Group of 47 senior academicians hits out at 'leftist' scholars

A group of 47 senior academicians today accused 'leftist' scholars of making hypocritical attempts to claim high moral ground over the issue of intolerance, saying an "orchestrated campaign" was on "to create a bogeyman and cry wolf".
In a statement released here, the academicians associated with various prestigious institutions said that as historians and archaeologists they wanted to respond to the scholars' "hypocritical attempts to claim moral high ground".
"The closely-linked statements(by the scholars) appearing with clockwork regularity in India and abroad" are a well orchestrated campaign to create a bogeyman and cry wolf.
"They (statements) are neither intellectual nor academic in substance, but ideological and, much more so, political," the academicians claimed in the statement.

The statement said that on October 26, 53 Indian historians had voiced alarm at what they perceived the country's "highly vitiated atmosphere" and attempts to impose a "legislated history.
This statement, they said, was followed by an open letter from overseas historians and social scientists warning against a "dangerously pervasive atmosphere of narrowness, intolerance and bigotry" and a monolithic view of India's history.

Many of the signatories to these two statements, they claimed, have been part of an politico-ideological apparatus, which has come to dominate most historical bodies and imposed its blinkered view of Indian historiography on the whole academic discipline.

Terming the followers of this school of thought as "leftists," the academicians said that they preferred to dismiss dissenting Indian historians as "nationalist or communal".
"While we reject attempts to portray attempts to portray India's past as a glorious and perfect golden age, we condemn the far more pernicious imposition by the leftist school of a "legislated history", which has presented an alienating and debilitating self-image to generations of Indian students, and prompted contempt for their civilisational heritage," the scholars said.
Institutions like the Indian History Congress and Indian
Council for Historical Research (ICHR) have become arenas of power play as well as political and financial manipulation, the scholars claimed.

The academicians also claimed that the "leftist school" had itself imposed a "legislated history" and called for a unbiased and new historiography of India.
Further, claiming that the leftist scholars had engaged in various unscholarly and abusive practices, the 47 academicians, in their joint statement, also charged that the tradition of plurality that India has cherished has never been practised by this school.