Secular Politics Communal Agenda: A History of Politics in India from 1860 to 1953

The Indian history writing has never been an easy task because the beginning itself was motivated by the political considerations and religious constraints, rather than driven by the principles of historiography.  This necessarily encouraged historians to distort the history of India so as to fit in certain ideological and religious framework.  Entire history written by colonial, ideologically and politically motivated historians is witness to it and victim of it.  Since the independence of India a new approach has become fashionable i.e. writing of ‘politically correct history’.  The entire history wiring has now been reduced to ‘secular’ history and ‘communal’ history.  In the process, the sacredness of primary evidence and importance of original sources have become a major casualty.  To push their agenda and to write ‘politically correct history’, historians have resorted to hiding away the facts, ignoring the facts.  Their sole agenda is to prove their viewpoint wedded to their political ideology and its usefulness in the immediate battle in politics.  This approach is as visible as daylight in the writings dealing with almost all periods of history, including the freedom struggle and the partition of the country.  The last sixty years history of independent India has been dealt with even more callously.  In his proposed three volume study of history of politics in India from 1860 to 2007 Prof. Makkhan Lal exposes such politically motivated writings.  By quoting extensively from original sources he comes out with facts which demolish the myths carefully built around personalities, ideologies and political parties.  The work shows the incalculable harm that has been done to the history of India and historiography as a whole.  First one in the series of three-volume study.  This volume cover the period from 1860 to 1953-the period of our freedom struggle during which the two-nation theory was born and propagated.