Interview with Romila Thapar: “What Has Been Happening in Recent Times Could Well Develop Into Fascism”
For over five
decades, the historian Romila Thapar has been at the vanguard of research and
writing about ancient India. The author of 20 books including seminal titles
such as A History of
India and Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, Thapar is
also the author of history textbooks for the National Council for Research and
Education (NCERT), used widely in schools across the nation. She is an honorary
fellow at Lady Margaret Hall at the University of Oxford, and professor emerita
at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, with which she has been involved
since its inception, and where, from 1971 to 1990, she was professor of ancient
Indian history. She has been a visiting professor at Cornell University, and
holds honorary degrees from institutions such as the University of Chicago,
Oxford University, Edinburgh University and the Universities of Calcutta and of
Hyderabad. In 2008, she was awarded the Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in
the Study of the Humanities.
Throughout her
academic career, Thapar’s focus has been on understanding history not as mere
factual inquiry but as questioning a cultural and ideological phenomenon. Her
oeuvre has transformed the understanding of the Indian subcontinent globally.
Thapar has also been a consistent and vocal advocate for education through
rational, evidence-based inquiry and research-oriented approaches. In February 2016,
soon after students from JNU were arrested and charged with sedition, The Caravan met with Thapar. They
discussed the historical evolution of sedition, the significance of secularism
and approaches to higher education in India. Published below is an excerpt from
the interview. This conversation
is a part of ‘Notes on Nationalism,’ a series being published by The Caravan that considers various
aspects of the public discourse around sedition, nationalism, and Indian
identity. You can read other pieces in the series are here, here and here.
The Caravan: Where
has the notion of sedition come from?
Romila Thapar: It’s a notion that came with the colonial government. In the pre-modern period, there were no references to sedition. There were no nations in those days, so opposition would only be to the ruling authority. But once the idea of the nation came to be established, then the question of making comments hostile to the nation or to the colonial government became a reality, especially with the growth of nationalist sentiment. Sedition was brought in by the British Indian government and made into a law for governing India. The dictionary meaning of sedition draws a distinction between advocating the overthrow of the government or violence, and inciting the overthrow of the government or violence. It is the inciting which is seditious, not just talking about it. This is a differentiation that is extremely important. Unfortunately, it is a distinction that people have forgotten because of the way in which the word has been tossed around these days.
Romila Thapar: It’s a notion that came with the colonial government. In the pre-modern period, there were no references to sedition. There were no nations in those days, so opposition would only be to the ruling authority. But once the idea of the nation came to be established, then the question of making comments hostile to the nation or to the colonial government became a reality, especially with the growth of nationalist sentiment. Sedition was brought in by the British Indian government and made into a law for governing India. The dictionary meaning of sedition draws a distinction between advocating the overthrow of the government or violence, and inciting the overthrow of the government or violence. It is the inciting which is seditious, not just talking about it. This is a differentiation that is extremely important. Unfortunately, it is a distinction that people have forgotten because of the way in which the word has been tossed around these days.
Most people don’t realise that the emphasis really is on
inciting violence and inciting people against the state. The British used it
against most of the major nationalist leaders, preeminently [the social
reformer Bal Gangadhar] Tilak. Whenever they felt that someone was making a
statement that was somehow injurious to British colonial rule, they would
invoke the law of sedition. Secondly, the historical situation has changed.
Sedition was introduced at a time when India was a colony and was governed by
an alien power. Now we are an independent nation with an elected government.
It’s a democratic parliament. So, the situation is entirely different. Is it,
then, legitimate to have sedition as a punishable offence?
TC: You have said
that for India, sedition is akin to blasphemy in Europe—since India doesn’t
quite have the concept of blasphemy that religious or political powers can
invoke easily, sedition became our blasphemy.
RT: The thought that crossed my mind was that what they’re trying to suggest about sedition vis-à-vis the nation in India, is becoming somewhat like blasphemy in the context of religion. As far as the Hindu religion goes, there cannot be anything really close to blasphemy because there isn’t a regular creed and a regular belief system that every Hindu has to conform to. There are all kinds of Hindus, who have all kinds of beliefs, and they are counted as Hindus under this umbrella term. Therefore, blasphemy is very difficult to define in a religion of this kind.
RT: The thought that crossed my mind was that what they’re trying to suggest about sedition vis-à-vis the nation in India, is becoming somewhat like blasphemy in the context of religion. As far as the Hindu religion goes, there cannot be anything really close to blasphemy because there isn’t a regular creed and a regular belief system that every Hindu has to conform to. There are all kinds of Hindus, who have all kinds of beliefs, and they are counted as Hindus under this umbrella term. Therefore, blasphemy is very difficult to define in a religion of this kind.
On the other hand, if
you want to attack certain people, then you can accuse them of being hostile to
the nation. The nation then takes the place of religion and criticism is seen
as a kind of blasphemy against the nation. This is just an idea that I had, I
haven’t thought about it very much.
In recent times there
has been much talk about people being anti-national. Those who make these
complaints often don’t work out what is national, and what is anti-national.
They turn to slogans and insist that articulating slogans is the test of being
nationalist. An example of this is the recent discussion of whether saying “Bharat
Mata ki Jai” is a test of loyalty to the nation. This has no special
sanctity as it is a slogan invented a century or so ago. In any case, is
sloganeering a test of anything? Surely, nationalism requires a serious
commitment to a nation, defined as every citizen having access to human rights,
and recognised not just by territory but also by reliable and just governance.
Nationalism is not expressed merely by raising a flag or shouting a slogan, but
by safe-guarding rights and ensuring good governance. Questioning or
criticising the government is not anti-national. This is quite normal.
Political parties when in opposition routinely do this, as do the [Bharatiya
Janata Party] and the Congress when not in power. In every society there are
people who criticise or complain against various activities within that
society. To dub such criticism anti-national means that there is something more
at stake in the mind of the accuser. The accusation of being anti-national then
becomes one of the mechanisms by which an attempt is made to try and imprison
or silence people.
TC: Does this mean
that, as a people, we are too fragile or too sensitive to criticism? Are we
politically insecure as a democracy?
RT: I wouldn’t say that as a people we are politically insecure. I think we’ve certainly proved ourselves to be a viable democracy in times of crisis. The relative smoothness with which we have changed governments is really, very impressive. But what it does suggest is that those politicians who almost routinely accuse particular persons of being anti-national, they are the ones who are insecure and lack self-confidence—or at any rate, the confidence to rule.
RT: I wouldn’t say that as a people we are politically insecure. I think we’ve certainly proved ourselves to be a viable democracy in times of crisis. The relative smoothness with which we have changed governments is really, very impressive. But what it does suggest is that those politicians who almost routinely accuse particular persons of being anti-national, they are the ones who are insecure and lack self-confidence—or at any rate, the confidence to rule.
TC: In this
context, would you say that this approach, this labeling of people as
anti-national, would always be a systemic part of any ruling dispensation in
which the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has a major say?
RT: Well, you said that, I didn’t say it! Yes, I think there is an ideological, historical background to this that we have to understand. The ideology of the party in power today is that of the RSS. What is the RSS ideology? There are two things that I think they regard as central. One is to convert India into a Hindu rashtra [nation]. This goes back to our experience of the varieties of nationalisms that we have had. Our major nationalism was anti-colonial nationalism, which was an inclusive nationalism. Everybody was brought in and the intention was to throw out the colonial power and to be an independent nation. But in addition to that, in a relatively lesser role at that time, in the early twentieth century, there were organisations such as the Muslim League that was arguing for an Islamic state, and the Hindu Mahasabha that was arguing for a Hindu equivalent. Some label these two as religious nationalisms, some call them communalism, and some describe them as being influenced by fascism. Whereas the anti-colonial nationalism had a nationalist agenda in that it was opposed to colonial rule, and worked towards a secular democracy, the other two communal organisations were not essentially anti-colonial, and their aim was to inherit a Muslim and a Hindu oriented state, after the departure of the British. Their role in the anti-colonial movement was therefore minimal. Secular democracy was not how they envisaged the future.
RT: Well, you said that, I didn’t say it! Yes, I think there is an ideological, historical background to this that we have to understand. The ideology of the party in power today is that of the RSS. What is the RSS ideology? There are two things that I think they regard as central. One is to convert India into a Hindu rashtra [nation]. This goes back to our experience of the varieties of nationalisms that we have had. Our major nationalism was anti-colonial nationalism, which was an inclusive nationalism. Everybody was brought in and the intention was to throw out the colonial power and to be an independent nation. But in addition to that, in a relatively lesser role at that time, in the early twentieth century, there were organisations such as the Muslim League that was arguing for an Islamic state, and the Hindu Mahasabha that was arguing for a Hindu equivalent. Some label these two as religious nationalisms, some call them communalism, and some describe them as being influenced by fascism. Whereas the anti-colonial nationalism had a nationalist agenda in that it was opposed to colonial rule, and worked towards a secular democracy, the other two communal organisations were not essentially anti-colonial, and their aim was to inherit a Muslim and a Hindu oriented state, after the departure of the British. Their role in the anti-colonial movement was therefore minimal. Secular democracy was not how they envisaged the future.
There can be a debate
about these two communal movements since these are really movements pertaining
to religious communities—they’re not national movements. They don’t involve
people across the religious spectrum, and each is concerned only with a
particular community, with a particular religious identity. Now, Islamic
extremism, Islamic nationalism—call it what you will—succeeded in establishing
a state—Pakistan. Therefore, the Hindu version of that ideology is still
anxious to have a Hindu rashtra, and is anxious to convert the Indian state
into a Hindu rashtra.
Therefore, the
ideological battle today is at two fronts. One is to establish a Hindu rashtra
irrespective of the aggression between religious communities needed to do so.
There are incidents of aggression involving what is described as “majority
communalism and minority communalism,” especially in the predictable rise of
riots prior to elections. The needling of the latter by the former, sometimes
followed by a retort, is a common occurrence both in speeches and actions, as
we have experienced in recent times. The second is the confrontation between
communalism and secularism—specifically a choice between a Hindu rashtra or a
secular democracy. To support the former, communalism is being revived,
presumably as a strategy. The attempt is to change the mindset of Indians to
support that ideology. Intolerance of the views of others and
anti-intellectualism are on the rise. In this confrontation, universities and
the educational system are, and will continue to be, obvious targets. Education
can easily be converted into indoctrination.
It is also important
to remember in relation to the RSS ideology that it works with a distinct
definition of the Hindu. If it’s going to be a Hindu rashtra, then the Hindu
has to be defined. Based on the colonial idea of majority communities and
minority communities, the Hindu forms the majority community. The Hindu has to
be the primary citizen as far as citizenship goes. He is the primary citizen
because the territory of British India—which is the territory that the RSS
holds to be the territory of India—this territory is his pitribhumi, the
land of his ancestors, and his punyabhumi, the land in which
his religion originated. The Muslims and the Christians, and to a lesser
extent, the Parsis, are said to have come from outside this territory and their
religions originated outside this territory, so they don’t have primacy. There
is a sense in this ideology, of the coming together of territory, religion, and
language that makes the Hindu more easily identifiable as national, as it were,
than the others. Needless to say, in actual fact, the vast majority of Muslims
and Christians can certainly claim India as their pitribhumi, but this was not
conceded.
The debate on anti-nationalism routinely recurs each time there is an RSS-linked party in power, but it recurs in different forms. For instance, in the 1960s and 70s, some of us historians wrote textbooks for the NCERT [National Council of Education Research and Training] that were used in state schools. But, when the Morarji [Desai] government came to power in a coalition with the Bharatiya Jana Sangh [in 1977], an anonymous letter to the prime minister stated that these textbooks were anti-national and anti-Indian, and therefore, they should be banned. The debate about whether these books were anti-national or not went on back and forth in the newspapers. Then, in about three years, the government fell and the textbooks stayed in place.
This is the story of
textbooks as far as the NCERT is concerned. Each time the government changes;
attempts are made to change the textbooks. Then, the government falls and the
old textbooks come back. Governments make a joke of education. Then again, when
the first National Democratic Alliance government came to power in 1999, Murli
Manohar Joshi, as the education minister, conducted a heavy attack on the
textbooks from 2000 onwards. He referred to us, the authors, as anti-Indian and
anti-national, which meant anti-Hindu, and all this resulted in a demand that
“academic terrorists like us, worse than the cross-border variety” should be immediately
arrested.
This makes their
concept of nationalism very clear. It involves an unquestioned adherence to a
certain territory. However, Pakistan and Bangladesh broke away, so it’s no
longer the original territory of British India. It is important to maintain the
notion that the nation is a Hindu nation, that it is a Hindu rashtra in which
inevitably the Hindu will have a primary position. That is a major component of
the idea as far as its origin is concerned, irrespective of after-thoughts, if
any. Many of us object to this. What we think of as the nation is a secular
nation with multiple religions, where the primary identity is not of any
religious, caste or language group, it is of the Indian citizen. What we want
is the recognition of the rights of the Indian citizen.
TC: This belief in
the primacy of the Hindu in the RSS ideology. Is this belief reconcilable with
the Constitution of India?
RT: I think the Constitution is quite clear about the fact that whatever constitutes the Hindu is something apart and is not a priority for being the Indian citizen. The Indian citizen draws on many more identities... Read more:
RT: I think the Constitution is quite clear about the fact that whatever constitutes the Hindu is something apart and is not a priority for being the Indian citizen. The Indian citizen draws on many more identities... Read more:
