Amid all the noise made over Jaswant Singh’s book and his expulsion one statement stands out. It came from Arun Jaitley, the first to be fielded to defend the expulsion. One of the more serious charges against Jaswant Singh, he said, was that he went against the “national consensus” on Sardar Patel. Now, can there ever be a national consensus on a figure, an aspect, or any chapter of history? You can have national consensus on a policy, an idea for the future, on high principles of nation-building, constitutionalism and so on. But a consensus on history? If history were to be assessed and analysed through national consensus we would make a very poor democracy. It is regimes like Kim Il-Sung’s that believe in the idea of official history, officially mandated views on society, politics and philosophy. The sad truth, however, is that at least in this one area we in India are not much better than the more classic authoritarian societies. Except that instead of one personality cult, we have many, reflecting our diversity. But in essence it amounts to the same closing of the Indian mind when it comes to our past.

The BJP in 2009 mandates that you cannot hold a view on Jinnah and Patel that is at variance with its own “corporate” view. The Shiv Sena would ban anything that does not look like a hagiography entirely adhering to its own version of the “national consensus” on Shivaji. Any deviation, in fact, even before a ban, may expose you to vandalism and arson. In Bengal you would still risk your neck if you used an expression like “late” Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. The study of Sikh history brings its own challenge since it is so integral to the evolution of the faith. Nobody can say one critical thing even about Mahatma Gandhi and go unpunished. Arun Shourie had muck thrown at him (literally) for questioning Ambedkar. Nikki Bedi may have gone too far in the expression she used on her show on Star more than a decade ago, but did it really justify the filing of criminal cases against Rupert Murdoch?

... contd.