History wars roiling India

An attempt to “fabricate and distort history” is a terror of a different nature, general president of Indian History Congress KM Shrimali said, expressing concern over the shrinking space for reason and debate in the country.

The sole agenda behind the RSS-BJP trying to rewrite history was to create a Hindu nation, where minorities were treated as second-class citizens, he said. “It is a matter of concern that the space for reason and debate is shrinking in India. We have never witnessed such a disturbing trend. Those with little knowledge about history are trying to fabricate and thrust their idea. It is a terror of a different nature,” the former history Prof at Delhi University said.

The RSS and the BJP were determined to divide the nation on religious grounds, Shrimali said, adding that history was a discipline of reason and could not be written with “fabricated truths, imagination or myth-making.”

The historian explained that Hindutva and Hinduism were different concepts with the former being a political ideology. Shrimali said Hindutva was being used as a tool to access power. ...