training of some Indian academics in the social sciences and humanities
that they resort to such unscientific and inhumane name calling so easily,
so blithely. When Mr. Das dismisses the work of archaeologists as
"...producing evidence of a broken pillar here, the fragment of an
inscription there, pieces of pots and human artifacts from beneath the
earth of Ayodhya evidence that is historically verifiable or not..." he
is doing what self-righteous but lazy academics always do, just simply
shift the goal post. When people raised questions about the historicity of
the Rama temple, the gauntlet they threw was "produce the evidence."

When the evidence was produced (see the article by B.B. Lal in The Hindu for
more details), the challenge became something else. This kind of shameless
political posturing is befitting of goons and criminals, not those who
claim to be academics. Mr. Das ends his article saying "Monkey gods may
have their place in mythology, but human history is too important and
complex to be left to be monkeyed about by bigots, zealots, and office-mongers."
What he has done is to caricature and condemn a people, their gods,
their history (however slippery and vague Mr. Das' definition of history maybe),
their right to affirm and reclaim what is theirs. Mr. Das, however, has no
problem putting Marx or Derrida or Foucault on a pedestal and worshipping
them! And regarding the problematic of human history, Mr. Das, I suppose,
would have no problem claiming the right also to interpret it his way.
To such people as India Abroad provides space to ventilate their wicked
blatherings, I will just quote the last question posed to Naipaul and his reply.

Q: But don't you think this tendency is only going to increase the
tendency to whimsically and freely interpret religion or history at the
street level?

A: I think it will keep on increasing as long as you keep on saying it is
wicked and that they are wicked people. And if we wish to draw the
battleline, then of course, you get to battle. If you try to understand
what they are saying, things will calm down.

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Closepet N. Ramesh, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Communication

Truman State University

Kirksville, MO 63501