Politics Of Indian History -2

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“Know global history for a broader perspective of important events”

Staff Reporter

History learning in the country is India-centric, says Chairman of ICHR

Photo: R. Ashok

FOR POSTERITY: Vice-Chancellor of Bharathidasan University M. Ponnavaikko (right) handing over a CD to ICHR Chairman Sabyasachi Bhattacharya in Tiruchi on Thursday. —

TIRUCHI: Chairman of Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) Sabyasachi Bhattacharya has advocated inclusion of global history in syllabus.
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History learning in the country is India-centric and students must know global history for a broader perspective of important events, Prof. Bhattacharya said inaugurating the ICHR National Seminar on ‘Early Resistance to Colonial Rule in Tamil Nadu: From Polygars to 1857 Revolt’, organised by the Department of History, Bharathidasan University, on Thursday.</b>

Explaining why the country could not obtain moral and material support from other parts of the world at the time of 1857 uprising of an unprecedented scale when people, cutting across religions, took a conscious political decision to revolt against the colonists, the ICHR Chairman said that despite the rivalry among England, France, Germany and Russia, all were imperialist powers with an ultimate objective of expanding European domination – sometimes in complicity or conflict – on Asian people.

Yet, the political ideologies that arose from the French revolution and other revolutions that the imperialist European countries witnessed since late eighteenth century, coupled with the mid-nineteenth century romanticism, created a strong nationalist streak.

The middle class Europeans among whom the idea of national self-determination as an extension of individual self-determination erupted sympathised with Indian people. The United States watched the happenings in India with interest, but had no sympathy towards Indian subjects, he said.

Presiding over and presenting the first CD containing digital documentation on the seminar topic to Prof. Bhattacharya, Vice-Chancellor M. Ponnavaikko spoke of the need to record real history based on facts from various proofs. History should not be left for political surmise, he emphasised, committing the required facilities to the History Department to start a Museum for depiction of important happenings in the world right from the first century through charts.

Seminar Director N. Rajendran, Professor and Head, Department of History, regretted that though Pulithevan, Kattabomman and Marudhu Brothers undertook anti-colonial struggle during the mid-eighteenth century, the role of Tamil Nadu in the freedom struggle has been bypassed or marginalised.

He disputed the generalisation that Madras Presidency was calm at the time of 1857 uprising, citing its invocation of repressive laws as hypothesis.

Though on a lesser scale compared to 1857 uprising, the Vellore Mutiny was a major uprising of the sepoys of the British army, he said.

Colonial documents on these events available at the Archives at Chennai; National Archives, New Delhi; and India Office Library, London, have been digitised on CD.