The ''Indian History and Culture Society'' (IHCS) was founded in 1977, and operates from the premises of the

Indian Archaeological Society The ''Indian Archaeological Society'' was registered in 1968 at Varanasi as a non-governmental, non-profit making professional organization of archaeologists, founded by A. K. Narain and other Archaeologists and Indologists. As of 2007, the socie ...

New Delhi New Delhi (, , ''Naī Dillī'') is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament House ...

. The society's journal ''History Today'' has been appearing annually since 2000. The society is now known as ''The History and Culture Society'', and is chaired by Prof. D.P Tiwari, a professor in the Department of Ancient Indian History and Archaeology at the

University of Lucknow The University of Lucknow (informally known as Lucknow University, and LU) is a public state university based in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. Founded in 1920, the University of Lucknow is one of the oldest government owned institutions of higher edu ...

. The Society aims to promote and organise interdisciplinary studies of Indian history and culture and to provide a common platform for distinguished scholars engaged in Indology, as well as organise various academic journals and conferences.

Formation

The Society was founded by Dr. S.P. Gupta (a prominent archaeologist and Chairman of the

) and Dr. D. Devahuti of the National Museum, New Delhi, and inaugurated by then Prime Minister Morarji Desai accompanied by eminent scholars such as Prof. Lallanji Gopal (of BHU), Prof. B. P. Sinha (head of History at Patna University), Prof. Khalid Ahmed Nizami (head of History at Aligarh Muslim University), Prof. G.C. Pande, Prof. K.D. Bajpai, and Prof. Tan Chung. The publication History Today was first edited by Dr. S.K Jolly (a historian of Sikh Revivalism) and subsequently, in due course it was edited by Dr. Vandana Kaushik, Ms. S. Radhakrishnan and Prof. D.P. Tiwari. When the Janata government of 1977-79 (including the former

Jan Sangh The Bharatiya Jana Sangh ( BJS or JS, short name: Jan Sangh, full name: Akhil Bharatiya Jana Sangh; ) (ISO 15919: '' Akhila Bhāratīya Jana Saṅgha '' ) was an Indian right wing political party that existed from 1951 to 1977 and was the pol ...

) was elected, it blocked the ''Towards Freedom Project'' of the

Indian Council of Historical Research The Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) is a captive body of the Ministry of Education, Government of India established by an Administrative Order. The body has provided financial assistance to historians and scholars through fellowshi ...

(ICHR) claiming that the history textbooks promoted by the ICHR suffered an ahistorical Marxist ideological distortion. After the Indian History Congress endorsed the textbook writers affiliated with the ICHR, the Janata government funded the then new ''Indian History and Culture Society''. According to scholars L.I. Rudolph and Sussane Rudolph, it attracted a variety of historians, some sympathetic to the

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ( ; , , ) is an Indian right-wing, Hindu nationalist, paramilitary volunteer organisation. The RSS is the progenitor and leader of a large body of organisations called the Sangh Parivar (Hindi for "Sangh family" ...

(RSS) and others disaffected from the textbook "establishment."

Activities

The IHCS offered a forum for a dialogue among quarrelling Indian historians and organised a number of seminars to discuss fundamental problems of Indian historiography. According to its chairperson Prof. D. Devahuti, "one had to free oneself from Western categories like, for instance, that of class struggle, and resume 'indigenous frameworks of interpretation'." She characterised Indian history, including medieval Indian history, as one of consent: 'emphasis appears to have been on consensus, i.e. adjustment, give and take, synthesis or at least an active acceptance of coexistence'. The group's first publication, the 1979 ''Problems of Indian Historiography'', is essentially the proceedings of its seminar in 1978. The book sought to free itself from 'imperialist and Marxist' approaches while simultaneously avoiding Hindu or Muslim communal biases in order to foster writing a more 'objective history' from a postcolonial, nativist, and an Indian point of view rather than a foreign one. Historian Pratap Chandra criticised British historians of India and their Indian disciples for their idea that nation states were deemed to be 'intrinsically desirable', which he argued led to an overstatement of the historical unity of India. Historian D.P Singhal further vehemently criticised Marxists, finding them a growing and unhealthy influence on Indian universities and their history departments.

Publications

# ''Aspects of Indian History and Culture'' (1984) - C.E. Ramachandran and K.V. Raman (Ed.) # ''Essays in Indian History and Culture'' (1986) - Y. Krishan (Ed.) # ''Studies in Indian History and Culture'' (1988) - K.S. Ramachandran (Ed.) # ''Dimensions in Indian Archaeology and History'' (1989) - S.K. Pandey and K.S. Ramachandran (Ed.) # ''Facets of Indian History, Culture and Archaeology'' (1991) - S.P. Gupta and K.S. Ramachandran (Ed.) # ''Dimensions in Indian History and Archaeology'' (1993) - S.P. Gupta and K.S. Ramachandran (Ed.)

References

External links

Indian History and Culture Society
official web site. {{Authority control Historiography of India