According to The Telegraph, Brittas was initially served a notice from the Rajya Sabha secretariat and was asked to appear before Dhankar. Brittas said when he had met Dhankar and briefed him “orally” on the issue, he was asked to give his explanation in writing instead.

https://thewire.in/government/rajya-sabha-chairman-summons-john-brittas-over-newspaper-article-critical-of-amit-shah 

01/05/2023

History is an important “issue” because it goes beyond the confines of academia and everyone has an opinion on it. It helps in creating identities. Identities which are often contested and imagined. The relationship between history and nationalism is like – as Eric Hobsbawm would have put it – “what poppy is to an opium addict”; it serves a purpose. What we are today has its roots in history and that is why history as a discipline is always on the radar of political regimes. In India, as lay people we do not read enough and often imbibe hearsay, WhatsApp forwards and political speeches as history and condemn historians for their “prejudice” in attempting to write academic histories.

https://thewire.in/history/are-we-moving-towards-a-medieval-understanding-of-history 

History never remains static; it is ever changing. Rewriting history is natural and essential. With every new interpretation or evidence, history changes.

And it is not uncommon for different political regimes to have different perspectives on history and to try to influence the historical narrative in the curriculum.

History should be understood in its totality, that is, with its context. Totality should not be confused with the “entirety” of the past, which is virtually impossible to achieve.

by Eshan Sharma

28/04/2023

Development: Between Cliché and Creativity,"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_wdd7D2iQk Shiv Visvanathan Azim Premji University
Jan 20, 2012 Shiv Visvanathan speaks on "Development: Between Cliché and Creativity," as part of the Azim Premji University Public Lecture Series
October 8, 2011
Shiv Visvanathan is Professor of Social Science at Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Ahmedabad. His areas of research interest include Sociology of Science and Technology, Violence and Globalization, Corruption, Sociology of Disasters and Futures. Apart from extensive journal and newspaper publications, his work includes Organizing for Science (1985) and A Carnival of Science (1997), both published by Oxford University Press. He has also co-edited Foul Play: Chronicles of Corruption 1947-1997 (1999), published by Banyan Books.