My Meeting with P.N.Oak

[Edwin Bryant]

On Thu, 23 Sep 1999, Shrinivas Tilak wrote:

>    While his fancy etymologies are truly a rich source of comic relief from
> academic drudgery, I came away after a meeting with Purushottam Nagesh
> (P.N.)Oak at his resodence in Pune in July 1998 with a nagging suspicion
> that something is indeed amiss with India's recorded history.
>    In 1964 Oak founded the Institute for Rewriting Indian History in order
> to rectify what he believes to be the biased and distorted versions of
> India's history produced by the invaders and colonizers.

Such nagging suspicions have become more and more representative of many
scholars within the Indian academy.  One has certainly enormous grounds
to be suspicious of a version of ancient history that was determined by
one's erstwhile colonial rulers.

Historical revisionism has had positive and negative effects.  On the
positive side nationalist historiography has brought different
assumptions, perspectives and concerns to the data, exposed colonial
predispositions and imperial biases, forced a reevaluation of old dogmas,
and provided resistance to racism.  On the negative side, it has
encouraged the misinterpretation of data for political purposes, distorted
that past, limited the questions that are asked and the sum total of data
that is brought into consideration, and reinforced the centralizing
policies of emerging nationalisms.

The question is, does the work of scholars like Oak contribute to the
positive aspects of revisionism, or the negative?  Even the RSS, which had
cultivated Oak in an earlier period, have since distanced themselves from
his views.  His type of etymologizing contributes to scholars stereotyping
anyone reconsidering any aspect of ancient history as having entrenched
preconvictions that are upheld by a stunning lack of awareness of most of
the relevant data.  THis is not to say that his suspicions are
illegitimate.  It is a statement of the method (or lack thereof) that he
employs to support them.