Indian historians call for historical units to be headed by professionals
FEROKE, Kerala, India -- The curtain came down on the three-day, 67th session of the Indian History Congress with a call to the Centre to free the Archaeological Survey of India and the National Archives of India from bureaucratic control.
A resolution adopted at the closing plenary here on Monday regretted the continuing tendency to place the administration of such organisations in the hands of government officials and keep professionals out of their helm.
Despite strong protests from the Indian History Congress, the ASI has had no professional archaeologist as its Director-General for over a decade now. The NAI has similarly been placed in the hands of a government official with no professional credentials.
The resolution, moved by historian Irfan Habib, pointed out that for a long time the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Museum and Library too was deprived of an academic director on mere technicalities and maintained as a bureaucratic fief.
A similar situation often occurred in the autonomous institutions. The Indian Council for Historical Research, which should have an `eminent historian' as its chairman, had during long periods of interregnum been saddled with Human Resource Development Ministry officials assigned to it as chairmen.
Read entire article at The Hindu (Chennai, India)
A resolution adopted at the closing plenary here on Monday regretted the continuing tendency to place the administration of such organisations in the hands of government officials and keep professionals out of their helm.
Despite strong protests from the Indian History Congress, the ASI has had no professional archaeologist as its Director-General for over a decade now. The NAI has similarly been placed in the hands of a government official with no professional credentials.
The resolution, moved by historian Irfan Habib, pointed out that for a long time the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Museum and Library too was deprived of an academic director on mere technicalities and maintained as a bureaucratic fief.
A similar situation often occurred in the autonomous institutions. The Indian Council for Historical Research, which should have an `eminent historian' as its chairman, had during long periods of interregnum been saddled with Human Resource Development Ministry officials assigned to it as chairmen.