Yellapragada Sudershan Rao is an Indian historian, who was appointed as the chairperson of the Indian Council of Historical Research by the Government of India, from July 2014 to July 2017. He was formerly a professor of history at Kakatiya University in Telangana and a member of ICHR along with being the head of a state chapter of ABISY. Prior to appointment, he was a hardly visible scholar with nil publication in any peer-reviewed media. Scholarly reception of his works, ICHR appointment, and tenure have been negative. Scholars have noted him to have sympathies towards Hindutva.
Prior to his appointment, Rao was a professor of history at Kakatiya University in Telangana; he was the erstwhile head of the department and formerly dean of the school of Social Sciences. Rao claims to specialize in ancient Indian culture, with an emphasis on the history of Hinduism. A report in The Hindu claimed that he has published over forty research papers in various journals and contributed to the Andhra Pradesh History Congress besides guiding eight PhD students.
ICHR
Rao was a member of the Indian Council of Historical Research during the Vajpayee Government and had also served as head of the Andhra Pradesh chapter of Akhil Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Yojana, a subsidiary organisation of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, devoted to rewriting Indian history from a Hindu nationalist perspective. In July 2014, the National Democratic Alliance government re-inducted Rao into ICHR and appointed him as the chairperson, as well. After serving as chairperson for 16 months, Rao was reported to have submitted a resignation from his position on 24 November 2015, citing personal reasons. However, the government did not accept the resignation.
Views and reception
In his interviews before media, at the time of appointment, Rao advocated for treating folklore et al at par with archaeological evidence whilst asserting of the Hindu epics to be actual historical events, in that it has occupied the collective memory of people for a long spans of time and hence, may not be lensed through the western constructs of mythology; he also spoke of the need to conduct renewed research about the epics and construct a sketch of the prevalent socio-cultural systems, from therein. He also emphasized upon the need of abandoning the western and marxist tools of historiography in a bid to rewrite Indian history from a nationalist perspective with due appreciation of cultural ethos. Rao also asserted of the presence of sufficient archaeological evidence confirming the presence of a demolished temple at the Babri Masjid site and of a Hindu civilization at the sites of Ayodhya circa 800 B.C. Rao had been involved in one such project, that attempts to rewrite Indian history from the viewpoint of Mahabharata, under the aegis of Sanathana Dharma Charitable Trust. He has been also working on other projects to document tribal history. Reacting to his appointment, eminent historian Romila Thapar questioned the academic rigor of Rao's work and stated that while he may have "published popular articles on the historicity of the Indian epics", none of his work were published in peer-reviewed journals and thus, his work had little visibility to historians. Thapar went on to criticize Rao's intentions of ascribing historicity about the Hindu epics as a futile endeavor and deemed his' comments about Babri Masjid, as politically motivated; in response to Rao's call of removing Marxist tools of historiography from ICHR, she posited that Rao, like most of his fellow travelers of the Hindutva bandwagon, had little idea of the Marxist methodologies and deemed any established rigorous method in the social sciences that ran contrary to Hindu nationalistic goals, to be Marxist, by default. His appointment was also criticized by other eminent historians including D. N. Jha et al and former members of the ICHR, even including those sympathetic to the ruling party. An Outlook article noted that he was a scarcely cited scholar with no established track-record and that his blog-posts on different aspects of the subject, which frequently delineated the boundaries between myth and history and ran on a course of faith alone, have only caused concern among academics. He was supported by M. G. S. Narayanan, a former ICHR chairperson, appointed during the previous NDA tenure. Ramachandra Guha noted him to be a right wing ideologue, who did not recognize the difference between history and myth. His tenure at ICHR has been subject to sharp criticism. He has advocated for the fringe theory of Indigenous Aryans, rejecting the Indo-Aryan migration as a product of colonized mind and has allegedly sought for research projects on Akhand Bharat. During his chairmanship, ICHR has been said to be linked with projects that seek to set back the chronological time-span of Vedas in the broader quest of present day sociopolitical goals and he has asserted of David Frawley as a serious scholar of Vedic literature, in defense of his decision to invite a fringe pseudo-historian to an ICHR event. Gopinath Ravindran, a fellow member resigned from the committee in 2015 alluding to Rao's autocratic ways as well as intolerance of dissent and criticized the credentials of his scholarship, whilst pointing to the increasing saffronisation of ICHR. Rao rejected the allegations and deemed Ravindran's criticism of the academic credentials of appointees to ICHR of having stemmed from an inability to revisit the version of history, perpetuated by Marxist historians. He has recommended fellow ABISY office-bearers, subscribing to his thought-schools, to the ICHR council. Rao had also announced of plans to study whether Adam's Bridge was a man-made structure, which was shelved after he retired.
