Now Reading: Sumit Sarkar defends Towards Freedom project against ICHR charges
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Sumit Sarkar defends Towards Freedom project against ICHR charges
Historian Sumit Sarkar has rejected allegations that the Towards Freedom project was biased or wasted public funds. Speaking to Frontline, Sarkar said that not a paisa of Indian Council for Historical Research…
The Story in Brief
Historian Sumit Sarkar has rejected allegations that the Towards Freedom project was biased or wasted public funds. Speaking to Frontline, Sarkar said that not a paisa of Indian Council for Historical Research money passed through his hands. He edited the volume for 1946, submitting his manuscript to the council in 1995. The ICHR's own minutes from September 1998 show it was sent to Oxford University Press for publication.
Sarkar defended including the 1946 communal riots and the Royal Indian Navy mutiny in the volume. He said critics dislike the chapter on anti-British movements because communists featured prominently there, while the RSS was absent. The project aimed to document the last decade before Freedom and Partition, covering diverse movements. Sarkar stressed that editorial comment was kept minimal so readers could judge the documents themselves.
The Indian Opinion
The row over the ICHR's Towards Freedom project is being painted as a battle between nationalist and anti-national history. The truth is simpler: the 1946 volume includes communists because they were active in the RIN mutiny and other protests, not out of bias. Readers should ignore the rhetorical fog and ask one question, can the ICHR name a single document Sarkar allegedly suppressed?
Source: frontline.thehindu.com
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
