Recent events in India recall the Latin phrase Damnatio Memoriae, which translates to “condemnation of memory.” In the Roman Empire, people who were once deemed worthy of recognition but later considered traitors or tyrants had their memory expunged from history. They destroyed any statues, inscriptions, or even places of residence associated with the condemned person.
The incumbent government employed Damnatio Memoriae as a political tool to generate a new version of history. Since time immemorial, politicians have sought legitimacy for themselves and their political ideals throughout history. Tyrants have often sought to falsify, modify, and weaponize history in order to gain political power. From the Roman Empire to Joseph Stalin, who even used to erase purged officials from the pictures they had taken with him, Damnatio Memoriae has proven a favorite weapon of oppressors.
Alteration of History
In today’s “enlightened” and “liberal” world led by the United States and its Western European cohorts, one might expect that they would frown upon Damnatio Memoriae. How could the champions of human rights stand by as tyrants and oppressors erase and modify history in order to position themselves to erase whole nations from the areas under their control? But, sadly, the demon of Damnatio Memoriae is very much alive.
Interestingly, though not surprisingly, the leading beacons of Damnatio Memoriae in today’s world are two key allies of the “liberal” West: Israel and India.
Israel has emptied the Palestinians from their land, confined them to ghettos, and massacred them. The Nazis committed these heinous acts against the Jews (and many others like the Poles and Russians, though Hollywood has made fewer films about the greater tragedies they suffered) some decades ago. The victims of yesterday are the tyrants of today, and they are replicating the behavior of their tormentors.
Interestingly, Israel justifies all of its tyranny through a form of Damnatio Memoriae. It asserts that the Palestinians lack a history and are merely unlawful occupiers of the sacred Jewish land of Israel (extending from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, according to some; though some Zionists claim that Israel’s boundaries are the Nile and Euphrates rivers).
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India: Taking after Goebbels
Unlike Israel, India is relatively new to the practice of tampering with history. However, thanks to Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), it is making rapid progress. Through filmmakers like Vivek Agnihotri, India is trying to emulate Goebbels and create films based on “historical” events for popular consumption. These films (The Kashmir Files, Panipat, Padmaavat, etc.) presented a falsified and distorted narrative of history. The filmmakers, keeping effective propaganda rules in mind, aimed to make these films entertaining. They kept the “message” simple for the audience. They used graphic violence and tales of betrayal to foster hatred against a single entity: Muslims.
The propagandists were aware that including subtleties (such as portraying some Muslims in a positive light) would only serve to dilute the primary message. Consequently, they painted Muslims from various regions and ethnic groups with the same brush, similar to how ancient Hindus referred to all Muslims as “Maleech.”
The goal was equally straightforward: to dehumanize all Muslims in the eyes of India’s Hindu majority.
The narrative depicted Indian Muslims as fifth columnists who needed to be subdued and taught their place. At the same time, it portrayed Pakistani Muslims as a “barbarian” threat to the “civilized” Hindus.
Concerning Damnatio Memoriae, recently, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), which makes the textbooks that are part of the syllabus in most government-run and Central Board of Secondary Education schools in India, has taken some significant steps. The textbooks have undergone significant changes. They have erased paragraphs about the attempts to assassinate Mohandas Gandhi by Hindu extremists, the 2002 Gujarat Riots, and Mughal rule. Interestingly, the textbooks have also removed Abul Kalam Azad, who had been celebrated as a “Muslim founding father” of India.
Imminent Doom
Apparently, the BJP government is determined to launch a crusade against history and expunge anything Muslim from India’s past. The murder of history is in full swing, but the liberals of the West remain indifferent. Why alienate a key potential ally against China and a lucrative market?
A quote from George Orwell’s 1984 comes to mind: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified; every book has been rewritten; every picture has been repainted; every statue and street building has been renamed; every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
Modi and the BJP appear determined to transform India into Oceania in 1984, under the leadership of someone like Modi, the Big Brother.
Critical Time for Muslims
Such a slaughter of history is almost always a sign of impending genocide. If India succeeds in expunging the Muslims from its history, it will cause the Muslims to lose their ability and power to take any sort of collective action. This will make them easy prey for Hindutva goons to devour. A few years down the road, history textbooks in India might claim that Prithvi Raj Chauhan built the Taj Mahal! Ghettos and concentration camps for Muslims would open up. Indian Muslims would be declared “illegal aliens” and “people without history”.
Even now, we can see how the Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019 discriminates against Muslims. This act has been instrumental in turning millions of Indian Muslims into stateless people with no rights whatsoever. After the completion of the murder of history, tyrannical polities like the BJP’s India turn to the murder of people. This was the sequence followed by Hitler’s Nazis as well. After all, Savarkar, Hedgewar, and Golwalkar, the ideological fathers of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and BJP, were fanboys of Hitler and Nazism!
The record of the past illuminates the conscious of a people;
The memory of past achievements makes it self aware,
But if that memory fades and is forgot,
The folk again is lost in nothingness.
(Allama Iqbal, Rumuz-e-Bekhudi)
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of the South Asia Times
