Noted historian Ramachandra Guha today said it was important for journalists as well as those in creative fields, such as novelists and filmmakers, to keep patriotism and their profession separate.
Guha, who was given lifetime achievement award at the Times LitFest here, spelt out his "four commandments" for people in the creative field.
"Thou can be a patriot in private, but thou shall never be a patriot in your professional work. When you are writing the history of the country, or when you're a journalist, studying the political or social dynamics of the country, you cannot escape the horror, the discrimination," Guha said.
He followed this policy in his work, he said.
"I am a patriot, which is why I've lived in this country and not elsewhere, but in my historical work I try not to be a patriot... Even when we are not forced to stand for national anthem or scream 'Bharat mata ki jai', it is very important for any person in the creative field, could be a novelist, filmmaker, journalist, to follow 'I can be a patriot in private, but I must not be a jingoist in public'," he said.
"Thou shall be disloyal to every ideology and especially every political party. Too many journalists, scholars, historians are contaminated by an allegiance to an ideology. You can have views, be left of centre or right of centre, but that does not mean you can follow a party line," he said.
His another commandment was "Thou shall steal from disciplines other than history". Some historians were so obsessed with their "disciplinary chauvinism" that they could not borrow idea from other fields like sociology and literature, he said.
"Thou shall be promiscuous in the sources you use" was the fourth injunction of the writer of 'India After Gandhi'. Some Indian historians had developed a "fetish" for government archives and very few of them used newspapers which were a "fantastic resource", he said.
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