A communal interpretation of Indian history has formed the core of communal ideology as a major instrument for the spread of communal consciousness. In fact, it would not be wrong to say that the communal interpretation of history has been the main constituent of communal ideology in India. This has been particularly true of Hindu communalism. Muslim communalism too has used ‘history’, but it has depended more on religion and minority feeling, which have been used to create a fear psychosis.
To create a similar fear psychosis, Hindu communalists have tried to use an appeal to the medieval period of Indian history. The communal view of history has been, and is, spread through poetry, drama, historical novels, popular articles in newspapers and magazines, children’s magazines, pamphlets and public speeches. The historical veracity of such popularly disseminated view of history was virtually nil, but it passed as history in popular mind.
The conscious communal view of history at the level of research or scholarship was rarely found among Indian historians before 1947 mainly because of secular nationalist influence among the intelligentsia. Communal forces gained significant intellectual adherents in India and Pakistan only after 1947.
Communal approach to history was openly preached by communal political leaders and found reflection in school textbooks and popular writing. Moreover, although the proponents of the Hindu and Muslim communal views of history take up diametrically opposite and hostile positions, they adopt basically the same historiography framework, premises and assumptions.
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Often the only difference in their approach is that the opposite religious community is treated as the villain. Unfortunately, the colonial and some modern Indian historians incorporated the religious outlook of the ancient and medieval chroniclers in their own writings and thus contributed to a communal interpretation of Indian history. For example, till this day, the communal historians, whether Hindu or Muslim, go on portraying Mahmud Ghazni’s invasions as religiously motivated and as throwing light on the character of Islam. Similarly, they portray the political
struggle of medieval India, for example between Rana Pratap and Akbar or Shivaji and Aurangzeb as struggles based on or motivated by religion.
Moreover, invariably the literary sources of the ancient and medieval periods deal primarily with the doings of the kings, princely courts and upper classes and not with the society as a whole. In the military and diplomatic affairs of the ruling groups religious considerations do appear important. When wars are waged and alliances are made, many factors are balanced and appealed to.
Real issues are often kept disguised. Appeals are made to marriage ties, kinship, language, caste, region, as well as religion. But the main factor is consideration of interest, economic or political. It was very much the same in the past as today. Today, every nation clothes even the most marked of its aggressions with some decent motive. The difference is that a historian who accepts the official explanations of today would be laughed at by fellow historians. But many historians have accepted official explanations of the past rulers and of the official chroniclers.
It may also be pointed out that, just as in the case of colonial writing, contemporary communal politics were, and are, projected into the past and the happenings of the past so described and historical myths created as to serve contemporary communal politics. Thus, both communalists, Hindu as well as Muslims, adopted, and continue to adopt, an interpretation of the past through which feelings of fear, insecurity and schism could be aroused among their contemporary followers.
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In this sense, if communal history produced and propagated communalism, in its turn communal politics gave, and gives, a fillip to communal history writing and propagation. Another way of saying the same thing is to stress that it was not medieval history as lived by the medieval people or the medieval historical processes that generated communalism, it was the communal interpretation of history that produced communalism as well as got produced by communalism – that is, this interpretation was itself communal ideology.
Lastly, it may be noted that because of being subjected to communal view of history from very childhood, elements of this view came to prevail even among many nationalists and other secular persons, who were unaware of their communal implications. For example, many talked of India having undergone a thousand …’years’ of foreign rule or having suffered social and cultural decline during the medieval period or having been ruled by Muslims or Muslim rule. Similarly, elements and themes of the communal view of history are found in nationalist historical works.