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Magazine
COMMENT
Heritage destroyed
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Reactions to the destruction of manuscripts at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute.
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HUNDREDS of books and manuscripts, some of them rare palm leaf manuscripts, were damaged, destroyed, and stolen, along with priceless artefacts when some admirers of Shivaji invaded the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) at Pune on January 5. Incensed over remarks made about the medieval ruler and hero of nationalist historians in a book written by American historian James W. Laine, the mob (belonging to the Sambhaji Brigade of the Maratha Mahasangha) vandalised the BORI to punish scholars at the institute for having provided research assistance to Laine.
When the attack took place, the book had already been withdrawn from the shelves by Oxford University Press, and an apology tendered by Laine for inadvertently hurting the feelings of admirers of Shivaji (whom he refers to as a "great man" in his book, Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India). The book is a study of various narratives of Shivaji produced during and after his lifetime, and Laine's proclaimed intention is to examine the motivation of each narrator, against the complex background in which each lived and wrote about Shivaji.
The incident has sent shivers down scholars' spines. Even those who did not approve of Laine's book: one of those historians who had asked for its withdrawal, 85 year-old Gajanan Mehendale, was so anguished at the destruction that he tore up 400 pages of the unpublished part of his biography of Shivaji, saying there was no place for scholars in a society which believed in mobocracy. Among those who spoke to this writer were historian Dr. R. Champakalakshmi, a historian with a special interest in archive preservation, S. Theodore Baskaran, the economist V.K. Natraj of the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS), S. Ramakrishnan of CRE-A books, also a noted Tamil writer and editor-publisher, and G. Ramachandran of Motilal Banarsidass Indological Publishers.
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"History is the collective memory of a people...Can you imagine a human being without a memory? To find any solutions to our national problems you have to go back to history. Take Kashmir and Ayodhya. Can we solve anything unless we understand their history," asks S. Theodore Baskaran, historian and former Director of the Roja Muthiah Research Library. "This is a wake-up call for all historians, libraries, museums and archives to protect and preserve their material by microfilming them. A library is vulnerable whenever a group wants to attack an idea or a concept. It is not a new thing in Indian history. Buddhist and Jain books have been destroyed in medieval times, as Mayilai Seeni Venkatasaami showed in his Maraindhu Pona Thamizh Noolgal (Tamil books that have disappeared) written in the 1950s. Books were disposed of into water, or fire. In 1967, the Jaffna library was destroyed. In Chennai, the U.Ve. Swaminathan Library, the Sanskrit College Library, the Maraimalai Adigal Library and Roja Muthiah Research Library all have priceless imprints and manuscripts."
Historian Dr. R. Champakalakshmi agrees that "archives' building is a duty of all citizens, and there should be a policy of getting all of them located, listed and copied either by Government sponsorship or by funding agencies which have no vested interests in projecting or obstructing any particular point of view... But the malaise seems to be deep rooted. Nor can it be treated as a mere law-and-order problem. Such groups that destroy like this have no legitimacy, no authority as academics to condemn any opposing opinions or criticisms. They have no right to be called nationalists. The fact is that knowledge progresses only through debate and differences of view between scholars interpreting the same material! This attack goes against the expression of scholarly opinions on the basis of sources, and to that extent it would hinder academic work, both by Indian and foreign scholars."
Is this an indication that interest in historical studies might wane? Known for her work on Indian religion, society, and urbanisation in ancient and medieval India, Dr. Champakalakshmi feels research in history has of late actually reached a new high, especially in the Central Universities and universities in the North, with some young research scholars showing a rare commitment. She speaks of new perspectives and approaches that have evolved since the 1970s, attracting foreign students and scholars in South Asian Studies.
"India is not lagging behind in contributing to international journals or publishing journals of high standards. But materials available in private collections and religious establishments are not easily accessible to scholars. The BORI has been a major institutional source for projects on Indian literature especially Vedic and epic traditions, as well as Persian and Marathi literature, attracting scholars from all over the world. Members have been rendering assistance to researchers by giving them access to their collection and even by reading manuscripts in unknown scripts and languages. This vandalisation of irreplaceable and rare materials might drive away the few people familiar with scripts. Already the number of such persons is dwindling. Existing funding problems may worsen, if institutions cannot protect and preserve their manuscript collections. Scholarship does not flourish under such adverse conditions," concludes Dr. Champakalakshmi.
"Any feeling citizen should be concerned about this intolerance to ideas. It is a question of the health of our society in the long run," says S. Ramakrishnan of CRE-A Publishing House who has been associated with the Roja Muthiah Research Library, and is acutely aware of the challenges of archiving and heritage-preservation.
V.K. Natraj of MIDS asks, " ... If somebody writes a book, how is the Bhandarkar Institute to be held responsible? An author should feel free to draw his own conclusions, and unless you have room for different opinions, we cannot teach history. To protect their idea of Shivaji, they have damaged a national treasure! I'm not expecting everyone to become heroes and heroines, but if we hesitate to take a position on such things, we will encourage intolerance. I think some kind of sanity will prevail, and it will not happen elsewhere. Otherwise, prejudices instilled into us will be retained until our dotage!"
G. Ramachandran of Motilal Banarsidass Indological Publishers, who recalls the work of Brahmachari Srinivasan who laboriously collected Sanskrit manuscripts for the BORI, laments: "Was there no other way to protest? Why destroy manuscripts? In the old days, people did not even go with chappals into libraries! But we are ignorantly destroying our own heritage ... throwing mud on our own heads!"
VASANTHA SURYA
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