Few decades back, at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), Prof. Irfan Habib summoned his former student and now faculty member K K Muhammed to his office. Muhammed had discovered Ibādat Khāna in Fatepur Sikri. Built by Akbar in 1575 CE, the Ibādat Khāna was the place where various religious scholars held discussions. A major discovery, this was reported in various newspapers, something which Prof. Habib was not too happy about. The conversation went as follows:
Irfan Habib: “This is not Ibādat Khāna”
Muhammed: “No? This is not Ibādat Khāna?”
IH: “What you gave in Times of India is not Ibādat Khāna”
M: “How can you say that? Are you an archaeologist?”
IH: “I may not be as good an archaeologist like you”
M: “Sorry, you are not an archaeologist.” Irfan Habib was speechless.
Habib pushed a paper to Muhammed and said, “write what you discovered is not Ibādat Khāna”. Muhammed refused and walked away.
After working both at AMU and the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) in various designations, K K Muhammed has now written an autobiography in Malayalam titled, ഞാനെന്ന ഭാരതീയൻ (Me, the Indian), which has details of his encounters with Prof. Habib and his cabal. As part of his education, Mr. Muhammed learned how a historian becomes secular.
When Muhammed reached AMU as a student, he was initially excited to have someone as famous as Prof. Habib as his teacher. Muhammed recollects, “As a teacher, he did not make any impact on me.” His other classmates too had similar opinion. This news reached Habib’s ears. Muhammed ran for the Student’s Union as a Congressman. This too did not go well with the Marxists and they decided to contain him. This would cause various encounters between the Irfan Habib group and Muhammed and they are detailed in the first few chapters of the book.
Due to some Machiavellian maneuvers by the Marxists, Muhammed did not get admission as a researcher and hence opted for archaeology. After completing his post-graduate diploma in Archaeology, he returned to AMU. He thanks Habib for blocking his path, because it led him to archaeology where he made a name for himself by discovering not just the Ibādat Khāna, but also a Christian Church, Akbar had built for the missionaries.
The Marxist attack came in multiple ways. First, they tried to prove that the discovery was not Muhammed’s. That failed. The second attack claimed that if Muhammed had discovered this, then it could not be the Ibādat Khāna. Soon after that Habib became the Head of the Department and that’s when the direct confrontation mentioned earlier happened.
Muhammed was a Communist sympathizer, but what he encountered in the campus was a new form of it. The petty version. Muhammed writes that he could never get along with Irfan Habib.
Habib group could cause career damage. They controlled the purse strings: they could decide who got scholarships or who would be admitted as researchers. If you were not part of his group, you were branded communal. Independent thinking was anathema. But if you joined his group, you became secular.
For this Muhammed cites the example of Prof. Ramachandra Gaur, with whom he worked. An enemy of Habib, Prof. Gaur was branded an RSS man. Once he became the Head of the Department, he changed his allegiance. Gaur also advised Muhammed that it was better to switch to Habib’s group for career advancement. Once Prof. Gaur joined the Habib group, he was considered “secular”. Muhammed says, he refused to follow Gaur’s example.
Another encounter he mentions, occurred in front of an interview panel consisting of among others, the Vice Chancellor and Habib. During the interview, the Vice Chancellor said he could not consider anyone for AMU, who did not respect Prof.Habib. Muhammed replied that respect has to be earned not demanded. He mentioned how a person who got less marks than him was admitted as a researcher. Another case was when someone with less marks and no Post-Graduate diploma was given the post of Asst. Archaeologist instead of him. Muhammed also had evidence against a false accusation that Irfan Habib had made. While Muhammed said all of this, Irfan Habib sat with his eyes down. Muhammed, writes, “His behavior towards me changed, but I was sure he would stab me at the first opportunity”
Muhammed writes that Prof. Habib preferred people who flattered him like Makkan Lal. Prof. Habib tried to get Prof. Makkan Lal as the deputy director instead of Muhammed. When this was challenged by Muhammed in court, Makkan Lal became an ally of Irfan Habib. Muhammed writes, “Unholy alliances are short lived”. By the time of the World Archaeology Congress in Delhi, the Habib group and Makkan Lal group were openly fighting and in the Babri Masjid dispute, Irfan Habib and Makkan Lal were on the opposite sides.
Muhammed was finally selected as the Deputy Superintending Archaeologist at the Archaeological Survey of India. According to Muhammed, Prof. Habib. met the Director General of ASI and asked him to reject Muhammed. The DG replied that it was a UPC selection and he did not have the power to reject it. Then Prof. Habib had one final request. Don’t post him in Agra. (What if he discovers something else). Muhammed was posted to Madras Circle. But he would visit AMU for lectures and then efforts were made to block them. The only place where they were successful in blocking him was at JNU (no big surprise there), but everywhere else Muhammed was able to speak freely.
In the foreward of the book, Prof M G S Narayanan, too writes about Prof. Habib. According to Prof. MGS, Prof. Habib has poisoned, not just history, but culture and social life by his narrow groupism, nepotism and treachery. At the same time, he writes that Prof. Habib is a hard working person, but crafty. His group would threaten, cheat and would be part of various intrigues. Anyone who criticized this group would be branded a Hindutvavaadi and communalist. At the same time, Prof. MGS says, Prof. Habib is not an Muslim Fundamentalist. He is not sure, even if he is a believer. Prof. MGS attributes this group for making Babri Masjid a national issue.
According to Muhammed, it was during the Babri Masjid time that his mask of secularism came off. As the head of a government body (ICHR), he should not have taken sides in the dispute. People saw this as an effort to to increase his influence by taking sides with the Muslim side in the dispute. The one historian who had to courage to say that the head of ICHR should not take sides in the dispute was Prof. M G S Narayanan. Prof. MGS initially had a great opinion of Prof. Irfan Habib. He even disagreed with Muhammed on his opinion of Prof. Habib, Once Prof. MGS worked with Prof. Habib in ICHR, he realized that truth of Muhammed’s statements. Not being able to work with Irfan Habib, he left ICHR. Very soon Prof. MGS was branded with the Hindutva label.
These are just few select incidents from the first few chapters of the book. It is these petty people who get to define Indian history on if a Ram temple existed or if Saraswati flowed in India or in Afghanistan (see The Lost River). This is the price for continuing the British practice for having an “official” history. We have become bystanders while our history has been hijacked by Marxists like Prof. Irfan Habib.
Prof. Irfan Habib’s “Secularism”
Published
Irfan Habib is a man who believes in his convictions. Whatever he believes on Monday, he believes sincerely and teaches that to his students. However on Tuesday if he finds that what he believed on Monday was totally erroneous, and his beliefs disproven by facts, nonetheless, on Wednesday he will still believe the erroneous ideas that he believed on Monday regardless of the fact he heard on Tuesday, and continue to teach those disproven theories to his gullible students. Irfan Habib is so committed to his “facts” that he holds on to them long after they are disproven. Loyalty is his forte. Loyalty to discounted data and old stale news…..
See: http://indiafacts.org/irfan-habib-still-searching-for-the-saraswati-river/
Thank you very much for shedding light on an obscure, yet, very important incident that unmasks Mr. Habib who was entrusted with writing the history books & school curriculum of our education system distorting the bright minds of generations of young Indians only to divide them psychologically, ideologically & religiously to the point of dividing our great country!
Irfan Habib is a clear example of the Indian Marxist opportunists whose only long-term plan was capturing positions of power in education right from primary stage to the highest level of Indian education so they could fully control the future Indian intelligentsia who are instrumental in forming public opinion dominating the overall social discourse of the country. In achieving their this goal the Marxists have left no stone unturned starting from treachery to backstabbing those with independent/differing opinions even marginally. The next stage of this is what we can see in Communist history of mass elimination of such people wherever communism has been in control of things, for example Soviet Russia, mainly under Joe Stalin. And I’m sure if Commies could capture power in India then here also we would have seen repetition of the same phenomenon. Communism’s another name is treachery – for them what matters is the end result, not the methodology for achieving them.
Excellent
Compliments to Prof.K.K.Muhammed for shedding light on how Prof.Irfan Habib and his band work.
Long back, when I read the book -Eminent historians- by Arun Shourie, I thought there might be some truth, but it is exaggerated.
Now after reading this essay, I feel Arun Shourie was correct in all that he had written in his book.
Brilliant post, Jayakrishnan.
Thank you , Sir, for the translation. Excellent work.