Hindutva pseudohistory is a series of false claims and disinformation spread by Hindu nationalist ideologues. The phenomenon has existed since the Hindutva movement - a right-wing political ideology that seeks to define the cultural identity of India in terms of Hinduism [1] - began in the 1920s, although specific claims may be newer.
Hindutva pseudohistory dates to the British colonial period, arising with the Hindutva movement itself. According to Anthony Parel, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and his 1923 work Hindutva, Who is a Hindu? regarded as the fundamental text of Hindutva ideology, presents the "Hindu culture as a self-sufficient culture, not needing any input from other cultures", which is "an unhistorical, narcissistic and false account of India's past". [2] According to Jaffrelot, the Hindutva ideology projects its roots into an era where the fiction in ancient Indian mythology and Vedic antiquity was presumed to be valid. This fiction was used to "give sustenance to Hindu ethnic consciousness". [3]
In post-independence India, Hindutva organisations continued to peddle pseudohistory. Writing in 1976, V.S. Naipaul was appalled by “the prickly vanity of many Hindus who asserted that their holy scriptures already contained the discoveries and inventions of Western science." [4] Hindutva pseudohistory became stronger as Hindu nationalists gained political control in India, although their claims largely stayed the same. In recent years, scholars and journalists have called attention to Hindutva organisations that treat events in Hindu mythology as history. [5] [6] [7] [8] Hindutva organisations have been criticized for their belief in statements or practices that they claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. [9] [10]
Hindutva pseudohistory has thrived in India during Narendra Modi's time as Prime Minister. Writing for the New York Times, Romila Thapar states that Modi's government and the BJP have "peddled myths and stereotypes", such as the insistence on "a single uniform culture of the Aryans, ancestral to the Hindu, as having prevailed in the subcontinent, subsuming all others", despite the scholarly evidence for migrations into India, which is "anathema to the Hindutva construction of early history". [11] An investigative report by Reuters, based on testimonials from scholars, including Mahesh Sharma, the creator of the committee, claimed that the Modi government had established a committee of scholars to promote certain narratives, such as linking evidence of Indian history with ancient scriptures, establishing a view that Indian civilization is older than currently believed, proving the existence of the mystical Saraswati river, mapping and excavating sites of battles mentioned in the Mahabharata. Sharma also stated that his ministry had organised workshops and seminars to "to prove the supremacy of our glorious past." [12]
Distortion of history in National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks has been frequently observed under the BJP governments. [13] [14] G. N. Devy writes, "the discipline of history is so rich now in its knowledge of the past that Hindutva’s speculative historiography, though imposed upon learners through the NCERT, can hardly make a dent in it." [15]
Audrey Truschke states that Hindutva followers have fabricated evidence such as the Indus horse seal in order to equate the Indus valley civilisation with the Vedic culture and that they have also propagated the Out of India Theory (OIT) which claims that Aryans originated in India and spread out to the rest of the world. According to Tony Joseph, OIT lacks support from even "a single, peer-reviewed scientific paper" and that it is nothing "more than a kind of clever and angry retort." [8] Regarding claims of Pashupati seal by Hindutva groups, Dr Ruchika Sharma, who holds a PhD, an MPhil and a Master's in medieval Indian history from the Centre for Historical Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, said that seal is called seal 420 and has nothing to do with the Puranic deity Shiva. This is an outdated theory that has no evidence and has been junked by all serious historians and archaeologists”. [16]
According to Truschke, Hindu nationalists in the U.S. have attempted to censor historical references to Hindu practices such as the caste system and untouchability from history textbooks. In India, they have also attempted to erase references to Muslim figures, such as Akbar the Great, or secular figures, such as Nehru, replacing them with icons such as Shivaji whom they falsely imagine "to have been seeking to establish a Hindu Rashtra in premodernity". Truschke concludes that Hindutva efforts at altering history textbooks have been successful in the US and India and with their attempts at subverting academic views to political narratives, they have succeeded in limiting dialogue on Indian history. [8] [17]
Truschke further elaborates that Hindutva ideologues want to promote a view that Hindus alone are indigenous to India and therefore Hindu as a social group can be considered as the definition of Indian, in an attempt to exclude groups such as Muslims from said definition. [8] She also states that Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist claims that Islamic rule of India was “1,200 years of slavery". Hindu nationalist websites also propagate a narrative about a “Hindu Holocaust” perpetuated by Muslim rulers. [8] French journalist and Hindutva ally, François Gautier has in past proposed the idea of a "Hindu Holocaust Museum"'. [18]
According to Tanika Sarkar, Hindutva narratives portray Hindus as the sole victims of violence during the partition of India, despite both sides being "equally combative". These narratives also depict Indian Muslims as "perpetual aggressors, invaders, and agents of terror", despite their significant "social, educational, and economic disadvantages" after losing electoral power following the partition. [19]
Shivkar Bapuji Talpade was an Indian instructor who has been claimed to have flown a heavier-than-air aircraft in 1895, before the first successful flight by the Wright brothers. The contemporary evidence about a successful flight does not exist and no reliable sources report this account. The pseudo-historical narrative about Talpade was propagated in the early 2000s by the Hindu-nationalists, who claimed that Talpade had "invented the modern aircraft". [20] [21]
Hindutva pseudohistorians identify stone formations in the channel between Sri Lanka and India as the bridge that an army of sentient monkeys built for Rama, an incarnation of Vishnu, in the Ramayana. [22] The proposed identification prompted protests in 2007 and public clarifications from NASA about an aerial photo that partly sparked the confusion. [23]
Since the 20th century, Hindu nationalists have often claimed that Muslims committed a series of genocides in premodern India, with a death toll of 80 million Hindus. [24] In 2011, the New York Times repeated a version of this, accusing Aurangzeb of killing 4.6 million people. As scholars have explained, there is no historical evidence for these claims. [25] [26] Sanjay Subrahmanyam calls them "genocide invention," which he compares to "genocide denial" since they are "equally a radical falsification of the historical record" that "trivialize the great genocides of our times." [27]
The BJP government has taken the initiative to "saffronise" history textbooks ever since taking power through exclusion of Muslim rulers and their contributions from Indian history. [28] This is part of a larger effort to promote and reshape Hindutva, often leading to actions that sideline minorities. Examples include changing the names of places to Hindu ones and attempting to claim centuries-old mosques as Hindu religious sites. [29] [30]
Hindutva objections to Indian textbooks first surfaced in the 1990s, although a smattering of earlier objections arose as early as the mid-1970s. [32] According to The Print, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has revised the engineering curriculum to introduce an Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) course textbook which makes claims about ancient Indians pioneering aviation and credits the Vedic period for inventing batteries, electricity production, maritime engineering and discovering the phenomenon of gravity based on certain interpretations of Hindu scriptures such as the Vedas. [33] [34] Critics such as Jaheer Mukthar, an assistant professor of economics at Kristu Jayanti College in Bangalore, have stated that "One can say that the government is clearly using the textbook as a tool for propagating the Hindutva agenda" [35]
Popular historians like Sanjeev Sanyal and Vikram Sampath are notable for writing books on revisionist Hindutva history. [31] In an earlier generation, Sita Ram Goel, Kishori Saran Lal, and others were notable Hindu nationalist revisionists.
The Archaeological Survey of India has also been accused of "fortif[ying] Hindutva history" by producing hurried reports that promote ahistorical views. [36]
In 2003, the idea of a 'Hindu Holocaust Museum' was proposed by French journalist and Hindutva - ally, François Gautier.
Sanjeev Sanyal, an economist who writes popular books on revisionist Hindutva history