With the government deciding to set up a one-member inquiry committee to look into the irregularities in the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), following a MAIL TODAY expose last week which revealed how one of its major research projects, 'Towards Freedom', has been going on for 43 years, with crores of rupees already spent on it, our investigation suggests that the above malpractice is just the tip of the iceberg.

The more shocking irregularity lies in the way some of our well-known historians have taken ICHR for a ride, in the name of the 'Translation Project'. While the books of these eminent historians have got published in several vernacular languages, there are more than 224 manuscripts which couldn't see the light of day, even after the ICHR spent lakhs of rupees on translating them.

Kapil Kumar, professor of history at IGNOU, who was also ICHR member secretary in 2003-04, found over 224 manuscripts lying for publication for more than a decade. "No efforts were made to publish them in spite of having incurred expenditure on their translation, etc," he informed.

A recent Right To Information (RTI) application revealed that the ICHR didn't take up the 'Translation Project' between 2004 and 2015, but a top HRD ministry official insisted that the academic body spent Rs 28.29 lakh in one year on translating books. Arjun Dev, a prominent member of the 'Towards Freedom' project, shared, "I don't think the project has been going on a big scale. One would hear the books of some historians being translated in some vernacular languages, but it's not a regular phenomenon now."

ICHR chairperson Y Sudershan Rao, when asked about the 224 manuscripts, said he would look into the matter, as "I have no details about it right now." But an ICHR official insisted that the actual number could be higher.

"It would be much more than 224, for not many translated books have been published in the past 10 years, except the ones written by eminent historians," he said, adding: "It is high time responsibility is fixed on those wasting public money on translating books and then leaving them to bite dust."

But, then, what is the 'Translation Project' all about? "The project began in April 1972 with the National Book Trust's proposal to translate the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan series on the history and culture of India, but a committee consisting of Romila Thapar, S Gopal, Satish Chandra and Tapan Raychaudhuri found these volumes edited by RC Majumdar 'not suitable for translation into Indian languages', and instead proposed to suggest alternative names," informed AG Lal, who was part of the ICHR from the early 1970s till the mid-2000s.

Interestingly, the main beneficiaries of this last-minute change were the very people who proposed it - the late RS Sharma, the first ICHR chairperson, S Gopal, Romila Thapar, Bipan Chandra, Irfan Habib, his father Mohammad Habib, and of course Satish Chandra!

While these historians were not paid any royalties for these works, they were indeed given "a lump sum for translation rights", which if combined with the inflationary rise over the decades, would turn into a hefty sum for each historian. "Today, it can easily be in lakhs for each of the beneficiaries," confessed an old ICHR hand, not willing to be named.

For Dev, however, the government's move to set up an inquiry committee is aimed at diverting people's attention from its saffronisation agenda. "If anything, the government's move is political in nature, rather than academic. It is a tactic to divert attention from the incompetence of some of the individuals put up by the government at such academic bodies," said the historian.

Prof Kumar begged to differ. Emphasising that corruption in ICHR went deeper, and at the highest level too, he recalled how the then ICHR chairperson during his stint as member-secretary wanted him to reimburse his mobile phone bills and half of the electricity bill at his residence. "I refused to clear these bills as the CAG had objected to such reimbursements being made to the former chairperson," he said. The IGNOU professor also shared how the chairperson he worked under was not just a defaulter of an ICHR project but also had "violated the Research Funding rules of ICHR".

But what takes the cake is the incident where the then ICHR chairperson mentioned the name of one Prof Shabir Mohammad to be contacted and be requested for a paper for the Indian delegation's visit to Turkey. "This Prof Shabir Mohammad was converted into Mr Shabi Ahmed by the dealing Deputy Director and whose own name is Mr Shabi Ahmed. This file never went back up to the chairperson," recalled Prof Kumar.

A senior HRD ministry official said, "There's corruption at all levels in ICHR. I don't think a one-member inquiry committee can look into the length and breadth of its malfunction within a month. It needs at least three months, more so because some of the documents are no longer with the HRD ministry or the ICHR, but with an old academician who is not keeping well."