vyakta

I was reading a book - ‘Eminent Historians’ by Arun Shourie a couple of days ago. I really enjoyed a small incident in that book. I shall share the same with you and relate it to what happened very recently- just after Shourie gave talk at IISc.

Manoj Raghuvanshi, host of ‘Aapki adalat, Apka faisla’ had called Arun Shourie and K N Shrimali for a debate related to saffronisation/distortion of history by the right wing people. The drama unfolds…. (The questions & answers are not verbatim)

Manoj asks Shrimali: Why do you say the history is being distorted? Can you exemplify?

Shrimali: In the ancient times beef was eaten, it is written in the Vedas. But these people deny that.

Manoj: Can you quote a verse substantiating your stance?

Shrimali fails to recall & says I have not brought the books there. To his horror, someone from the audience hands over the four Vedas to him. Shrimali fails to show any verse which substantiates his statement. Then he says he was talking about the verses in Vedic literature but not Vedas themselves. Again, when asked to quote a verse, he fails to quote.

After that, Manoj himself reads out a few verses which say that cow is sacred, should not be killed / eaten. Now change of stance by Shrimali!- Few verses in Vedas opposing the beef eating does not indicate that they were not eaten at all !! (True. IPC section 304 opposes murder, but that doe not mean there are no murders at all. But the original stance of Shrimali is backtracked and has run out of resources. Also ancient people revered cows. These are the points to be noted.)

The story shifts to Aurangzeb and his fanaticism.

Manoj to Shrimali: Do you think Aurangzeb was intolerant towards other religions?

Shrimali: Of course no, he had several Hindu nobles in his court. (Shrimali is trying to fool people here. Efficient people will be kept in any King’s court. That does not suppress his religious intolerance.)

Manoj to Shourie: Yes, he was a fanatic. Religion was his motive to expand his state. Shourie quotes from proceedings of Aurangzeb’s court.

..Program continues. And at the end of the show Shrimali has lost out badly. What does he do? He starts attacking the program itself in a column in “The Hindu”. ...The host was biased, partisan editing to weaken my stance, showing Shourie’s quoting from questionable sources … So this is how a historian like Shrimali fights, lose out in face to face, and then criticize the program itself. These are the people who have spent a considerable amount of time in ICHR (Indian Council for Historical Research). These are the people who play a major role in how our social science curriculum should be.

Now the analogy. Shourie gave a talk in IISc about reservations. XYZ (A Professor whose name I don’t want to take) was sitting & listening to the talk. He did not utter a single word there. Just a couple of days after, XYZ writes a blog on what Shourie said and why Shourie is wrong. I saw his blog in another blog by ABC (a retired IAS officer). Now, we all know about the cross & circular references of our left historians. This was no different. ABC refers to XYZ’s blog and vice-versa. I asked ABC: “Why didn’t XYZ question Shourie in the talk itself?” ABC replied “may be XYZ did not want to stoop down to Shourie’s level”. That is the last thing he could have thought of because both ABC and XYZ are nowhere comparable to Shourie in stature. Naming them will not help either. XYZ himself did not answer my questions on his stance, his counter arguments about Shourie’s talk related to reservations. Next time you see someone criticizing a speaker or a program just ask “were you there in the thick of the action during the program?”

# posted by ananda k s @ 3:45 AM