AGAINST COMMUNAIISING HISTORY 53
into the interior of India. Reference to this region (Shripada Janapada) by Bana as the kingdom of Indra gives it some kind of divine association just as his somewhat detailed description of it portrays it as a land of plenty and beauty. The sacrifices made by numerous heroes from ancient to modern times can easily be woven into a tale of valour and bravery. The peculiar geographical position of the Punjab made it a zone of interaction among a number of peoples in ancient and medieval times, and nurtured several mystic movements which were conducive to the growth of a composite culture, so prominently reflected in the teachings of Jagatguru Nanak who stood for an egalitarian society. All this and many other developments give a legitimate amour-propre to the people of the Punjab and the north western part of the subcontinent. But historians working on the Punjab region may tend to go in a dangerous direction when they glorify its past without adequate emphasis on the fact that the cultural heritage of one region belongs equally to the other parts of the country just as the past of other regions of India is inextricably linked with the history of the Pubjab. By laying an undue emphasis on its achievements and by ignoring those of the rest of the country regional historiography will weaken the nation state which is already being considerably eroded by the almost irreversible process of globalisation. It must be stressed that historians have to reconstruct the past without regional chauvinism and religious fanaticism so as to save the country from fragmentation.
Chauvinism has its first cousin in communalism. Its pernicious influence on the reconstruction of Indian history, first seen in colonial historiography, has assumed alarming dimensions in recent years. We are all familiar with the shameful events at Ayodhya2 followed by macabre consequences, and with the agenda of 'liberating' Mathura and Kashi in Uttar Pradesh and Bababudangiri in Karnataka. One should not be surprised if the list of sites to be 'liberated' is enlarged in the near future and our past is distorted beyond recognition to provide legitimacy to communal vandalism. In fact, for the Punbjab region itself a history with communal overtone is already being written. Some archaeologists thus have been contesting the view that the Aryans came to India from outside and think that they originally lived in the valley of the river Sarasvati which finds frequent mention in the Vedic texts. They also assert that the Aryans were the authors of what is known as the Indus civilisation. For example, a VHP protagonist and an archaeologist of sorts, has proclaimed that the Harappan culture was the gift of both the