The professional history writing that developed in India in the early decades after independence was powerfully shaped by the intellectual culture of the time. New India looked forward to a future in which democracy would unfold, the rights of free citizens would be defined, and the commitments made during the national movement would be realized. Troubled by memories of the communal carnage and trauma of the Partition years—when thousands of Hindus and Muslims killed each other—the intellectuals of this new India struggled to create a secular and democratic public culture. Inspired by the ideals of democratic citizenship, they hoped for a society where individuals would be emancipated from their religious and affective ties and reborn as secular citizens of a democratic state. Historians turned to the past to counter communal representations of history, question communal stereotypes, and write a secular national history. The critique of communal prejudice was seen as necessary for developing a history that was scientific and objective. To be authentic, it was believed, this new history had to be both scientific and secular.

In the decades that followed, sectarian conflicts continued. New trends in historical writing emerged; historians became aware of the problems of both objectivism and the meaning of narrative truth; but the battle against communal histories continued to determine the way new histories were framed. In this essay I will look at the way this battle has shaped the agendas of secular histories—its terms of reference, its silences and erasures, its tropes of analyses, its fears and anxieties. I will reflect on the predicaments of doing "secular" histories: the need to simultaneously critique communal frames and transcend the limits that such a critique imposes. Through an inner critique of secular histories—for I locate myself within the tradition—the essay will discuss the larger problem of writing history.¹

Beyond Boundaries

Communal histories of India are premised on one fundamental assumption: that India is a society fractured into two overarching religious communities—Hindus and Muslims. These communities are not only separate and distinct but also irreconcilably opposed. Their cultures, values, social practices, and beliefs have little in common. Their histories are histories of discord: of mutual hostility, hatred, conflict, battles for domination. The boundaries of their identities are well etched, firmly defined, and categorically drawn, the lines deepened by a long history of mutual antagonism.²

For many years secular histories have battled against these ideas and the histories through which they have been naturalized.³ Anxious about the growth of communalism and haunted by the fear of communal violence, secular historians have returned to the past to build the premises of a humane, secular, and democratic present. They have questioned communal assumptions, deconstructed communal stereotypes, mined the archives for alternate evidence, reread the texts, and presented secular counternarratives.

But secular histories have been strongly defined by the history of their origin. The desire to argue against the constitutive assumptions of communal history has shaped the questions that have been posed, the narrative choices that have been made, and the way arguments have been elaborated. Secular historians have questioned communal stereotypes by turning them upside down and have countered communal assumptions by inverting them. Where communal historians can only see the hard lines of the boundaries that separate communities, secular historians have emphasized the porosity and open-endedness of these boundaries. Where communal historians look at the communities as homogenous and unitary, secular historians point to the heterogeneity and fragmentation within them. Where communal historians look at the past as a time of communal discord, secular historians have sought to underline the elements of concord, harmony, and togetherness. Where communal historians hear only the voices of orthodoxy and sectarianism, secularists have searched for histories of syncretism and tolerance.