Why suppress right to historical knowledge?

My article Why suppress right to historical knowledge? appeared in the Edit Page of The Pioneer


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While India has touched benchmarks in many fields, the fact that the Government continues to confiscate modern Indian history not only demonstrates immaturity but shows lack of self-confidence

One of the biggest failures of the present Government has been its ignorance of the importance of post-Independence history. Four years after it was elected to bring about some transparency, hardly anything has changed in this field. Take for example the VK Krishna Menon Papers, held at the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML); they are still kept under wraps and remain inaccessible to researchers and scholars.
The situation is so ridiculous that when the Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru published a large corpus of historical documents (more than 300 pages) related to Zhou Enlai’s visit in India in April 1960, the crucial meetings with Menon were unavailable. Why should the fact that Menon often humiliated competent Armed Forces’ officers, in some cases with the backing of the Prime Minister, be kept secret?
In many ways, Menon with his well-known arrogance and brashness was responsible for the debacle against China in 1962, but nothing has been done to unearth the ‘truth’. Why has the Government not bothered to open the Krishna Menon Papers? The reality is that very few politicians or bureaucrats are interested in modern history (it has sadly been true for all Governments since Independence); the distant past of the Mahabharata is perhaps too attractive.
More than four months after the Central Information Commission (CIC) directed the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to make public the records of the Raj Narain Committee — constituted in 1977 to look into the mysterious death of former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1966 in Tashkent — nothing has happened.
We are facing two issues here: One, no interest of the Government (this includes the Ministry of External Affairs) about modern history; two, very few scholars have the necessary knowledge to go through the files to decide if there is anything which can jeopardise India’s ‘security’ or ‘national interests’. In my experience of years of working in the archives, particularly with the Jawaharlal Nehru Collection (known as Nehru Papers and available at the NMML), very few documents (perhaps one out of tens of thousands) would need to remain ‘classified’. Another irony, the famous Henderson-Brooks report, which for years has been circulating freely from the Internet, is still classified. What does it mean? Nobody in the Government has taken the time to go through it. Why? Because it is so much faster and easier to put a blanket ‘classified’ tag on everything than to make the effort to look into, keeping in mind the ‘national interests’ and blackened a few sentences, if necessary.
In fact, it would be in the ‘national interests’, if most of these so-called secret papers, including the Krishna Menon Papers, were put in the public domain or at least opened to genuine researchers. Interestingly, the CIC recently held that the “people’s right to know the truth …cannot be brushed aside”. In its September 24 order, the Commission said that “in view of the startling incidents that followed (Shastri’s) mysterious death, such as killing of his personal doctor and assistant in two separate ‘accidents’, disappearance of records of the Rajya Sabha committee’s probe, and various significant points raised by journalists…and Shastri’s wife Lalitha Shastri and other family members, the Union Government has a duty to explain to the nation why and how Lal Bahadur Shastri died in Tashkent”.
The same ‘right to know’ should apply to all papers more than 25-years-old. It is not that India has no law; the Public Records Act exists, but laws seem to have been made more for the ‘common man’, than for Government offices. In the Shastri case, the Government was ordered “to place all the so-called ‘classified papers’ before the Prime Minister and the Home Minister and recommended that they “consider the fundamental right to know and demand of the people, (and) to declassify (them), either through an expert committee or by any other process, to get the mystery probed and resolved”.
Probably nothing will happen, like in the case of the Sikkim Papers, where the entire record of the Political Officer in Sikkim between 1895 and 1975 had ‘disappeared’. While India has reached a great maturity in many fields, the fact that the Government continues to confiscate the history of modern India not only demonstrates immaturity but also shows lack of self-confidence. I personally believe that the study of history of the subcontinent could be one of the keys to disentangle difficult problems such as the Kashmir issue and the border row with China. Unfortunately, it is practically impossible to access genuine historical records.
Without rewriting history, it is important to learn from past successes, victories, as well as defeats. In fact, there is certainly more to learn from blunders than success. A case worth citing is Lt Gen SPP Thorat’s report about the ‘Chinese threat’ on India’s borders. On October 8, 1959, Thorat, then responsible for the Eastern Command, sent a paper on the defence of the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) to the Army Chief who forwarded it to the Minister. Thorat’s findings were outrightly rejected by Menon, and worse, Thorat was accused of being an ‘alarmist and a warmonger’. Maj Gen VK Singh, who wrote Thorat’s biography, noted that the latter had provided a time-table showing “how the defences would fall day by day in case the Chinese attacked”. He had also advocated the use of the Air Force to counter China.
Sometimes, one is lucky. I recently came across a file of the visit of Kushok Bakula Rinpoche to Tibet in 1956; his secretary DD Khosla brought to the notice of the Government, the existence of the Aksai Chin road: “The Chinese Government have secretly circulated a new map of Tibet among their official organisations and the pro-Chinese Institutions — in which they have shown the whole of Aksai Chin (Soda Plains) hump as a part of Tibet.” The information was dismissed by the Indian Embassy in Beijing, but the point is that it was known to the Nehru Government that China had built road on the Indian territory several years before the issue came to Parliament.
Why is the present Government protecting the Congress for blunders committed more than 60 years ago? This, I am unable to understand. The only solution would be to create under the PMO, an office of the historian, which would make sure that the Indian laws pertaining to records are scrupulously respected. Just a Dream!

Conspiracy of Silence

My article Conspiracy of Silence appeared in The Mail Today/DailyO


One of the biggest failures of the present government has been to ignore post-independence history. To give an example, South Block still does not declassify historical documents and transfer them to the National Archives of India, as legally mandated.
Another disappointment is that the VK Krishna Menon Papers held at the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, are still kept under wraps and not accessible to researchers and scholars.
Menon humiliated competent Armed Forces’ officers, in some cases with the backing of the Prime Minister; why should this be kept secret?
 
Keeping the Secret
Further, without rewriting history, it is important to learn from past successes, victories, as well as defeats. In fact there is certainly more to learn from blunders, than sucess
The case of Lt Gen SPP Thorat’s report about the ‘Chinese Threat’ on India’s borders is worth citing. On October 8, 1959, Thorat, then responsible for the Eastern Command, sent a paper on the defence of NEFA to the Army Chief who forwarded it to the Minister. Thorat’s findings were outright rejected by Menon and worse, Thorat was accused of being an ‘alarmist and a warmonger’.
The report began thus: “Previously, the only real threat against India which merited consideration was from Pakistan. To this now has been added the threat from China. …This is primarily due to the claim made by China upon large territories which are clearly ours. … (China) has also refused to recognise the McMahon Line as the international boundary and has made deliberate incursions into our territory in Ladakh, Uttar Pradesh and NEFA (North- East Frontier Agency.”
Soon after Menon took over the Defence Ministry, Thorat, like General Thimayya, the Army Chief, had fallen out of Menon’s favours.
Maj Gen VK Singh, who wrote one of the Army Commander’s biographies noted that Thorat “clearly brought out that with the troops, weapons and equipment available at that time, a Chinese attack could not be contained or defeated, and the 'forward policy', being advocated by Menon was not practicable.” Thorat also provided a time table showing “how the defences would fall day by day in case the Chinese attacked.” He advocated the use of the Air Force to counter China.
VK Singh further noted: “When Thimayya retired in May 1961, it was expected that Thorat would succeed him as the Army Chief. He was highly decorated, had combat experience, and was held in high regard in the Service. Most important, he was GOC-in-C Eastern Command, and was familiar with the situation on the borders with China.” Unfortunately for India, Gen PN Thapar got the top job; though technically senior, he had little field experience but was pliable and close to the minister.
An exchange between Gen Thapar and Lt Gen Thorat shows the pettiness of the then leaders; it occurred as Thorat was in the process of retiring.
At 8 am on June 24, 1961, Lt Gen Thorat received a letter from the Army Chief who had been ‘asked’ by the Prime Minister for his comments “on the following allegations against you [Thorat] which have come to his notice.” By the evening Thorat had answered all the points.

China War
The first allegation was about a speech given by Thorat in Ranikhet where the Army Commander would have said: “Indian Officers were seeking promotions through political influence which was disrupting our army, or words to that effect.”
Thorat replied that he had only said that “officers must give their loyalty to their superior Commanders and through them, to the COAS [Army Chief] whoever he may be. Any tendency to look in other directions for early advancement was likely to ruin the discipline of the Army.”
The habit of finding other ways of ‘advancement’ had already sneaked into the Army, mainly due to Menon’s ways of working.
The second allegation was that Thorat would have told a senior IAF Officer that he was “allergic to the Defence Minister whom [he] could not stand and who was disrupting the army.” There is no doubt that many in the Army thought that way. Had Thorat said it openly?
Thorat answered to the Chief: “I recollect that some IAF officer possibly at Jorhrat or Tezpur asked why I had not been appointed COAS. To the best of my memory, I remember having replied that you were senior to me and also that the Hon'ble Defence Minister and I were not very fond of each other.” He admitted that it was not proper to make such a statement.
 
Right Prediction
This exchange however shows the small-mindedness of those who asked these questions just before Thorat’s retirement.
The next query was worse: “your Headquarters spent large sums of money on the farewell parties, functions and parades for General KS Thimayya in Lucknow during his visit earlier this month. How much money was spent, and how many vehicles were employed under the items mentioned above?”
The Army Commander listed ‘his’ expenses during the farewell functions: (a) At Home: Apr 26 Nil; (b) Guest Night: Apr 29, Nil; (c) Parade: May 1, Rs 450. He went on to provide the details for the Rs 450.
Thorat’s conclusions were: “Should [the PM] not be satisfied with my explanation, I request that I may be given an opportunity to clear myself in person, in the presence of those who have made these allegations.”
Thapar had nastily written to Thorat, “these are serious allegations and cannot be ignored.”
It is said that after the war Nehru realized how right Thorat had been in his assessments and predictions. It was too late.
One can only hope that the VK Krishna Menon Papers will soon be available to the Indian public; then we may realize all the blunders committed by the arrogant Minister, and learn from them.