Thread by @gauravsabnis

Vikram Sampath revealed to be a plagiarist, that too about Savarkar, is the most shocking SHOCKING revelation of all time since the discovery of gambling occurring at Rick's Cafe Americaine.

I said then only that this guy seems as much a historian as Arindam Chaudhary is a professor and Vijay Mallya a doctor. 🤭🤭🤭

Copy pasting favorable bits to further your propaganda makes you a hack not a historian.

https://twitter.com/gauravsabnis/status/1448286443525312522?t=OTlc5TNo4h2YgAfwWnLlgw&s=19

Honest people who have a real keen interest and worthy knowledge about a field despite not being formally trained in it go out of their way to humbly remind us they are NOT professionals or experts, just enthusiasts. Like a Bill Bryson or Michael Lewis or our own @krishashok.

Any time you see someone cloaking themselves in a degree or a title that they have not formally professionally earned, but trying to convince us they are Historian, Doctor, Professor, data "scientist", Nutritionist, etc, walk away slowly. You're being sold a bill of goods.

But back to Vikram Sampath, he should now be called a Fallow of the Royal Historical Society. 🤭

Relevant reminder to my Marathi brethren that Babasaheb Purandare was a fiction writer focusing on the Maratha Empire and, despite what Wikipedia or your elders might say, was NOT a historian. Similarly, Vishwas Patil & Shivaji Savant. Historical fiction writers. Not historians.

I was telling @AudreyTruschke that a great topic for a PhD dissertation would be seeing how the popularity of historical fiction and historical theater in Maharashtra directly fed into and perhaps created hindutva. So many overlaps in those two worlds.

It is hard to explain to someone outside the Marathi world what an outsized influence historical fiction plays in shaping identity in my culture. People think Vishwas Patil's Panipat or Purandare's Janta Raja is actual history. On par with Romila Thapar or Audrey Truschke. 😤😤

When @AudreyTruschke asked me why her work on Aurangzeb in particular triggers Indians so much, I said a big reason would be Shivaji Sawant's Chhava. I cried as a kid reading the "details" of how Sambhaji was screwed over and tortured and killed by the evil Aurangzeb.

Now it is objective historic fact that Aurangzeb did indeed screw over and torture and kill Sambhaji. But it is also objective historic fact, at Dr. Truschke's extensive research shows, that he wasn't particularly more or less cruel or sadistic than his contemporaries.

You have several generations of Marathi brahminical elites being fed details of torture in a way that makes it seem like "we" Marathas never tortured or looted or killed. We aren't taught about Maratha brutalities in Gujarat or Bengal for war funding reasons.

On one hand you have these details day in and day out of how Aurangzeb and other designated villains were the heartless sadists and our guys so awesome that Shivaji Maharaj refused the gift of a concubine spontaneously and with a self effacing humility.
That's the menu.

Most Marathis will tell you that when his general brought the beautiful daughter in law of the vanquished Subedaar of Kalyan as a gift,
अशीच आमची आई असती
सुंदर रूपवती
आम्ही ही सुंदर झालो असतो
वदले छत्रपती

Which, unless you're told is history, sounds a bit much, no?

"If my mother had been
As beautiful and gorgeous as you
Maybe I would have been good looking too
Said the Chhatrapati"

Yeah, right, our King sat there and cranked out a line implying his mother was ugly in full court instead of just saying, no, send her back.

Now here's the thing. The general Marathi intelligentsia is very much in line with reality and modernity and science. Almost everything else, we are taught in the proper way. Or at least were pre modi.
Physics, Chem, Geography, Biology, all good. So we assumed history was too.

And it's not like these historical fiction writers or propagandists change the big objective facts. Broadly speaking, the history they teach us is accurate in the bullet points. It's the emotional narratives added on top, with polarization, that fuel a lot of Muslim phobia.

The only way hindutva thrives is by demonizing Muslims. The thing is, other than rare terrorist attacks from ISI/Lashkar, Muslims don't remotely pose a credible threat to Hindus in India in day to day life.
Which is why they need to amplify and stoke historical enmities.

Your average sanghi has never faced a single instance of a Muslim even speaking loudly to them. Your average sanghi is mostly angry about one narrative of stuff that happened 400 years ago, and they think it happened uniquely to our ancestors who were uniquely saintly.

It took me until I was almost 30 to read actual verifiable history of Maharashtra and again, it's not like I was told any big lies, but my perspective changed.

Rid of the historical grudge indoctrinated into me, I suddenly saw Indian Muslims as what they are today not then.

And Indian Muslims today are oppressed and underprivileged and by no stretch of the imagination any kind of a threat or even challenge to the Indian state or the general Hindu society.

But sangh can't survive if we think of Muslims as just regular people. Hence their tactics.

Given that Indian Muslims refuse to pose any actual real threat to Hindus, sangh tactics
- History distortion
- concocting love jihad
- lynching meat eaters

Even that is getting old. So now attacking the hijab in ways worse than the French.

When I was a kid in brahminical Pune, I had been taught a lot about how Aurangzeb was a villain as was Afzal Khan, Jinnah, etc.

Tipu Sultan for us was half a page in a history textbook and a source of childish giggles. Peripheral.

Then Sanjay Khan made that TV show about him...

That show portrayed Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan as one of the good guys on our side, working together with Hindus to beat the greedy Brits. Slickly made, good actors, it was a hit, though I found it melodramatic AF. But people liked it.

Soon after a new sangh narrative started

"The truth about Tipu Sultan" screeds started being told to us, presumably translated from Kannada material used by sangh there to sustain historic grudges.
We were told repeatedly at events and in articles in Diwali ankas and in prabodhoni type events how evil Tipu was.

Turns out Tipu Sultan wasn't a half page history figure with a funny sounding name. He, much like other villains, was into demolishing temples and raping Hindus and.... You know.. The usual thing the sangh says all Muslims are totes obsessed with from Gazni to Khilji to Imran.

That's the propaganda machine that has been working full time in Maharashtra and other Indian states since independence. It will take more than a couple of elections to detox from it.

Tipu Sultan lived in modern times and was a modern guy. He was a contemporary of the American founding fathers. There is a LOT of verifiable recorded history about him. He was nothing at all like the image the sangh sells which is Darth Vader meets Ranbir from Padmavat.

Speaking of Padmavat, even Khilji was nothing like what that privileged relative of Bollywood elites portrayed

This is the most hilarious bit. Sampath thinks he is Dolund Trump threatening to sue anyone and everyone including a news organization for just reporting a public letter. 🤣🤣

Totes the behavior of an innocent person, threatening to sue the reporter asking for your version.🤭

I think Sampath knows even less about law than about history. Before he goes around threatening lawsuits against American academics in America, he should maybe read what "discovery" means in the American legal system. As we say in Hindi, givings of takings will fall.