Sanyal is no historian, but he dabbles in it and wouldn’t mind if it’s rewritten lock, stock and barrel. But while he is gaga about Modi and the resurrection of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose in popular lore, he is also a great admirer of Manmohan Singh’s 1991 liberalisation reforms.Sanyal was a guest on Goswami’s show a couple of days ago and while there, he held forth on the urgent need to rewrite Indian history from the root fast-forward to yesterday, up to the last 24 hours. Sanyal has no respect for historians of the Romila Thapar brand, who he has accused of “double standards”. Sanyal, now backed by Arnab Goswami and Maj. Gen GD Bakshi, wants history rewritten by “revisiting primary sources”.Historians who want to rewrite Indian history are livid at the manner in which King Ashoka has been raised to greatness. They have their own ideas why Ashoka converted to Buddhism. The whole Kalinga war and the following tale of remorse does not cut ice with these historians. And in the rewriting of the history of India, “things will be set right”!Sanyal has written a book titled ‘The Ocean of Churn’ which actually tells the story of the proposed rewriting of India’s history under the tutelage of the Modi regime. The way Ashoka and Akbar, and Aurangzeb, will be treated along with Raja Bhoj and Maharana Pratap, will be just the tip of the iceberg.The meddling with the history of India is a serious and humongous project and while it tells of history in the making in more ways than one, it will also involve a lot of erasing of history. There will also be a lot of unlearning—entire chapters, in fact. Already, Jawaharlal Nehru is playing second fiddle to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, and the Mughals, the entire lot of them, are ‘aakranta’ or invaders, so strike their names off Delhi’s roads.
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