Last week, at the launch of Sanjeev Sanyal’s latest book Revolutionaries, Home Minister Amit Shah spoke of the need to tell the “other side” of history, as it has for too long been seen through the prism of colonial historians. This week, historian Swapna Liddle, at the launch of her own new book The Broken Script, said history writing should be left to historians. These two contradictory views highlight an increasingly vexing question: Whose history is it anyway?

Many years ago, a venerated editor of a major national daily used to write a column that continued to be published long after he retired. His commentaries were not for the faint-hearted—or for the average newspaper reader. As a rookie journalist 30 years ago, I often heard the comment that “if more than five people read his column—and understood it—he would be offended.” He apparently believed that quality and popularity were inherently mutually exclusive.

Today’s “eminent” Indian historians concur. Think of a book on Bharatiya history you found interesting—if you ever were enthused enough to think of reading a book on history, that is. The chances are that the one(s) you like are written either by non-Bharatiyas, or Bharatiyas who are not historians. Most professional historians here write books only for their peers and hapless students. Most would probably be annoyed (like that editor) if the hoipolloi read and understand them!

They, therefore, remain smugly unaware that they have been hoist by their own petard, as the rise of non-historians writing history is proof of the failure of the ‘professionals’. Had the writing of history not been left to these exclusivist historians all this while, non-historians like Sanyal (an economist by education and profession) would not have had to jump in to make history accessible and intelligible to the very people whose shared past forms its core focus area.

The presiding deity of the professional historian cult is, of course Romila Thapar. And her CD Deshmukh Lecture at the India International Centre last week was an impeccably enunciated excoriation of the “other” historians who have the temerity to tread on hallowed ground reserved for her ilk. The overwhelmingly grey-haired audience was told that the others were a bunch of ill-read, untrained, idiotic (saffron) flag-wavers who don’t know their a*** from their elbow.

She talked of the professional historians’ loyalty to methodologies and processes, characterising the work of the “others” as flights of fancy based on hearsay, mythology and their own imagination. She obviously did not think it necessary actually read any book by those “others” before attacking them, or else she would have been horrified to discover that most of them use the same sources, methodologies and processes she assumes are exclusive to her cohort.

The difference is that non-professional Bharatiya historians use refreshingly non-academic language and present findings and arguments in a way lay readers can relate to, not turgid jargon-ridden treatises in “historians”. Yet professional historians abroad whether they lean left or right—let us not pretend historians anywhere are impartial— make the effort to write lucidly. So they appeal to wider audiences unlike their Bharatiya counterparts, and even produce bestsellers.

Apart from her fellow “professional” historians and generations of unfortunate students forced to read Thapar as part of history syllabi in universities—myself included—few other Bharatiyas would willingly buy any of her two dozen or so books. Most other professional historians also wallow in the same shallow pool. Ironically, it suits this elite band to keep history (knowledge) confined to a select few in this way, just like the Brahmins of ancient Bharat used to do.

But this elite group now has reason to be afraid—be very afraid—as a revolution is underway. Their superiority and monopoly are being challenged—not by the non-professional historians but by the people, by readers. Bestseller lists based on actual sales of books rather than the selections of interest groups consistently show that works by so-called amateurs are dominating the top ranks. So much so that even publishers are now looking beyond their previous elite favourites.

The redoubtable Arun Shourie had taken on this cohort in his 2014 book Eminent Historians showing how they have steered narratives in a particular direction via total control over the writing, researching, funding, guiding and teaching history. Those professional historians have achieved little apart from discouraging legions of students who may have been inclined to explore alternative (opposing) ideas or narratives and realigning them towards more “acceptable” ideologies.

Actually, historians like Thapar did notch up a success of sorts as the vanguard of today’s cancel culture: preventing bright minds from entering their hallowed portals in the previous 60-odd years. They could then confidently heap scorn on the “other side” for lacking people with the professional qualifications to write “credible” history. But those who have hogged the history space for decades and still seek to stave off others have good reason to be ashamed of themselves.

Because, as these gatekeeper-historians kept an iron grip on textbooks, the fact that so many (if not most) young Bharatiyas who finished from school under their watch deem history to be boring and nothing to be proud of is a damning indictment of their writing and teaching. They should have been made to explain their failure and reform. Instead, they were lionised, allowed to continue controlling access to history and even anoint themselves as ‘liberals’.

The damage they wrought on young Bharatiya minds was not always via blatant twisting of facts; it was often through selection of facts, an accusation those ‘liberals’ lob at non-professional historians today. Why, for instance, is it that the “important” battles students memorise are the ones that were “lost”—Porus in 326 BCE, the second battle of Tarain (1192), Panipat (1526, 1556 and 1761), Plassey (1757) and Seringapatam (1799)—rather than those that were won?

The fiery Ahom general Lachit Borphukan who defeated Aurangzeb’s Rajput general Ram Singh in 1671 at the Battle of Saraighat has only now been rescued from the footnotes of history, where he was consigned by historians for reasons no longer tough to figure out. As was the Gond Rani Durgawati, who defeated Mughal forces on the first day of the battle of Narrai Nala in 1564 before being wounded on the second day and killing herself to prevent being captured.

Last year Aneesh Gokhale, a merchant navy officer who has written three books on history previously, published a gripping account of Borphukan—Lachit the Indomitable. And this year, Rani Durgawati: The Forgotten Life of a Warrior Queen by Nandini Sengupta, a journalist and writer, has just been released. Both are non-professional historians and thus candidates to be ‘cancelled’ by the cabal. Luckily they do not aspire to academic posts and can ignore patrician vetoes!

The fact that Sanyal’s books have been runaway bestsellers, whether about more recent times like our freedom movement or on ancient Bharat, emphatically shows that many Bharatiyas ARE interested in our own history. Yet books by professional historians—whom Liddle thinks should have a monopoly over history writing—are evidently not the ones they want to pick up to read. That can only mean these professional historians are incapable of addressing this huge demand.

Interested Bharatiyas cannot be left to the tender mercies of a coterie of like-minded professional historians who have so far not been able to make themselves accessible or intelligible to all those who have a yen to know. History is always contested as facts can be interpreted in a myriad of ways. But like most things about Bharat, there has to be diversity in approaches to discover, analyse and understand our past—and present it to Bharatiyas in a lucid, engaging way.

Having understood the zeitgeist, Amit Shah exhorts the unshackling of history. Liddle does not or cannot accept that history is too important to remain the exclusive preserve of ‘professional’ historians. But why not let both sides flourish? There is enough material and space in Bharatiya history for all types of research and writing. Democratise history writing so that different and differing approaches—not just Thaparite dogma—can be posited and understood by everyone.

(The story was published on firstpost.com on January 20, 2023 and has been reproduced here with minor edits to conform to HinduPost style-guide.)