The Hindu : Fate of `Towards Freedom' project hangs in the balance

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Apr 15, 2003

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Fate of `Towards Freedom' project hangs in the balance

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI APRIL 14. The fate of the `Towards Freedom' project of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) continues to hang fire with the review committee set up to look into the controversial volumes authored by K.N. Panikkar and Sumit Sarkar ``unable to complete its report because the manuscripts are incomplete''.

A year after the Council decided to get the two manuscripts — ``temporarily withheld from publication in February 2000'' amid a major controversy with secular historians viewing this as another effort at saffronising history — examined by an ``independent committee'', the review committee has written back to ICHR asking for all the papers.

While the introduction is missing in Prof. Panikkar's volume, 161 pages and Part-B on princely states are missing from Prof. Sarkar's volume.

The members of the review committee — the former Vice-Chancellor of Kakatiya University, Y. Vaikuntham; ICHR member and professor at the Indira Gandhi National Open University, Kapil Kumar; and retired professor of Kota University, V. K. Vashisht — have apparently informed the ICHR of their reluctance to submit a report based on incomplete documents.

``Our report is almost ready on the basis of the documents that were referred to us. However, as professional historians, we are reluctant to submit a report without going through all the papers,'' said a member.

This has led to a curious situation for which no immediate remedies are available as the Council has been maintaining for over a year now that the manuscripts returned to it by the publishers after a legal battle were incomplete.

Though the ICHR is left with little option but to approach the two historians to retrieve complete manuscripts, this is likely to further delay the publication of the series that is as old as the Council itself.

Whether the two historians will agree to such a request is another issue; particularly since Prof. Panikkar had categorically stated last year that he did not recognise the review committee as his work had been edited by the general editor of the series, the late S. Gopal.

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