Indian History and Culture Society


The Indian History and Culture Society was founded in 1978, and operates from the premises of the Indian Archaeological Society in New Delhi. The society's journal History Today has been appearing annually since 2000.

Formation

When the Janata government of 1977-79 came to power, it blocked the Towards Freedom Project of the Indian Council of Historical Research and pressured it to bring its history of books in line with those published by the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. After the Indian History Congress strongly endorsed the textbook writers affiliated with the ICHR, the Janata government encouraged, and initially funded, a new Indian History and Culture Society. According to scholars Lloyd I. Rudolph and Sussane Rudolph, it attracted a variety of members, including some sympathetic to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and others disaffected from the textbook "establishment."

Activities

The IHCS offered a 'forum for a dialogue' among quarrelling Indian historians and organised a number of seminars to discuss what it called 'the fundamental problems of Indian historiograpy'. According to its chairperson Devahuti, "one had to free oneself from Western categories like, for instance, that of class struggle, and resume 'indigenous frameworks of interpretation'." She characterised Indian history, including medieval Indian history, as one of consent: 'emphasis appears to have been on consensus, i.e. adjustment, give and take, synthesis or at least an active acceptance of coexistence'.
The group's first publication, the 1979 Problems of Indian Historiography, is essentially the proceedings of its seminar in 1978. It was meant to deviate from 'imperialist and Marxist approaches' and foster writing of 'objective history'. A contributor Pratap Chandra condemned the British historians and their Indian disciples for "ethnocentrism", nation states were denied to be 'intriscially desirable', and the Indian historians' emphasis on unity was said to have been exaggerated. Marxists were also criticized by another contributor D. P. Singhal, who found them to be an unhealthy influence on Indian universities.
Historian M. N. Pearson, who reviewed the volume, did not find any overt examples of communalist history. However, he noted that all the contributors to the volume were Hindus and all the contributions focused on Hindu India. There were no case studies of Muslim events or people.