Editorial Note, Sep-Oct, 2020

As lead article in this issue we publish the text of Irfan Habib’s illuminating lecture to the India Diaspora Washington D.C. Metro on ‘Interpreting Indian History’. Habib starts by clarifying that the historical method requires the historian to begin with a minimum of a priori assumptions when turning to sources and deploying a critical apparatus when examining them. Unfortunately, he holds, the current political dispensation does not encourage resort to this method and promotes ‘myth formation’ in the name of history. This is visible in a number of areas: the ‘Aryan fixation’ reflected in the position that Aryans originated in India; the claim that India has been ‘fully a nation’ since ancient times; and the misrepresentation of
India’s religious history. Underscoring the need to challenge these attempts to distort the interpretation of India’s history, the lecture also flags the need to recognise, despite similarities, the specificities characterising the social and economic histories of individual countries and the need to pay more attention to women’s history that has been hitherto neglected. The article
concludes by emphasising the need to recognise the role of colonial tribute when interpreting historical trends, to critique tendencies to give the resistance to British rule a communal colour, and to correct views that do not recognise the redistributive gains made during the early decades after Independence. All these features of the practice of a progressive history are  crucial in the current battle against the tendency to make communalism the  official doctrine of the country.