Karachi: It is not news that the ascent of Narendra Modi has marked a change in India’s outlook on its past. The elevation of Hindu identity as central to being Indian has been accomplished in a variety of ways, from prioritising narratives that connect the nation’s Hindu past to its current nation-state identity, to marginalising interpretations giving primacy to secularism. Writers and anyone else challenging India’s Hindu nationalist pride have been battered. Some have been killed.
It is no surprise, then, that the effort to rewrite Indian history, such that it fits better with a narrative of Hindu supremacy, has spread into India’s academia. At the end of September, a meeting was held at the University of Delhi’s department of Sanskrit. Archaeologists and scholars from Gorakhpur, Varanasi and Delhi took part and had some interesting interpretations to present to the world.
In his address, head of the department, Ramesh Bhardwaj, said, “The time of the Vedas cannot be asserted before 6,000 BC and thus Vedic civilisation is proved more ancient than the Indus Valley civilisation.” Archaeological, literary and astronomical evidence, Bhardwaj insisted, confirmed that the Vedas, which are the Hindu scriptures, are actually 4,500 years older than had been previously believed. These claims are contrary to what historians have believed for some time, which is that the time of the Vedas did not begin until the Harappan civilisation declined.
Politics, then, has won another victory over history in India. Making the Vedas suddenly older than, for instance, the Harappan civilisation (normally dated at 2,500 to 1,800 BC) permits the Hindu civilisation to be described as the first civilisation of India. Since so much of Hindu rhetoric is poised crucially on the premise of claiming India as the original homeland for its Hindus, changing the date of the Vedas fits well in the Hindu nationalist scheme of things.
The claim of being indigenous in turn permits exclusions: Muslim and Christian arrivals obviously came much later and can hence be characterised as usurpers. Given India’s increasingly authoritarian climate and the attacks on free speech, it is likely that the historians of Delhi University’s Sanskrit department will enjoy some favour with the Modi government. Favours of historical interpretation, after all, are invaluable to politicians everywhere and this one is likely to be of particular use. Beyond political claims, will Hindus feel more “indigenous” than they already do in the land where they have lived for centuries, simply because scholars turn historical dating into a political act?
That too is unknown, but the question of which portions of history become precious and which are left to stagnate and fester is equally important in Pakistan. Here, it is, of course, not the indigenous that is highly coveted, but the Islamic or post-Islamic. As a consequence, the pre-Islamic is not a particular priority.
Around the same time that the Indians were undertaking their revisionist dating of the Vedas, some interesting discoveries were also made in Pakistan. A dig near Badin discovered statues that may belong to a Buddhist city that used to be the capital of lower Sindh. A historian said they appeared to belong to Dravidians.
Then, just last week, archaeologists who were digging in Buner in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa found the remnants of an ancient city from the 6th century BC. According to reports, one of the most interesting finds from the six-month long dig is a fort-like structure in the mountains in Gandhao. Historians associated with the dig said that the settlement dated from a time during which the area was still under Buddhist influence.
Just as the old dating of the Vedas does not fit in with the Modi government’s understanding of India, Pakistan’s pre-Islamic history are of little political use. Even more troubling is how little this history figures in the story of Pakistan that is told to future generations. Pakistanis turning away from their pre-Islamic history is anomalous when considered against other Muslim nation states. Given India’s recent turn, it seems that the antipathy towards history that does not fit the requirements of the politics of the present is a very sub-continental, a very South Asian, a very Indian, and a very Pakistani thing.
(By arrangement with Dawn)
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