Dalrymple is Wrong. Don't Blame Historians for the Rise of WhatsApp History

The recent comments by popular historian William Dalrymple at the Indian Express’s Idea Exchange have caused ripples among Indian historians and intellectual circles alike. Replying to a question by the host, Dalrymple stated that Indian historians who failed to disseminate history to the masses are largely responsible for the surge of WhatsApp history in India.

WhatsApp history refers to pseudo-history, devoid of any historical references or scrutiny, passing off as facts on social media portals like YouTube, WhatsApp and some popular books, a phenomenon witnessed in the last decade.

Dalrymple’s summation, which is apparently well-intentioned, misdirects the onus of the situation at the Indian academic historians. The real issue, on the other hand, is much more complex, involving structural and mainly political forces that fall outside the control of historians.

The WhatsAppisation of false history is a phenomenon that has occurred alongside the rise of the current political dispensation. The pseudo-history doing rounds on popular social media platforms is designed to manipulate viewers into believing half-truths and whole lies targeted against a specific religious community and a set of historians.

WhatsApp history is specifically aimed at distorting history, mainly the medieval period. The most frequently touched topics are anti-Mughal (read: Muslim) rhetoric and crimes against Indian Hindus by the invading Muslim forces, blaming Muslims for the partition, and positioning the British as benevolent rulers as opposed to the Mughals who were invaders and plunderers.

Most of this content is designed to garner hatred, anger, and mistrust among communities, and forward a right-wing communal agenda.

Dalrymple wrongly hints that the failure of academic historians to reach the public has a role in the rise of this phenomenon. Along with this, he signals that the divorce between the academic historians and the public was “deliberate” on the part of the historians. Not only does this statement lack any real nuance, but it also fails to acknowledge the political factors and implications under which WhatsApp history has flourished.

Rise of Misinformation is a Larger Phenomenon

The divide between academic historians and the general public is real and needs mitigation, but the rise of false narratives in history cannot be blamed on the former. The rise of WhatsApp history is not due to the elitism of academic historians but rather due to the discrediting of real historians as “liars” and “concealers” of real history by the very pseudo-history propagated by social media.

The Marxist and left-leaning historians were hit the hardest, for they imbibed a non-communal approach in writing and teaching history, focusing on political and economic factors of historical causation instead of religious ones. This mistrust was further widened by fiery slogans and statements of politicians who demonised the minority for electoral gains, a phenomenon also seen in popular Bollywood films.

Despite the vilification and hate campaigns, historians took this challenge head-on by frequenting news channels and social media platforms, issuing statements, and conducting public discussions and conferences.

The allegation against academic historians is thus serious and appalling and calls for an introspection. Assuming that the academic community stays aloof and disconnected from the masses is a gross denial of the services and attempts of several historians who have dedicated their careers to writing the people’s history.

First, one must understand the difference between “popular” and public to reach a coherent conclusion. In his study of the Medieval empire, academics like Satish Chandra first attempted to take the focus away from the kings to its people. To say that Marxist historians deliberately preoccupied themselves with academic jargon, making the discipline harder for the masses to grasp, is a denial of the values with which Marxist historiography rose in the 1960s.

DD Kosambi, author of An Introduction to the Study of Indian History (1956), and DN Jha, who wrote Ancient India: In Historical Outline (1997), apart from other important publications, worked tirelessly in order to oust the communal biases and right-wing agenda that loomed among both Muslim and Hindu academics of that era.

One of the earliest attempts at taking history to the masses was switching the medium of these publications from English to Hindi and multiple other languages for a wider reception. Historians like Irfan Habib published his popular book in Hindi, Madhyakalin Bharat (1990), in order to bridge this gap between English and Hindi reading audiences.

These historians also aligned themselves with organisations like the Sahmat Collective, which ran publications on topics relevant to the Indian masses at affordable prices. These included publications like Rashtriya Andolan Vichardhara or Etihas and Hindustan Humara by Irfan Habib and October Kranti Ke Sau Saal Aur Aaj by Irfan Habib and Prabhat Patnaik, all highlighting a consistent effort at reaching out to the masses.

Books of Satish Chandra, Bipan Chandra and Romila Thapar had wide publication ranges in numerous languages like Urdu, Punjabi, Bangla, Gujarati and Marathi. Prominent historians also made themselves available to film directors in order to make historically accurate films, and this understanding was mutual, unlike the present, in which cinema is motivated by profiteering the bigotry already in place.

I am reminded of the time when historians organised a series of online academic talks, sensing the divide between experts and the masses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Irfan Habib was delivering a talk on Savarkar with eight hundred-plus online viewers. However, some miscreants within that audience were hurling abuses and vitriol at the senior historian as the facts he stated made them uncomfortable. The unapproachability of learned scholars is thus not the real issue here.

Whatsapp history thrives not on ignorance but a rising appetite for the viewers for bigotry and hate. An average viewer knows exactly which historian to whom they should not lend an ear. The targeted mistrust that has divided real historical scrutiny and value for it is not the fault of the historians but the sentiment of hatred on the rise within the public that wants to feed on communal bigotry.

An average social media user has access to a plethora of online content every minute, but the user decides what content they want to view. Propagation of WhatsApp history is an attempt to ridicule real historiography and make it a questionable preoccupation. The content mostly comes wrapped in innuendos like kala sach (dark truth), jhoota itihas (fabricated histories) or vampanthi itihas (Marxist history) directed at an audience ready to consume it. The vitriol directed at the historians who promoted interpretations of Indian history that are not communal itself begs the question of these historians being inaccessible to the masses.

Why would these historians be hated if they were only relevant to their elitist circles? This culture has discredited credible sources of historical knowledge and promoted the practice of resorting to other (pseudo) sources of knowledge as credible.

The idea of knowledge consumption has changed in recent years as the spirit of inquiry is driven not by inquisition but by agenda-driven politics. No one wants to know the truth per se; people want only to consume facts that reinforce their biases and validate their presumptions. An academic, no matter how reachable he/she attempts to make themselves, cannot combat this bombardment of false information online due to its reception and easy dissemination.

The root of the cause is the hate campaign directed at secular historians, which labelled them anti-national, Maoist, and whatnot. Why would this demonisation take place if the historians had not made themselves public in expressing their ideas?

The rise of misinformation does not just have to be curbed by writing popular histories (as Dalrymple believes) but also by upholding agents of public history and memory. School textbooks form an essential part of a nation’s history and collective memory and do not lie outside the domain of public history. There have been numerous onslaughts on the kind of history that gets taught to young students since the establishment of NCERT in 1960. 

It was the alleged historians accused of being cut out from the public domain who worked to make history unbiased, rational and free from being clouded by religious binaries. As early as the inception of NCERT in 1961, historians like Irfan Habib, Romila Thapar, Bipan Chandra, Satish Chandra, Ram Sharan Sharma, and others strove to make textbooks and therefore, public history, free from communal agendas towards a ‘secular’ ‘unbiased’ and anti-colonial standpoint. If communalism had been allowed to creep into textbooks and pedagogy at that juncture, our understanding of history would not be where it is today.

These were the same historians who fought the additions of communalising elements in textbooks and public discourse in the 1970s and 1980s when secular historians were first labelled as anti-national.

This shows that writing popular books is not the only means to ensure that the correct history is disseminated to the masses. The process also involves interventions that go against structural and ideological fronts and may have serious political implications.

The most recent changes and deletions are the discussion on the history of caste oppression, justifications of caste in Vedas, and the dangers of communal politics being cut short. Portions relating to Mughal rule, details about courts and administrative systems, and the history of other Islamic rulers, including Mamluks, Khaljis, and Delhi Sultanate, have been omitted.

Historians and academic historians have been vilified for battling the siege on the NCERT syllabus which will affect how history will be studied and taught. In 2021, the University Grants Commission (UGC) announced the addition of sections on the History of Bharatvarsha, ‘Saraswati Civilisation,’ ‘Indian valour,’ and scientific inventions in the Vedic age for the graduate courses.

These ideas are historically inaccurate additions that insert a wrongly conceived notion of a great indigenous past, discouraging a critical and rational approach toward history. The academicians published statements criticising the move despite the serious threats, ostracisation and hate campaigns directed against them.

In 2023, the NCERT decided to delete the chapter covering the themes of ‘Kings and Chronicles: the Mughal Courts (16th and 17th Centuries); other themes to be removed included the portion on Mahatma Gandhi’s life and assassination, Maulana Azad’s contributions, communal riots, caste and gender inequalities and Dalit writings. Among other themes that were removed from the class 12 textbook included topics about Mahatma Gandhi, his assassin, and the banning of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) following Gandhi’s assassination.

To fight this step, nearly 250 academics and historians issued a public statement criticising the NCERT for making changes in its textbooks. They alleged that the move has been “guided by a divisive and partisan agenda” while demanding “the deletions be immediately withdrawn.” The public statement was signed by Romila Thapar, Jayati Gosh, Mridula Mukherjee, Apoorvanada, Irfan Habib, and Upinder Singh, among others.

It would be wrong to say that the rise of pseudo-history is at the behest of an elitist academic intelligentsia. Not only is it ungrateful, it is also a denial of the challenges that eminent historians faced in nurturing the discipline as we study it today.

While it is important for academicians to quell the gap that exists in popular history and academic history, by definition, academic writers have to keep pace with rigorous exercises of reading original sources, and interpreting and theorising them in order to contribute new research to the discipline. This rigorous and time-consuming exercise often renders them incapable of nurturing a connection with the masses.

However, the senior historians, as discussed above, definitely showed a way to balance this disconnect along with producing excellent research. As far as mitigating barriers between intelligentsia and the general public is concerned, the last five years, especially the post-pandemic era, have enabled the rise of multiple platforms that helped connect experts to the public interested in gaining correct historical knowledge. In recent years, as one can see, a greater attempt was made by historians to address this situation by indulging in online talks and heritage walks in order to deliver expert analyses to the masses online.

Online platforms like Karawaan Heritage, Ganga Jamuni Foundation, and others played a great role in bridging the gap between academicians and common people through weekly lectures on a diverse range of themes on Facebook and YouTube. Along with this, a range of new work has been published and is underway by popular and academic writers like Rana Safvi, Swapna Liddle, Ira Mukhoty, and Ruby Lal, who have significantly reached out to the masses. The popularisation of history is still an ongoing process that shall lead to positive results. 

(Zainab Naqvi is a Research Candidate of Mughal History at Aligarh Muslim University. Views are personal.)