'They tried to bring pressure'

Interview with Professor S. Settar, former Chairman, ICHR.

Professor S.Settar was Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) between 1996 and 1999. During his tenure five of the nine volumes of the "Towards Freedom" project were either published or their manuscripts prepared for publicat ion.

An interview he gave Parvathi Menon provides interesting background to the ICHR's recent withdrawal from the press of the manuscripts of two leading historians, K.N. Panikkar and Sumit Sarkar relating to the project. The link between the reconstit ution of the ICHR in early 1998 by the BJP-led Government and the growth of a climate of intolerance and academic censorship in the ICHR is made explicit. Settar was under pressure as early as August 1998 from a small group in the Council, "of which B.R. Grover (the present Chairman of the ICHR) was one of the more vocal", Settar recalls, to withdraw the manuscripts and stop ICHR funding to the Indian History Congress. He resisted both these pressures. Excerpts:

The present Chairman of the ICHR, B.R. Grover, has suggested that during your tenure as ICHR Chairman, you had expressed your dissatisfaction with the manuscripts of K.N. Panikkar and Sumit Sarkar in various ways. He said that you set up a review comm ittee to examine the manuscripts in August 1998 (which subsequently did not meet), and that you criticised the published volumes of the "Towards Freedom" series in a letter to Professor S. Gopal, the General Editor of the series. What is your response to this?

First of all, I had never endorsed the need to review the manuscripts of the "Towards Freedom" volumes, prepared under the editorship of Professor Gopal. There is nothing on record which supports his (Grover's) contention. There was a committee set up at the meeting of the 41st Council of the ICHR held on August 31 and September 1, 1998, the outcome of a six to seven-hour long discussion, when one section of the Council members were probing...

Which section?

A small group of new members nominated by the BJP-led government who had just joined the Council. Mr. Grover was one of the more vocal of the group. He argued that these volumes should be reviewed before being sent to the press. The house was divided on this point.

The manuscripts were already in the press by then?

Yes, and he was insisting that they be recalled. This was the very first meeting of the Council after it had been reconstituted. There was a very intense and stormy discussion. One section of the Council wanted the manuscript to be reviewed. The other se ction opposed it and said that such a move was academically unjustifiable.

What was your view?

I held that it would be wrong to recall the manuscripts prepared by a set of well-known scholars under the editorship of Professor Gopal. I made this point very clear to the house. They wanted the manuscripts recalled in order to review its contents. I r eplied that its contents could be reviewed only after its publication. One of them then suggested that the manuscripts do not represent all aspects of the freedom movement.

Were they referring to the role of Gandhi?

No, the role of Gandhi was never discussed. They were making vague allegations.

But you said that none of them had read the manuscripts.

Obviously not. None of them had access to the volumes. They were making allegations without even reading the volumes, on hearsay of some kind. I said the best way to respond to drawbacks in the volumes was to review them critically in professional journa ls, or to supplement them in another volume. I offered to publish the reviews in the Indian Historical Review. I also offered to publish supplements to the volumes if there was convincing evidence to show that the authors had not fulfilled the exp ectations of the project. To that the reaction was: who can go through 3,500 pages of material! Of course a substantial section opposed recalling the manuscripts.

The discussion ended in a compromise, which was to constitute a committee with specific terms of reference. As there was no agreement on this, I ultimately asked this vocal group to draft a resolution, which they did, and which I incorporated in the minu tes of the 41st Council. This committee was to "streamline and expedite the work" of the "Towards Freedom" project. "Streamline " is a word vague enough to cover many things, but it was to be read in reference to the expedition of the project as there wa s a lot of criticism in the press and Parliament over the delay. The same resolution also places on record an appreciation of the hard work done by the editors of the "Towards Freedom" volumes. There was no question of the committee reviewing even future volumes, let alone those already in the press. So the resolution of the 41st Council was very, very clear.

The second charge made against me was that I did not call the meeting of the committee consisting of B.R. Nanda, S.C. Mittal and T.K. Ravindran. The ICHR wrote to them but not all of them agreed to serve on the committee. So the question of calling such a meeting did not arise. The second important thing is that since this was set up to expedite future publications, calling this committee was felt to be not that urgent until the manuscripts arrived.

My name has been drawn into a controversy over a letter I had written to Professor Gopal on these volumes. The HRD (Human Resource Development) Minister read out this letter in the Rajya Sabha and I felt it was unfair to me as the letter was quoted out o f context. I wrote several letters as Chairman of the ICHR to the General Editor of the series. I only drew his attention to some of the supposedly occurring drawbacks in the volumes, which were of a purely technical nature. For example, somebody said th at Partha Sarathy Gupta's volumes did not contain an index. I discussed this with Professor Gupta and he explained that there is already a kind of index in the guide to the documents in the Preface, and that the preparation of a separate index may not be all that necessary. But there was also a feeling that a comprehensive index would have to be prepared at the end of the publication, that is, after the 10th volume. My intention was not to cast aspersions on the competence of the editors nor doubt the q uality of the work.

Once the ICHR was reconstituted by the BJP-led government, were there pressures on you as Chairman by Council members?

Well, I did not yield to their pressure, but yes, they tried to bring pressure on two issues. One was the work that I had applied myself to in order to make progress in the publication of the "Towards Freedom" volumes. The second was to stop the funding by the ICHR to the Indian History Congress. In that group were Professor Grover and Professor A.R. Khan. At the 41st meeting they could not achieve much. We continued to fund the History Congress.

Why were they opposed to funding the History Congress?

They demanded to know why I had released that year's money to the History Congress without bringing it first to the Council. Now if as Chairman I wanted to enhance the grant, then I would have to take the prior approval of the Council. But I can release a grant that has been released for the 20 years, and report the matter to the Council. This has been the convention. In any case it is specified in the ICHR's Memorandum of Association that the History Congress should get a particular sum of money.

Other than the technicalities, was there any reason why they wanted funding stopped?

They were interested in seeing that funds were not released by the ICHR because the History Congress was getting funds from Ministries and also from other bodies. This was not the concern of the ICHR. The ICHR was supposed to give certain funds and we co ntinued to give those funds. I think there is a larger issue here. They have ideological and personal differences with those now involved in the History Congress.

The present HRD Ministry and the reconstituted ICHR have set up a number of committees to oversee the "Towards Freedom" project. What was the outcome of these committees?

Well, after the BJP-led government came to power, a review committee was constituted in March 1998 comprising A.K. Ray, a diplomat, who was its chairperson, with M.N. Deshpande, archaeologist, and Subhash Kashyap, a bureaucrat. The committee was to submi t its report in three months. It was to review the qualitative and quantitative progress in the work made by the Council since its inception in relation to its aims and objectives, and with specific regard to the progress of various projects undertaken b y the Council, including the "Towards Freedom" project. I don't think any one of the three members was academically competent to sit in judgment over the qualitative aspects of the "Towards Freedom" project.

This committee has done nothing in the last 13-14 months. So, I do not know if its recommendations will be taken seriously by the Government. In the discussion in Parliament members, both in the Treasury benches and in the Opposition, thought it was this committee that had recommended the withdrawal of the "Towards Freedom" volumes.

Ignoring this committee, the members themselves constituted a committee at the 41st Council meeting in August-September 1998 comprising B.R. Nanda, S.C. Mittal and T.K. Ravindran. As I have already said, this committee was constituted as a compromise act because the house was divided on the need to review the works of the "Towards Freedom" project. The primary function of this committee was to "streamline and expedite" the work of publication which meant that it was more concerned with the pace of the p ublication rather than the quality of the work.

Sidelining the above two bodies, the 43rd Council under the chairmanship of Mr. Grover, constituted yet another committee comprising S.C. Mittal, Hari Om and A.R. Khan, all members of the Council appointed by the BJP-led Government. Its scope was limited to working out "the modalities for the line of action to be pursued for the residuary work of the "Towards Freedom" project". The minutes of the 43rd meeting prepared by the Chairman is nothing but a bundle of lies and contradictions. Do the manuscripts in the press fall under the scope of "the residuary work of the project"? Has the Chairman acted "on receipt of the report of the committee" and does the report include the recommendation to withdraw the manuscripts from the press?

It is learnt that the present Chairman has been authorised by the Council to "redraw the minutes"of the 42nd Council meeting prepared by you. You are alleged to have "distorted" or "wrongly recorded" the minutes.

I cannot convince myself that the members of the Council made such an allegation. The minutes of the 42nd Council, which are now alleged to have been either "distorted or wrongly recorded", were, in fact, not prepared by me alone. They were jointly prepa red by Professor M.G.S. Narayanan, representing the Council, and myself, minutes after the conclusion of the Council meeting. The document bearing our joint signatures forms part of the records and could be verified.

Mr. Grover is stated to have taken more than two months to prepare and circulate the minutes. Oddly enough, the minutes were released to members some time after OUP (Oxford University Press) had been asked to return the volumes. I learn from the media th at some Council members have expressed their shock and surprise at the minutes drawn by Mr. Grover, and have denied it.

Apart from all this, the very idea of redrawing the minutes is shocking. Even the minutes of the 38th and 39th meetings of the administrative committees, held more than two years ago in November 1997, are to be reviewed by Mr. Grover! There is no precede nt in the Council of a Chairman being empowered to "rewrite" the minutes written by a preceding Chairman.

The 43rd Council meeting noted that the progress under the Special Publication Programme was "absolutely negligible" during your tenure, and that there was "considerable deterioration" in the progress of publications, including the "Towards Freedom" v olumes. This led the Council to re-examine the entire issue, which resulted in the withdrawal of the two volumes from the press. What are your comments?

There cannot be a greater lie. The Annual Report and other documents will show that during my tenure two volumes of the "Towards Freedom" project were published, manuscripts of two volumes were sent to OUP, and one volume (of Bimal Prasad) was got ready for the press. I was awaiting another volume from Mushirul Hasan at the time of my retirement. I do not take any credit for this: it goes to the editors and to the general editor. As Chairman I could only take credit for coordinating and expediting the p rocess of publication. In addition, I streamlined the publication of Indian Historical Review, making up for the gaps in publication. I initiated a special monograph series. We published three volumes on the Indian Railways under the Economic Hist ory of India project, and revived publications which were in the press for over a decade. I learn that he (Grover) has stopped publication of the journal as well as the special monograph series.

Has Grover been associated with any of these projects?

Well, he was involved in a very important project. In the late 1970s or thereabouts, I think it was during the time of Professor Nihar Ranjan Ray, a project to prepare source books of ancient, medieval and modern India was commissioned. Nihar Ranjan Ray was himself in charge of the ancient period. I learn that Mr. Grover was in charge of the medieval period. Professor Ray nearly completed the project and it was subsequently assigned to B.D Chattopadhyay of the Jawaharlal Nehru University. The manuscript was sent to Orient Longman where it was lying for eight to ten years. From the files I learnt that Mr. Grover was assigned the work of compiling the medieval sources. Apparently he never completed it. I think it is still expected from him.