RSS hits out at Romila Thapar over new book

Renowned Indian historian Romila Thapar is under attack yet again by the big brother of the Sangh Parivar — the RSS. This time the RSS is breathing fire on her latest book — On Nationalism. In the book, Ms Thapar has stated that “Nationalism cannot be reduced merely to waving flags and shouting slogans and penalising people for not shouting slogans like Bharat Mata ki jai.”

Seething over her observations, the RSS mouthpiece, Organiser, which described Ms Thapar as the “queen bee of highbrow intellectualism of divisive Left”, targeted her by saying, “(Ms) Thapar is far from surprise to those who understand the phoney communist character of her intellectual politics.”

Targeting the latest brand of nationalism, Ms Thapar has said, “Sloganeering or flag waving smacks of a lack of confidence among those making the demand for slogans.”

Of course this has gone against the nationalist spirit of the Sangh. The mouthpiece wrote: “This time, she has produced another stinky logic of provincialising the otherwise wide-ranging cultural nationalism or Hindutva.”

Hitting out at Ms Thapar, the Organiser wrote in its cover story “Nation for Naysayers”: “In the post-Independence era, historians like Thapar were nurtured by the Congress Party and were established as intellectuals only to ensure that they echo the political programme of this power mongering party through their divisive theories and intellectual activism so that the most legitimate cultural interests of the Hindu society gets nullified from general cognisance.”

Ms Thapar in the new book, a compilation of three essays by Thapar, lawyer A.G. Noorani and cultural commentator Sadanand Menon, wrote: “In India we distinguish between secular anti-colonial nationalism that was the mainstay of the national freedom movement and the other movements that called themselves nationalism but were doubtful as such and were correctly religious or communal nationalism that drew their identity from individual religions, such as Muslim, Hindu and Sikh nationalisms.” She added: “Many historians would refrain from calling these nationalism.” Reacting to this, the Organiser stated: “This classification is inherently erroneous and does not require a deep study of History (which is essentially a European discipline) to know that the freedom movement was a collective and inclusive enterprise of nationalism.”

The Organiser article claimed that her writings are “elitist and hence unrecognisable to the general population of India” and added “historians like Thapar produce a history in an absolute conformity with the determining character of the British renderings of Indian history or Hindu identity. It is far from being factual and real.” The RSS mouthpiece further claimed that “she tries to dazzle her readers with the rationality of her otherwise decadent political ideas.”