If we are to preserve our Constitution and our secular, democratic tradition, our history books must mirror truths and our public policy must get attuned to its core values

For over six decades after independence, “the Establishment” in Lutyens’ Delhi comprised people belonging to the Nehruvian-Marxist, pseudo-secular consensus. These ideological brothers-in-arms influenced everything — from school curriculum to public policy to history writing — and built up a false narrative that systematically debunked and condemned India’s civilisational journey.

Such was the influence of this consensus that it successfully managed to draw away three generations of Indians born after independence from the country’s great heritage and also inject a sense of shame among citizens about their own past. Much of this damage was done by Left-leaning politicians, bureaucrats and academics, who ensured through educational material — from primary school text books to major tomes on history, government policy and legislative measures — that the populace developed an allergy to its own culture and traditions.

Further, since the overwhelming majority of the people in the country were Hindus and since India’s civilisational experience for millennia was Hindu, the grand scheme of this pseudo-secular establishment became anti-Hindu. It encouraged people to negate anything associated with Hinduism and to eulogise everything that was non-Hindu. This extended to various fields and included condemnation of the Vedas, treating the great epics — the Ramayana and the Mahabharata — with derision, pooh-poohing yoga and ayurveda and pouring ridicule on Sanskrit, the mother of Indian languages.

I wonder if there is another example of this kind where a miniscule minority of people launched an enterprise with such success to get the people living in a land to invalidate their own civilisation and culture.

They worked this consensus successfully for 67 years — and this included the six years during which the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition was in power between 1998 and 2004 — until they met their nemesis in Narendra Modi. Finally, the people of India decided that enough was enough and knocked down the Nehruvian-Marxist brigade from its perch in 2014. People reiterated their position in the 2019 Lok Sabha election and with this, the process of changing the narrative and getting the people to own, appreciate and applaud the phenomenal contribution of the oldest civilisation in the world has begun.

Now that the people of India have ensured the marginalisation of the Nehruvian-Marxist pseudo-secular school, work must begin to restore national pride. It is in this context that one must see Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s recent call for re-writing history. Shah cited many examples and said that but for Veer Savarkar, who described the events of 1857 as the “first war of independence”, historians would have written it off as a mere revolt against the British.

Shah is right when he says we must write history that is faithful to facts, in other words, re-write history. For example, let us take the case of Aurangzeb. He asked his Governors in 1669 to destroy Hindu temples, including the most revered Kashi Vishwanath temple, the Somnath temple in Gujarat and the Krishna temple in Mathura. He built a huge mosque after destroying the Mathura temple and had the idols of the Krishna mandir buried under the steps of a mosque in Agra.

Aurangzeb is also the emperor who offered Government jobs to Hindus who converted to Islam. Computation of prison terms was another incentive. He also imposed higher customs duty on Hindus, who imported goods into his territory and imposed a tax on the Hindus (jizya) who wished to practise their faith. Finally, let us not forget that it was Aurangzeb who destroyed Sikh gurdwaras, imprisoned and tortured Guru Tegh Bahadur and eventually beheaded him when the latter refused to convert to Islam. He continued his assault on Sikhism during the tenure of Guru Gobind Singh and killed his sons as well.

This is the story of Aurangzeb. Yet, historians of the variety named above have tried to bury these facts and even paint him as person who was “secular.” If ever there was a prize for fraudulent history, this would get it. Will someone from the pseudo-secular, Nehru-Marxist combine tell us as to what was the rationale in naming a key arterial road in New Delhi after this tyrant?

Similarly, many towns and key roads and suburbs in other cities have been named after him — all because the Hindu-hating Nehru-Marxists controlled the levers of power in this country for over six decades. Similarly, Babar, Humayun and Jehangir have been accorded pride of place in the national capital and elsewhere in the country.

How can India remain a secular, democratic nation so long as it perpetuates the memory of such invaders? If we are to preserve our Constitution and our secular, democratic tradition, our history books must mirror these truths and our public policy must get attuned to the core values in our Constitution — meaning thereby that the last vestiges of these dreadful memories must be wiped out forever.

Fortunately, the name of Aurangzeb has been obliterated from that road in New Delhi and it has been named after the most honourable former President, APJ Abdul Kalam. Others, who fall in Aurangzeb’s category, deserve similar treatment. Also, the truth about their empires and their bigotry must be part of the school curriculum, if only to emphasise that India’s future lies not in such bigotry but in genuine democracy where the mantra is equality and equity. François Gautier, the French journalist who has made India his home, and Koenraad Elst, the Belgian scholar, have both alerted the people of the country to the humongous fraud that has been perpetrated by Left-leaning politicians, academics and bureaucrats since independence.

Gautier’s book, A History of India as it Happened: Not as it Has Been Written, which was first published six years ago, is one of those books which compels the nation to re-write history.

Elst is another scholar who has focussed on the phenomenal damage done by Marxist historians, who have tried to erase from Hindu memory “the history of their persecution by the swordsmen of Islam.” Elst says in his book, Negationism in India: Concealing the record of Islam, says India has its own “full-fledged brand of negationism” and “this movement is led by Islamic apologists and Marxist academics and followed by all the politicians, journalists and intellectuals, who call themselves secularists.”

Also, this has been promoted by the Indian State. He says the English-educated class has turned the negation of India’s civilisational greatness into a fashion statement. The Home Minister is also saying very much the same.

(The writer is an author specialising in democracy studies. Views expressed are personal.)