A SYMPOSIUM ORGANISED BY the Akhil Bharatiya Itihaas Sankalan Yojana (ABISY) ” a subsidiary organisation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) founded in 1978 with the objective of rewriting Indian history from a nationalist perspective ” in Delhi on October 5, has sent a chill down the spines of liberal academics countrywide. It has resurrected apprehensions that the BJP-led NDA coalition which swept to power at the Centre five months ago, is set to resume its hindutva agenda interrupted by its shock defeat in General Election 2004, to infiltrate Hindu mythology into school curriculums. The symposium was convened by ABISY at the National Museum to commemorate Maharaja Hemchandra Vikramaditya (1501-1556), described as the forgotten Napoleon of India and œlast Hindu emperor of India. A former general of Sher Shah Suri who revolted against the Afghans and Mughals, Hemchandra reportedly won 22 battles in quick succession and declared himself Emperor of Delhi in 1556. œWe are always in favour of recognising and remembering our forgotten real heroes who were deliberately ignored by biased historians of the Mughal and British era, says B.M. Pande, organising secretary, ABISY and convenor of the symposium. At the packed-to-capacity symposium, speakers rubbished reputed historians with BJP ideologue Subramanian Swamy œin a nakedly communal speech, positing that it was œdue to the struggle of people like Hemu that Muslims and Christians failed to convert 80 percent of Hindus, reports Pragya Tiwari in firstpost.com (October 9). Moreover, Swamy opined that œbooks written by Romila Thapar, Bipin Chandra, and other historians of Nehru must be burnt in a bonfire. Quite clearly, drawing inspiration from the comprehensive electoral victory of the BJP ” widely regarded as the political arm of the RSS-headed sangh parivar and the fact that prime minister Narendra Modi is a former RSS pracharak (foot soldier) ” in General Election 2014, Pande believes ABISY™s time has come. œThe Indian Council of Historical Research receives an annual grant of Rs.20 crore from the Central government. Earlier, all grants used to go to the leftist Aligarh, JNU and Calcutta universities. Now it must go to the correct places, he says. In this context, it™s pertinent to note that one of the new government™s first appointments was of Dr. Yellapragada Sudershan Rao, a former history professor at Kakatiya University, Telengana whose current research project is to discover the definitive date of the Pandava-Kaurava war described in the Mahabharata, as chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research, Delhi (estb. 1972). Within months of the BJP-led government being sworn-in, liberal intellectuals in academia and education regulatory organisations are feeling the heat. On October 9, Prof. Parvin Sinclair, director of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), who had acquired a reputation for standing up to the diktats of the Union HRD ministry, put in her papers reportedly because of a written allegation made against her by Dina Nath Batra, a leading light of Vidya Bharati, the education wing of RSS. The octogenarian Batra, who forced the Congress-led UPA government…
