K.N. Panikkar - History as a Site of Struggle: Essays on History, Culture and Politics

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History as a Site of Struggle

This valuable collection of essays by a renowned historian chronicles contemporary South Asia as events have unfolded in the last three decades. The author has analysed contemporary issues from a unique historical vantage point not available in most commentaries on South Asia.

The author focuses on the linkage between neo-liberal economics and Hindu fundamentalism in India, and the vicissitudes of politics in the subcontinent.

There is in-depth analysis of the status of minorities, growth of religious tensions and the erosion of democracy. He outlines the historical context of the Hindu right wing cultural project and the strategies of resistance against it.

The destabilisation of the educational system through privatization by a variety of political regimes, and its communalization during the NDA rule are carefully discussed in the context of the secular and democratic project in South Asia. The significance of history as a site of struggle and contestations over history is a running thread in these essays.

Written in a style that is accessible and reader friendly, these essays show how those involved in academics can make a larger public participate in the intellectual debates of our times. This book would be useful for those engaged in academics of course, but students, civil society activists and concerned citizens would also gain from it.

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Books by KN Panikkar

British Diplomacy in North India:

A Study of the Delhi Residency, 1803-1857 (1968) Against Lord and State:

Religion and Peasant Uprisings in Malabar 1836-1921 (1990) Culture, Ideology and Hegemony:

Intellectuals and Social Consciousness in Colonial India (1996) Communal Threat, Secular Challenge (1997) An Agenda For Cultural Action and Other Essays (2002) Before the Night Falls:

Forebodings of Fascism in India (2002) Colonialism, Culture and Resistance (2007) Books edited:

National and Left Movements in India (1980) Peasant Protest and Revolts in Malabar:

A Source Volume (1990)

Communalism in India:

History, Politics, and Culture (1992) A Concerned Indians Guide to Communalism (1999) Making of History: Essays Presented to Irfan Habib (with Terry Byres and Utsa Patnaik, 1990)

Communalism, Civil Society and the State

(with Sukumar Muralidharan, 2002)

Indias Struggle for Independence

(with Bipan Chandra, Mridula Mukherjee and Sucheta Mahajan, 1988) Towards Freedom:

Documents on the Movement for Independence in India 1940, 2 vols (2011)

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History as a Site of Struggle

Essays on History, Culture and Politics

K.N. Panikkar

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First paperback edition August 2014

Three Essays Collective 2013

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 978-81-88789-84-9

B-957 Palam Vihar, GURGAON (Haryana) 122 017 India Phone: +91 98681 26587, +91 98683 44843

threeessays@gmail.com Website: www.threeessays.com Printed and bound by Chaman Offset Printers, New Delhi

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For those who are fighting for secularism

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Contents

Editors Note

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Acknowledgements xvi

History and Historiography

Colonialism, Culture and Revivalism

Outsider as Enemy: Politics of Rewriting History in India 17

History and Cultural Heritage

A Rational View of the Past: The Babri Masjid Dispute 37

On Historiography

History Textbooks in India

History Retold: Fascist Future of the Past

Competing Historiographies

EMS as Historian

A Great Historian: Sarvepalli Gopal, 1923-2002

Alternative Historiographies: Changing Paradigms of Power 91

It is a Fear of History

History as a Site of Struggle

Myth, History and Politics

Writing Local History in the Times of Globalisation 117

National Politics

Incomplete Struggle

Freedom Fifty: A Critical Introspection

Congress: Loss of Legitimacy

Denationalising the Nation: Politics of Globalisation 155

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Politics Without Idealism

Secularism Under Siege

History, Politics and Culture

Towards an Agenda for Secular Cultural Mobilisation 191

Media and Public Sphere

Bhagat Singh: Profile of a Revolutionary

Nationalism: Beyond Anti-colonialism

The Secular Way: To Uphold Democratic Principles 229

On the Great Rebellion of 1857

Communalisation and the Retreival of the Secular 247

Ayodhya: A Historical Overview

Was There a Renaissance in India?

Was Indian Nationalism Inclusive?

Some Thoughts on Secularism

Corruption and the Middle Class

Jan Lokpal

Corruption A Threat to Indian Democracy

Communal Politics

Religious Politics: The Possible Future

Religious Symbols and Political Mobilisation

The Right to Know

Babri Masjid

Meaning of BJP Politics

Hindu Revivalism: A Political and Cultural Project 359

The Task Before the Nation

Communalism in India: Towards an Intervention 369

Towards a Hindu Nation

Worse than Medievalism

Countering the Revivalist Spirit

Gujarat: Symptoms of a De-civilising Process

The Agony of Gujarat

Before the Night Fal s

A Dangerous Decade

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Communalising Kerala

In the Name of Nationalism

Assassination of the Mahatma

Communalism the Road Ahead

The Struggle Within

Education

Democratic Education: Some Reflections

Denationalising Education

Secular and Democratic Education

Higher Education: Perilous Prospects

Education for Fundamentalism

Whither Indian Education?

Education: Beyond Review and Rectification

Communalisation of Education

In Defense of the Right to Know

Culture

Cultural Pasts and National Identity

Tradition, Innovation and Identity: Religion and Caste in Colonial India

Globalisation, Culture and Communalism

Ungodly Men, Unholy Activities

A Perspective for Intervention

An Agenda for Secularism

Minorities in South Asia

Identity Politics in South Asia

An Agenda for Cultural Action

Left Cultural Intervention: Perspectives and Practice 633

Progressive Cultural Movement in India

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Editors Note

Not many professors of history have the good fortune of their work being found of use by persons outside the field of academics. In the case of Professor KN Panikkar there has been a long demand that his body of lectures at public meetings and his writings in the popular media be brought together in a kind of Omnibus of his activistic writings.

This volume has been some time in the making; collecting his ouvre and putting it together has been a pleasure and a challenging task. His range of subjects and depth of concerns is a catalogue of all that has been happening in this country in fact in South Asia in the last three decades, and the historical backdrop to it. His being a historian of modern India has leant to his analysis of contemporary concerns a unique vantage point not available in most commentaries of contemporary South Asia.