Ramraksha: Ram-ifying the Society and Modi-fying the State 157Right after the nuclearization of India, the BJP's minister of human
resource development (HRD), Murli Manohar Joshi, reconstituted the
ICHR, a major academic body that comprises reputed historians and
archaeologists and administers research projects and fellowships in his-
tory and archaeology. Four of the 18 new nominees were part of the
Vishwa Hindu Parishad's panel of historians that strove to establish the
existence of a Ram temple at the site of the Babri Masjid. And another five
were closely associated with the Sangh Parivar's efforts to discredit the
opposition viewpoints. The disciplinary bias of some of these new council
members was rather overt and unprofessional. Although the objective of
the council has always been to "promote objective and scientific study of
history," the June 1, 1998, order of the Department of Education shifted
the emphasis: "The Council will give a national direction to an objective
and national presentation and interpretation of history and also advise the
Government of India on all such matters pertaining to historical research
and history methodology as may be referred to it from time to time."
The "rational" interpretation was replaced by "national" interpretation,
and this change substantially altered the objective of the council. Conse-
quently, Aryans are hailed as the indigenous inhabitants of India who have
nurtured the Hindu nation from time immemorial. Aliens and invasions
are said to have interrupted the "glorious past" of ancient India, and this
medieval history represents India's dark ages, when all the ills and evils
crept into the national life. The Hindus who have been constantly fighting
the invaders are sidelined by the modern secular India, and this has to
be corrected. Moreover, the BJP-led government sought to discredit the
Congress-led and nonviolence-inspired movement for Indian inde-
pendence, and to replace Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru with
Hedgewar, Savarkar, and Golwalkar as national leaders.
Another powerful political symbol that has come to dominate the Indian
political scene is the issue of a uniform civil code. Following the Shah
Bano case of 1985, the Supreme Court renewed its plea for a uniform civil
code by dismissing the Hindu husbands' right to practice polygamy under
the cover of converting to Islam. Ruling on a case involving four Hindu
wives, the apex court nullified the second marriages of their husbands and
invoked the need for a uniform civil code that will supersede the Personal
Law. The factor that gave rise to such an invocation is that a born Muslim
can have four wives as per the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Applica-
tion Act enacted by the British in 1937. Above all, the Indian constitution
has promised in Article 44 to bring about such a uniform civil code as a
principle of state policy. The court asked the prime minister to take a fresh
look at the article and file an affidavit by August 1996. While the National
Front and Left parties were against imposing any uniform code on the
Muslims, the BJP seized its opportunity to press its long-standing demand
for a common code for all the communities.^36