AGAINST HISTORY
IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY, Rabindranath Tagore began his essay “Bharatbarsher Itihas” with a vision of Indian history as a series of recurring nightmares. “The history of India that we read and memorise to sit for examinations,” he wrote, is a story “of who came from where, ceaselessly fought each other, of which sons and brothers wrestled for the throne, of the disappearance of one group and its replacements by another.” Tagore continued:
Where the Indians are, these historians do not answer. As if, only those who have engaged in battles and assassinations alone exist, Indians do not.… In one’s youth, it is history which makes one familiar with his own country. It is exactly the opposite in our case. It is our history which has hidden our country in obscurity.
How do we begin to tell the story properly? This is a question that Tagore asked and tried to answer. More than a century later, the question is being posed afresh, as if it were entirely new. In a speech given in Kolkata in January 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi invoked Tagore’s essay to call out the supposed errors in the writing of Indian history. This June, the Parliamentary Committee on education, women, children, youth and sports invited suggestions from students, teachers and experts for “removing references to unhistorical facts and distortions about our national heroes from the text books,” and “ensuring equal or proportionate references to all periods of Indian history.”
The idea that Indian history has been taught incorrectly—that the history we currently study does not do justice to India’s past, that it is framed by colonial and Marxist biases and needs to be rewritten on the basis of the latest evidence—has become a popular chorus. To understand why, it may help to look closely at the work of a key proponent of the need for new histories: Sanjeev Sanyal.
I first encountered Sanyal’s work as a teacher in a new private university, in a sprawling campus set amid agrarian fields. Earnest engineers came to my classes, sometimes with his books in hand, hoping I would reveal for them India’s past in all its grandeur. As an academic historian, I was unprepared for this. I had just submitted my doctoral thesis. This was my first job. I was not comfortable with thinking of the past in terms of “pride.” Nor was I used to the idea that there could be audiences interested in history but with no maps to help them find their way.
Soon, I began to see his books everywhere—especially in airport bookstores, propped up beside trinkets and chocolates. Then, his videos began to appear in WhatsApp forwards: “Sanjeev Sanyal, ex banker and now an economist, he is also an Eisenhower fellow. Listen to his short talk—very informative without being tinged with saffron & quite an eye opener. Now people wouldn’t question the need to re write Indian history books.” In the videos, Sanyal appears jocular and charming, at ease with ideas and the world. His English is as immaculate as his white kurta, his choice of words as precise as his side-parting. He conveys the ease of a professional, the enjoyment of a storyteller, the swagger of a good debater as he walks up to the podium.
Writing and oratory are only part of the spectrum of Sanyal’s talents. Visit his Wikipedia page or his personal website and you will know that he is currently the principal economic advisor to the Indian government. Before this, he was a global strategist and managing director at Deutsche Bank. There is an impressive list of fellowships, starting with the Rhodes. Sanyal wears his many titles lightly. “Young Global Leader.” “Internationally acclaimed economist.” “Environmentalist.” “Urban Theorist.” “Author of best-selling books on India’s history and geography.” If that were not all, he also writes poetry.
The sheen of success is compelling, as is his ability to flit across disciplines and concerns. Running, Sanyal speaks of the economic liberalisation of 1991 as a turning point, “when India was forced to open itself out to the world.” Its long-term impact on Indian history, he writes, is nothing short of “what was witnessed in Western Europe following the Renaissance.” Liberalisation was not only an economic revolution, but also a sociocultural one. It made possible the transformation of India and a reinvention of its place in the world. Spurred on by demographic change, a primary-education revolution and a new assertive middle class, India could look forward to a new age of progress. Indians could begin to “believe in themselves again.”
