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ICHR to reissue banned book

Josy Joseph in New Delhi

The Indian Council of Historical Research has decided to resume the sale of a banned history book containing several unsavoury remarks against some freedom fighters including a claim that National Security Advisor and the prime minister's principal secretary, Brajesh Mishra's father, Congress leader D P Mishra, attacked a Muslim woman in Madhya Pradesh at the height of the Independence movement.

The mammoth volume, written as part of a project to record the Indian version of the last decade of the Independence movement, was banned in 1989 after countrywide protests.

The decision to resume the sale of Towards Freedom -- 1937-47, Volume I: Experiment with Provincial Autonomy, 1 January to 31 December 1937 was taken by the ICHR council --- its reconstitution last year with pro-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh historians had led to a controversy --- at its meeting in Bangalore last month.

The book, edited by Dr P N Chopra and running into 1,358 pages, was taken off the shelves and officially scrapped by the ICHR in 1989 after several "facts" in the book quoting British records were questioned by experts. The "facts" include the claim that D P Mishra had allegedly kidnapped a Muslim girl in 1937. There are slanderous allegations against other leaders, besides a selective letter reportedly written by M K Gandhi to Indira Nehru, saying she must have "grown quite plump by now".

Published in 1985, the book, termed a "misshapen obesity," contained British intelligence inputs. These were meant to defame the Independence movement and its leaders, some historians pointed out.

The volume extensively used material from Britain, while ignoring "the impressive crop of local material from language sources in Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Telugu, Urdu etc collected painstakingly by the Council's researchers themselves by searching from place to place."

The Council withdrew the book and engaged a separate team to write another volume to replace the controversial one. The new volume is expected to be published shortly by the Oxford University Press. Dr Basudev Chatterjee, who edited the new version, recently wrote to the Council, accusing it of deliberately trying to stall publication of the new version.

Council sources said the appointment of pro-RSS historians at the ICHR -- which was earlier dominated by Leftist historians -- has resulted in sweeping changes in its policy, and the decision to bring back Dr Chopra's book is only one of them.

Dr Chopra was recently nominated to the council of the Indian Council of Social Studies Research by Human Resource Development Minister Dr Murli Manohar Joshi.

The Towards Freedom Project -- the controversial book is the first of the proposed ten volumes -- is a yet to be completed programme undertaken by the government in 1973 to counter the British version of the Independence movement. While the first volume ran into controversy, only one other volume has seen the light of day.

With the Council's decision to bring back the "original" volume, sources are doubtful about the future of Dr Chatterjee's volume.

The only other volume to be published deals with events in 1943-1944 and was edited by the late Professor P S Gupta. It was published in 1997. The ICHR has spent about Rs 20 million on the Towards Freedom project.

The ICHR has also decided to publish all the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan titles on Indian culture and civilisation.

Sources said the Council has decided to translate and publish into 16 Indian languages 10 volumes on Indian culture and civilisation edited by R C Majumdar. These volumes had stirred a hornet's nest sometime back due to their assertion that there had always been friction between Hindus and Muslims and social harmony was mostly a myth.

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