TCA Srinivasa-Raghavan: 1857 and all that

LINE & LENGTH

Unifying myths serve a larger purpose. Fussy historians should have the grace to concede this.

Over the next year or so, India is destined to see another furiously intellectual controversy over history. It will centre around the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of 1857.

Only two facts are known at the moment but they are sufficient to provide the first spark. One is that a 68-member committee""yes, 68""has been constituted to oversee a programme of celebratory events. The other is that a mouth-watering Rs 150 crore has been allocated for it.

Salvos have already been fired by historians, including by my old friend Shahid Amin, head of the department of history at Delhi University. "Only an informed public debate can stem the wastage of money and effort on mere window-dressing", he writes in a newspaper article. Elsewhere in it he says: "To hang the story of the Ghadar by a single thread would amount to hanging its myriad rebels twice over."

The Congress, which happens to be in power, will see it differently, at least so far as the single thread apprehension is concerned. Broadly speaking, that single thread will be nationalism even though by all accounts a nation, let alone a nation-state, did not exist in 1857.

The BJP and the RSS are likely to be left high and dry, even though Atal Bihari Vajpayee is one of the 68. Had they been in power, they might have tried""as some Pakistani historians have done in tracing the idea of Pakistan to 1857""to turn the celebrations into a particular form of nationalism. It will be interesting to see how the BJP-ruled states deal with the Congress challenge.

The Marxists will have their own version, thanks largely to the old Karl's writings on British rule in India. If at all they acknowledge 1857, it will be equally interesting to see what West Bengal and Kerala do. It is not hard to guess, though, because the template already exists.

Then there are the regional parties of UP, the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Mangal Pandey""who another historian says had almost nothing to do with the events in North India that summer""was a brahmin. That could be a problem for both Mulayam Singh and Mayawati. UP has an election coming up and it will be fascinating to see how 1857 is milked there.

It is equally fascinating to ask what the rest of India will do to celebrate or how it regards 1857. The rebellion/mutiny/war of independence/ghadar was largely confined to the Northern region of a loose geographic agglomeration called India by the British. How are the Wise 68 going to convince a Tamil or a Manipuri or a Kutchchi that it concerns him or her? Hence Shahid's observation that it should all not be made to hang by a "single thread".

But that raises an even more difficult issue: if not one, then how many threads? The answer lies, at least according to the "Subaltern" school of history, in getting away from recounting things purely from the point of the ruling classes. The Subaltern approach to history is focused on the masses at the bottom rather than the elite at the top. The ruled probably had a perspective different from those of the rulers, and that too needs some airing.

Arthur C Clarke, by the way, has also been saying the same thing except that he calls it tribalism. This leads to another knotty question: what did India's tribals think of 1857, if at all they knew about it? Shall we see another version emanating from Jharkhand, where the BJP is in power?

Then there are the historians themselves. Like all academics in the social sciences they rarely seem to agree, except about one thing: everyone else should listen to them, and them alone. In this context, another friend, Ram Guha, says history writing should be left to historians. That would not be a problem, but which historians?

But as an interested citizen, I would like someone to tell me why we always need to make a fuss over everything. After all, 1857 is 150 years ago, and no one really disputes that a lot of people who got very cross with the Brits tried to get rid of British rule and restore power in the hands of the Mughal emperor.

Of course, different groups would have had different motivations, and the sum total of them need not add up to what is described as nationalism. But from the point of view of celebrations, which should be more important""the outcome or the motivations? In short, which exactly are we celebrating, the what or the why?

I am afraid that some historians are asking precisely this question, but with a very different connotation and implication: there is nothing to celebrate. Perhaps, they are right. Maybe they are wrong. But does it really matter that Mangal Pandey was nowhere near Meerut when the rebellion started?

All societies need a bit of mythology, and if it serves to unite rather than divide, surely the rest of us have the right to expect graceful behaviour from the experts?