Thread by @achakrava

While I am pleased to see international coverage of the strategic erasure of history in Indian textbooks, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Understanding how this happened holds lessons for historians everywhere. 🧵washingtonpost.com/world/2023/04/…

Like most of its other social objectives, the RSS has an organization dedicated to the remaking of history to its own ends. The Akhil Bhartiya Itihas Sankalan Yojana (ABISY- lit. Plan for Indian history collection) was founded in 1973 by the pracharak Moropant Pingle. 2/

The aptly named Pingle was a founding member of the Viswa Hindu Parisad, which has a powerful US counterpart, VHP-A. He served as the intellectual head of the RSS for years, guided it through the Emergency and was vital to the Ramjamnabhumi movement. 3/

ABISY, Pingle's brainchild, was dedicated to one of the earliest pracharak's Baba Apte, who was crucial to the spread of the network of shakhas by which the organization operates. Related to ABISY is the Babasaheb Apte Smarak Samiti, which focuses on publishing on ancient India 4

ABISY operates across 🇮🇳as a folklore and local history organization. They focus on collecting folk histories. They will release a series of 75 books for the 2024 election, and a year before the RSS centenary that will enshrine the "true" history of India based on this work. 5/

Here is a speech given by its current national head at an event in Bidar recently. For Hindi speakers familiar with Hindutva rhetoric, the content will be largely banal, contrasting the English history with the patriotic itihasa that ABISY promotes. 6/

His reference to Khudiram Bose is not incidental, by the way- Bose will figure among the 75 people whose biographies ABISY plans to release as part of an appropriation campaign to situate Bose and the Bengali radicals within the ancestry of the RSS. 7/

But I caution you not to be fooled by the nativist rhetoric about itihasa versus history. That framing has more to do with class and the English-speaking professoriate than it does to the operations, in the sense De Certeau employed it in The Writing of History, of ABISY. 8/

The ABISY operates in a way many historians would admire. They organize heritage walks for youngsters who would otherwise have no interest in or exposure to history, including cleaning up garbage around forgotten monuments overgrown with vegetation. 9/

The demeanor of the guides on these tours could not be more different from the haughty and dismissive attitude of professional historians that Hari Vasudevan described ruefully in his book recreating the voyage of Afanasi Nikitin. Kids leave with real passion for the past. 10/

They hold manuscript copying workshops to help youngsters learn paleography (this was actually how I came to learn about their activities, during my own search for people able to read Haḷegannaḍa scripts). Here's an ABISY powerpoint slide on old lipis. 11/

They adopt many of the best practices of oral historians and anthropologists, given their roots in colonial folklorist knowledge, collaborating closely with local villagers. 12/

A national symposium, cosponsored with the Mythic Society, which Balamukunda Pandey attended, was held in the tiny village of Bagali in Karnataka recently. It is part of a push to remake the site as a Vedic agrahara but villagers were included in the programme. 13/

The Mythic Society's co-sponsorship bears pointing out, since these colonial-era institutions are still crucial to this kind of knowledge production. Founded in 1909 by colonial administrators, its journal was an important venue for colonial sociology and history production 14/

Here's an article by GS Ghurye, full of race science measurements, in the Quarterly Journal of the Mythic Society. Ghurye is still (unbelievably, to me) taught and cited in Indian sociology (Sumit Guha refers to him fairly favorably in Beyond Caste most recently). 15/

The current head is a microbiologist. The Society hosts talks by professors at small colleges as well as amateur historians who push ABISY talking points. Here's a lecture by an ENT surgeon turned historian who works on resettling Pakistani Hindus 16/

The ABISY has long provided a parallel professional pathway to professors and lecturers at small colleges unable to break into the ranks or consciousness occupied by English dominant elite universities. Here's their UGC approved journal, with typical articles. 17/

The current head of the Indian Council of Historical Research was an ABISY member. When he was appointed he had no peer-reviewed work in reputable academi journals. This parallel pathway has nonetheless vaulted him to the top of the historical profession in India 18/

The other ABISY members on the ICHR, all appointed under Modi 2.0, disbanded the long-standing advisory council which included internationally recognized scholars such as Romila Thapar, on the grounds of "elitism" 19/
economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-…

In the vacuum left by state withdrawal of funding for the humanities in the 1990s, which hit small colleges particularly hard, organizations like the ABISY and Mythic Society actually filled the desire of so many Indians to know, learn and preserve history. 20/

Since elite institutions like JNU were insulated they only ever saw the sharp end of the ideological battle when the BJP came to power in Delhi. But this long-standing organizational strength is why Hindutva history is not so easily dislodged even if the NCERT is changed back 21/

The use of social media, particularly in the vernacular, and then the IT Cell to propagate this history has also been crucial to its spread, reach and resilience. Its far likelier that you will encounter an ABISY talk than mine or my colleagues on YouTube. 22/

The question is, why does history matter so much to the RSS's project. The recent FAILURE of their attempt to manufacture history in Karnataka in the run-up to the assembly elections gives us some insight. 23/

I will say this again: based on my research, there is no broad-based support for Hindutva as an ideology. Much of what sustains it is the local calculations of caste, which is the lifeblood upon which the RSS's capillary politics depends. 24/

In Kerala, I documented a clear case of the RSS attempting to co-opt one faction of the community as it fights for reservations. As part of that fight, one faction is elaborating caste histories that might help them qualify for the meagre state benefits they need. 25/

In Karnataka, the BJP tried to reverse engineer this process by inventing caste heroes of the Vokkaliga agricultural caste, who make up around 15% of the state and could prove a crucial vote bank 26/

ABISY plays a crucial role in transforming folk gods or caste heroes into part of the Hindutva pantheon of deities and kings. The glorification of Kempegowda, including the erection of the statue to him near Bengaluru airport, was part of the Vokkaliga campaign 27/

Here is a comic strip, part of work of the Kerala ABISY unit, dedicated to Kempegowda. Tiger comics, available to be shipped internationally (I will not link on principle) bills itself as identifying and glorifying those heroes that Amar Chitra Katha didn't know. 28/

As part of this campaign, the IT Cell recently started pushing this idea that two Vokkaliga heroes, Uri Gowda and Nanje Gowda, actually killed Tipu Sultan (the Vokkaligas traditionally were an important presence in old Mysuru state) 29/

The origins of this figure are obscure but may have originated from the folk theater world of the early 20th century. The BJP state president, when challenged by the community itself on this, claimed to have sent a cd with a 70 year old recording of a lavani referring to them 30/

This artifact has all the hallmarks of ABISY oral history and folklore collection. A recent revision of a history of the Mandya region, edited by the respected litterateur D. Javare Gowda, mentions these folk figures in passing with no linking to the killing of Tipu 31/

What is fascinating is that the community itself, which has long had friendly relations with neighboring Muslim castes, absolutely rejected this attempt to co-opt their history, in part because they didn't want to be seen as collaborators of the British. 32/

When a BJP minister and filmmaker showed up to see Nithyanand Swami, their seer, to seek blessing for a movie on Uri and Nanje killing Tipu, he was summarily rejected to the point that he cancelled the project which had already secured funding. 33/

This movie would have been part of the #TipuFiles project that is meant to be a counter-part to the #KashmirFiles and now #GoaFiles, the most visible end of the genocidal misinformation that justifies the extermination of religious minorities on the basis of fake history 34/

What is remarkable about this story is that Nithyanand Swami and the Vokkaliga community stopped this misinformation machine dead in its tracks. And it is being seen, rightly, as a sign of the profound electoral weakness of the BJP in Karnataka this cycle. 35/

I see several lessons here for historians. 1/ It is hubris to think professional expertise can carry a political argument about the past. We should condemn Hindutva on moral grounds first and then tackle the misinformation machine. In that latter fight, our work has a place 36/

2/ If our work remains disengaged from the communities, archives and places that we write about, we have no hope of countering RSS's organizational machinery. To stand above the fray in some ill-conceived idea of projecting objectivity will be a death knell for the profession 37/

3/ We must understand the stakes of history in India today. For communities, it can mean life and death if that is all they have to make a claim on the state for benefits. To understand ABISY's appeal, we must understand what history means to ordinary people. 38/

4/ If we continue to devalue vernacular expertise or institutions, we have no hope. That condescension alienated an entire class of the professoriate who became easy pickings for ABISY. By the same token, local experts are leading the charge against them in many cases 39/

5/ Projects like Hindutva depend on narratives of its own invincibility. ABISY, the IT Cell, the entire disinformation ecosystem, including corporate media, is dedicated to this. Propaganda works but noticing moments of failure like this helps us unpick it. 40/