Historica Romila Thapar vlijmscherp voor manipulatie geschiedenis in Indiase onderwijs en teloorgang sociale wetenschappen
De gerenommeerde Indiase historica Romila Thapar was onlangs, op haar 93ste, gastspreker tijdens de Kapila Vatsyayan Memorial Lecture. Ze zei onder meer dat het handhaven van de academische normen aan de Jawaharlal Nehru University in het afgelopen decennium ‘extreem problematisch’ is geweest. Wat volgt zijn citaten uit die merkwaardige lezing over de politieke manipulatie van de geschiedenis in India en de teloorgang van de sociale wetenschappen.
Romila Thapar heeft als historica een groot gezag in India. Ze werd op 30 november 1931 geboren in een gezin dat van oorsprong uit de Punjab komt. Ze behaalde haar eerste diploma aan Panjab University in Chandigarh en promoveerde in 1958 onder A.L. Basham aan de School of Oriental and African Studies binnen de University of London.
Als hoogleraar Indiase oudheid doceerde ze aan de Kurukshetra University en de University of Delhi. In 1970 werd ze professor aan de Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) waar ze in 1993 met emeritaat ging. Ze was goed bevriend met de Amerikaanse historicus Eric Hobsbawn.
Thapar staat kritisch tegenover wat zij een ‘communalistische interpretatie’ van de Indiase geschiedenis noemt, waarin gebeurtenissen van de afgelopen duizend jaar uitsluitend worden geïnterpreteerd in termen van een denkbeeldig, voortdurend conflict tussen monolithische hindoeïstische en moslimgemeenschappen.
Ze stelt dat deze geschiedenisinterpretatie ‘extreem selectief’ is in de keuze van feiten, ‘opzettelijk partijdig’ in de interpretatie en dat ze niet de huidige analysemethoden volgt die uitgaan van meervoudige oorzaken.
In 2002 wijzigde de Indiase coalitieregering onder leiding van de hindoenationalistische Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) de schoolboeken voor sociale wetenschappen en geschiedenis, omdat bepaalde passages de gevoeligheden van sommige religieuze en kastengroepen zouden kwetsen.
Romila Thapar maakte als auteur van het leerboek over het oude India bezwaar tegen de wijzigingen die zonder haar toestemming waren aangebracht, zoals het schrappen van passages over het eten van rundvlees in de oudheid en de formulering van het kastenstelsel.
Ze vroeg zich af of de wijzigingen een “poging waren om de mainstream geschiedenis te vervangen door een Hindutva-versie van de geschiedenis”, met als doel de resulterende controverse te gebruiken als ‘verkiezingspropaganda’.
(nvdr: Hindutva: letterlijk ‘hindoe-zijn’, is een politieke ideologie die de culturele rechtvaardiging van het hindoenationalisme en het geloof in het vestigen van de hindoeïstische hegemonie in India omvat.)
Andere historici en commentatoren, waaronder Amartya Sen, protesteerden ook tegen de wijzigingen en publiceerden hun bezwaren in een bundel getiteld ‘Communalisation of Education’.
Thapar, die op haar 93ste recent nog gastspreker was tijdens de Kapila Vatsyayan Memorial Lecture, zei dat het handhaven van de academische normen aan de Jawaharlal Nehru University in het afgelopen decennium ‘extreem problematisch’ is geweest (nvdr: dr. Kapila Vatsyayan was een gerenommeerd geleerde op het gebied van Indiase klassieke dans, kunst, architectuur en kunstgeschiedenis.)
Wat volgt zijn citaten in het Engels uit die lezing.
Appalled by ‘decimation’ of JNU in last 10 years: Romila Thapar
Historian Thapar questions efforts to push a “singular majoritarian narrative and erase India’s pluralistic traditions”
Historian Romila Thapar on Tuesday (16/09) said Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and other centres of social sciences have suffered in the last 10 years, and those who were involved in their establishment are appalled by the ‘decimation’.
Thapar, who was speaking at the third Kapila Vatsyayan Memorial Lecture at the India International Centre here, said maintaining academic standards at JNU in the last decade has been ‘extremely problematic’.
“Some of us who were involved in establishing JNU in the 1970s have been appalled by the decimation that it has undergone in the last 10 years. This is not confined to JNU alone, as other strong centres of the social sciences have also suffered.”
Romila Thapar said they had succeeded in establishing a university that was highly respected at home and in the world outside. “But in the last decade, maintaining academic standards has been made extremely, to put it politely, problematic.”
“This was done in various ways, through appointing some substandard faculty, non-professionals dictating the curriculum and syllabi, attempts to rescind the earlier appointed professor emeritus, curtailing freedom to research and teach what academics regard as meaningful.”
On 2020 incident
Citing the January 2020 incident at the university, in which an armed mob stormed the campus, resulting in injuries to students and faculty, the 93-year-old said that the situation “went beyond academic mechanism”.
While mentioning the arrest of Umar Khalid without naming him, Thapar said, “political control over education silences intellectual creativity”.
“There have been arrests of students for criticising authority, and some of those arrested are in jail still without a trial, despite the last six years of being there.”
(nvdr: Umar Khalid is een Indiase studentenactivist, onderzoeker aan de Jawaharlal Nehru Universiteit en leider van de Democratische Studentenunie (DSU) aan JNU. Hij zou betrokken zijn geweest bij de opruiingen en zit sinds september 2020 in de gevangenis van Tihar.)
“Intellectually purposeful education requires thinking with freedom… or is this control just another demonstration of the prevalent preference for anti-intellectualism. Speech can be silenced, but thought cannot be stilled,” Romila Thapar said.
Thapar criticises ‘current methods of history education’
She also criticised the “current methods of history education” in India by saying that “history is an easy prey because of the generally scant knowledge of history in the country.”
“It is unacceptable to professional historians, but it is acceptable to the members of the public who, in turn, quote it perhaps because of the generally scant knowledge of history in this country.”
“The sciences, being more technical, are not fantasised. The social sciences analyse how societies function and are therefore less technical and more vulnerable. And history is an easy prey,” Thapar said.
The author of ‘Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300’ argued that what is being propagated in history teaching today is a “return to the discarded colonial theories”.
“This is not the decolonisation that it claims to be, since it supports colonial teachings. This supposedly new history claims to replace what others have been writing and teaching in the last 75 years in post-colonial times, much of which is conveniently labelled Marxist, thus said to be erroneous and dismissed.”
Speaking about the ‘Hindutva version’ of history teaching that upholds colonial theories of superiority of the Aryan race and the Two-Nation Theory, Thapar said it is argued that the rightful future of India lies in its reverting to a Hindu state and asked, ‘Can a society as diverse as India be reduced to having a single uniform heritage?”
‘Singular majoritarianism contradicts democracy’
“Singular majoritarianism contradicts democracy, as also does acquiescence with the hierarchy of caste. This concerns the basic question of Indian pluralism: will we still be able to nurture a society whose parameters are open to debate and discussion?”
“Are we willing to confine our society to a single uniform way of living and thinking? Will there only be one explanation of the past and all others dismissed? Is culture going to be defined by the culture idiom of the dominant community, will variants be disallowed?” she questioned.
Thapar added that history, as taught and read, has to be reliable and accurate, which further requires ensuring that “it is not being manipulated for political or other reasons”.
At this point, education becomes crucial, involving trained and competent teachers who can encourage students to ask questions.
“There was a time when students in state schools were given an education that had some degree of quality in terms of a basic understanding of the world in which they lived. This is woefully scarce today.”
“It is not thought necessary that students should be taught to comprehend and question, if they wish to, the society in which they live.”
P N Sree Harsha
(Bron: The Siasat Daily. Press Trust of India, 17 september 2025.)
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