Redeeming the Historian From History

In 1779, roughly 21 years after he became the unquestioned master of India, Emperor Aurangzeb took a step that would ultimately ruin the Mughal empire. In March that year, he annexed the kingdom of Marwar—that had always been run by a Rajput dynasty—and later in the year re-imposed jaziya, the hated poll-tax on his Hindu subjects. From that year, until the end of his life in 1707, the last of the great Mughals battled what was later described as a Hindu reaction against his orthodox and even bigoted policies.

The reverberations of that episode of Indian history continue to the present day. From the renaming of a road in Delhi originally called Aurangzeb Road to the wars of historians after Independence, the life of this great monarch and what he did has cast a long shadow on India. At the heart of all this stands a now-forgotten historian, Sir Jadunath Sarkar.

Sarkar, once a vice-chancellor of Calcutta University, was a period historian who specialised in India’s history from the 17th to the 18th century. At the height of his powers, from 1920 to 1940, he wore many hats at the same time. He was the moving force behind the Indian Historical Records Commission (IHRC), the forerunner of the National Archives of India (NAI). But more than that, he was instrumental in letting the British colonial authorities allow greater access to archival material for Indian scholars. Over and above all this, he will always be remembered for this monumental five-volume History of Aurangzeb, the closest and most fair description of that ruler we have so far.

Contemporary reactions to Sarkar are largely negative. On the one hand, the questions that he asked and his view of fact-based history—written on the basis of carefully vetted original documents—have very few takers today. On the other hand, and vengefully, if one may say so, Sarkar, his students and followers, are dubbed ‘communal’ historians who were habitually prejudiced against India’s Islamic rulers. Both perspectives are inaccurate and have received a careful rebuttal, after a long time, at the hands of Dipesh Chakrabarty, a professor of history at the University of Chicago. In The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and His Empire of Truth, he offers a balanced assessment of Sarkar, perhaps the first one by a mainstream, practicing historian. What makes the exercise remarkable is that at one time Chakrabarty flirted with the quasi-Marxist ‘subaltern studies’ idea of history. The fact that the book was published from across the Atlantic Ocean is not surprising: Indian history writing, dominated by a Marxist establishment, can never issue a fair, let alone positive, assessment of a pioneering historian of modern India.

So just what did Sarkar write that attracted the ire of these Marxist intellectuals? Sarkar’s two famous books, History of Aurangzeb and Fall of the Mughal Empire (again, in four volumes) are what would be called narrative histories. They are the stuff of history that every schoolboy fears—dates, intrigues, battles, more battles, beheadings and grisly endings. This is especially true of Fall of the Mughal Empire. But in retrospect, after decades of ‘interpretative’ writing of history, we probably know less about the Mughal empire and more damningly are less willing to ask interesting and tough questions about India’s medieval past.

Consider Sarkar’s Aurangzeb. Even a cursory reading of these volumes—which are written simply and are shorn of modern jargon—paint a complex and fascinating picture of the emperor. Reading the first two volumes—dealing with Shah Jahan’s reign and the War of Succession on his death— one cannot but admire the prince Aurangzeb as a wise and energetic viceroy in one of the most trouble-torn provinces of the empire, the Deccan. Sarkar’s portrayal of Aurangzeb as a wise administrator and an outstanding military commander, who had to constantly battle his vain and inept brother Dara Shikoh, can only make one sympathise with the future ruler of India. In painting this picture, Sarkar relied almost exclusively on Mughal documents, some of which he translated into English himself. These include Maasir-e-Alamgiri, the chronicle of Aurangzeb as emperor.

What has drawn the ire of India’s allegedly secular historians is Sarkar’s treatment of Aurangzeb’s religious policy that targeted Hindus. This aspect of Aurangzeb’s rule—documented in volume three of History of Aurangzeb—is as unexceptional in its handling of historical sources and assessment as other parts of the book. But it has been sufficient to tag Sarkar as a ‘communal historian’.

The truth is that Sarkar belonged to an India where the search for its past was sought to be secured by ‘scientific’ means. This, as in other parts of social sciences, owed its existence to thinking pioneered in Germany in the 19th century. In history, it was the historian Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) who sought to ground history writing in unimpeachable facts based on sources as close to the event or person whose history was being written. If the relevant sources could not be found, then one could not write a ‘scientific’ history. Today, the Rankean view is considered archaic at best; at worst it is considered a positive hindrance to understanding the past.

At one level, Chakrabarty’s book is about Sarkar’s fights to get the British to adopt a more liberal policy towards opening up the archives. Understandably, a colonial regime is likely to be nervous in doing that: there was plenty in the origins of British imperialism in India to rouse nationalist passion and make history-writing more of a political act than a neutral examination of the past that it was supposed to be. That Sarkar managed to succeed to an extent made him appear faintly sympathetic to imperialism, something that was as fatal then as it is today.

The truth, however, is that Sarkar had a modern vision of the process of creating archives and letting scholars have access to documentary evidence for writing ‘proper’ histories. Just as in Britain, he wanted a Public Records Act in India that would allow automatic deposition of records in the archive.

Both visions—his History of Aurangzeb and his idea of an archive—came unstuck for the same, interlinked, reasons in Independent India.

The truth is that Sarkar’s idea of a Rankean history stood no chance in India. The complex story of why this was impossible unfolded in three phases. At the turn of the 19th century, the Rankean idea had a firm hold in Bengal where an educated public wanted to move away from history as mere hearsay. This led to what was virtually a hunt for historical documents to verify facts. Soon, this changed the definition of a person who could claim to be a historian. Only those who discovered new documents and then proceeded to translate them and write on their basis could avail the tag ‘historian’. It was not uncommon to read books subtitled ‘based on fresh and original sources’ in books of that age. Sarkar, and perhaps his closest professional colleague, the historian of Maharashtra, Govind Sakharam Sardesai, were not immune to this development. Chapters 3 and 4 of Chakrabarty’s book highlight the almost insane levels to which this quest took these two historians.

But soon enough, this pitted them against rival historians (and equally intrepid hunters and gatherers of documents) from Poona. These were Datto Vaman Potdar and Surendra Nath Sen—another Bengali and Maharashtrian pairing of historians. Much of this fighting broke out after Sarkar published the first edition of his Shivaji and His Times in 1919. The hunt for documents soon transformed into vicious politics over interpretation of those documents and ‘facts’. Both Sarkar and Sardesai—Brahmins—got embroiled in the politics of Marathi identity. Sardesai’s access to records of the Peshwas—chief ministers to the rulers of the Maratha kingdom—allegedly due to Sarkar’s influence led to what can be called India’s first war of history in late colonial India. It was alleged that there would be no ‘justice’ to Maratha history at the hands of a Brahmin who would impart an ‘upper caste’ vision to history. This was the second phase of the story that neatly blended into the third phase that continues until today. Only the cast has changed: instead of Potdar and Sen, we have politicised historians of India’s past.

In 1940, Sarkar was ousted from the IHRC and soon thereafter, when India gained independence, Sen became the first director of the NAI. In contrast to Sarkar, Sen was more interested in the act of archiving as such. His emphasis was not on the historian making use of archives for writing accurate histories but the task of creating, maintaining and ensuring the survival of documents. It is a vision that prevails today: India’s archival access policies are probably worse than those of Communist states. Even documents pertaining to the Simla Agreement of 1914—by which the boundaries between India and Tibet were established by the British—are barred to Indian scholars. Access to documents created after Independence is close to impossible. One can only look back at the original late 19th century hunt for original documents and the quest for a Rankean history and understand that such history is not unfashionable but is unfashionable for Independent India’s rulers. Even the British were more liberal with their documents.

The coda to this march of historians brings us to the present. If access to the archives is barred or documents have not been preserved, what have historians of medieval (and modern) India been doing since Independence? Well, they have been writing ‘interpretative’ histories, histories that move facts around to suit theories and not the other way round. Take Sarkar’s pet subject, Aurangzeb. Modern historians have sought to underplay his bigotry. The late Athar Ali (who was not a Marxist) is recognised as probably the greatest expert on Aurangzeb after Sarkar. In his interpretation of the 1779 rebellion in Rajputana, he used a single source—a regional document from Ajmer, the Waqia Ajmer, a collection of reports issued from that region during 1678-80—to glibly overturn the accepted version of the rebellion: that it was largely due to Aurangzeb’s religious policies. (‘Causes of the Rathor Rebellion of 1679’, pages 253- 261 in Mughal India: Studies in Polity, Ideas, Society and Culture with a preface by Irfan Habib, Oxford University Press, 2011). Now this is not an unusual thing: new facts lead to re-interpretation. The trouble in this case is that it has not led to a new interpretation but only a blurring of India’s past. Aurangzeb’s history has been bowdlerised to make his bigotry appear less a personal trait and more a matter of the ‘social and political’ factors of his time. This, simply put, is generation of historical entropy by creative interpretation. It is not a clarification of our past. This third and still- unfolding phase of the story marks a sorry state of affairs.

One last thing must be said about Sarkar’s alleged Hindu communal bent of mind and deserves quotation in full from Chakrabarty’s book. In a letter to Sardesai on the night of 15 May 1960, he wrote on the completion of the last volume of Fall of the Mughal Empire that, ‘I have given the finishing touches to the last chapter of my Fall of the Mughal Empire and sent it to the press. I can say that I have written it, not with ink, but with my heart’s blood. In saying so, I am not thinking of personal sorrows and anxieties—which have clouded the evening of my day, nor of the minute study and exhausting labour that had to be devoted to the subject in this terrible summer heat—but of the subject-matter of the last chapters—the imbecility and vices of our rulers, the cowardice of their generals, and the selfish treachery of their ministers. It is a tale that makes every true son of India hang his head in shame. But, at last, my task is done, and I am free again.’ (page 189).

This lover of Indian history deserved better than what he received at the hands of his successors. Chakrabarty’s book is a treat to read and helps one understand the exceptionally politicised nature of history writing in India.

booksDipesh ChakrabartyEmpire of TruthliteratureSir Jadunath SarkarThe Calling of History