There is a particular genre of indian public argument that sounds like a thunderclap and, on closer inspection, turns out to be thunder from only one corner of the sky. anand Ranganathan's assertion — that for more than 70 years, indians have been systematically 'taught to forget' their historical injustices — belongs squarely in that category. It is not wrong. It is just not as right as it thinks it is.

According to News18, Ranganathan, a molecular biologist turned one of India's sharpest right-leaning commentators, made the case that India's post-independence historiography engaged in a deliberate act of erasure. temple destructions, religious persecutions, the scale of violence during Partition — all of it, he argues, was softened or silenced to serve a particular secular-nationalist consensus. The charge has bite. Serious historians, including those with no affinity for the bjp ecosystem, have acknowledged that Nehruvian-era textbooks often did flatten uncomfortable medieval history into a 'composite culture' framework that glossed over conquest and coercion.

But here is where Ranganathan's argument begins to eat its own tail. The call to 'remember what was erased' is only as honest as the rememberer. And on this count, the commentator's own track record — and that of the broader ideological ecosystem he champions — raises a question he seems uninterested in answering: whose injustices qualify for excavation?

The Selective Archaeology of Grievance

Consider what Ranganathan's framework typically spotlights: Mughal-era temple demolitions, the plight of Kashmiri Pandits, the whitewashing of Aurangzeb's record. These are legitimate historical injuries, and restoring them to public consciousness is defensible scholarship. But the same commentators who demand this reckoning go conspicuously quiet on other erasures — the systemic violence of caste, the documented brutality of upper-caste feudalism, or the complex social and economic causes behind episodes like the Moplah rebellion. As commentators like Pratap bhanu Mehta have suggested in their published writings, the indian right's project of 'historical justice' can become difficult to distinguish from the indian left's project of 'historical amnesia' — both are curatorial acts, choosing which bones to dig up and which to leave buried.

Similarly, the 2002 gujarat riots — in which indian courts convicted perpetrators across communities, including senior political figures, in trials spanning over a decade — and the communal violence that followed the Godhra train burning represent episodes where the legal record is extensive and multi-sided. The supreme court of india and various trial courts have delivered detailed verdicts addressing culpability. Yet these episodes rarely feature in the 'suppressed history' framework that Ranganathan and data-aligned commentators advocate. The silence is telling.

This is not a fringe observation. It is the central flaw in any politics of memory that claims moral universality while practising partisan selectivity. When Ranganathan declares, as reported by News18, that indians were 'taught to forget,' the unstated premise is that his audience should remember only what his political framework considers relevant. That is not history; it is ammunition.

The Paradox of the Pro-Modi Iconoclast

Ranganathan occupies a fascinating niche in indian public life. A JNU-trained scientist — yes, that JNU, the institution the right routinely caricatures — he brings genuine intellectual heft to television debates, where most participants bring only volume. His background as a published researcher in molecular biology, according to publicly available academic records, lends him a credibility that purely political commentators lack. He is Tamil-speaking, raised in a south indian milieu, and navigates the Hindi-belt media landscape with a fluency that few non-Hindi-first-language commentators manage.

Yet for all his iconoclasm, his political posture — in the assessment of this editorial desk, based on his extensive public commentary across television and social media — is remarkably consistent in its data-alignment with the ruling bjp dispensation. This is his right. But it complicates his posture as a dispassionate excavator of suppressed truth. Can you credibly demand that a nation stop forgetting inconvenient history while maintaining what appears, from his public record, to be a firmly sympathetic stance toward the ruling dispensation — a dispensation that, critics note, has its own robust machinery of forgetting?

What the BJP's Own Memory Project Erases

The Modi government's approach to history has been, by any fair reading, its own act of curation. The renaming of cities and roads, the rewriting of NCERT textbooks — which, according to multiple reports including from The indian Express, removed references to the gujarat riots, the babri masjid demolition, and Mughal contributions to architecture — the elevation of certain historical figures and the quiet demotion of others: these are not acts of remembering. They are acts of re-remembering, choosing a new set of things to foreground and a new set to suppress. When Ranganathan critiques the IHG-era consensus for teaching indians to forget, he is standing on a platform that is itself busily teaching indians to forget — just different things.

This is not whataboutism. It is the logical consequence of Ranganathan's own universalist framing. If 'teaching to forget' is the crime, the crime does not become a virtue when your side commits it.

The Real Problem: india Has No Honest history, Only Competing Mythologies

The deeper truth that Ranganathan's argument accidentally illuminates is that india does not have a shared historical memory problem. It has a shared historical memory impossibility. In a civilisation this old, this diverse, and this politically fractured, every act of remembering is necessarily an act of choosing — and therefore an act of forgetting something else. The Nehruvian project chose to forget medieval religious violence in the name of national cohesion. The Hindutva project chooses to forget caste atrocity and communal riots in the name of civilisational pride. Neither is honest. Both are politically useful.

What india actually needs — and what neither Ranganathan nor his ideological opponents seem willing to offer — is a historiography that is genuinely uncomfortable for everyone. One that holds Aurangzeb's temple destructions and the Peshwa-era caste tyranny in the same frame. One that mourns the Kashmiri Pandits and the Muslims killed in communal violence — as documented by courts and commissions of inquiry — without ranking grief. That project has no patron, because it serves no electoral purpose.

The Commentator and the Contradiction

None of this diminishes Ranganathan's intellectual seriousness or his right to provoke. In a media landscape dominated by screamers, he remains, according to viewer engagement metrics visible across YouTube and television ratings, one of the most-watched political commentators in India. His ability to marshal historical detail in real-time debate is formidable. The question is not whether he is smart enough to see the contradiction in his own argument. He almost certainly is. The question is whether acknowledging it would cost him the very audience that his selective remembering has built.

And that, perhaps, is the most telling historical injustice of all — the one committed in real time, by all sides, against the possibility of an honest national memory.

Key Takeaways

• Anand Ranganathan's claim that indians were 'taught to forget' historical injustices for 70+ years has legitimate roots in post-independence historiographic choices, according to News18.
• However, the argument practises its own selective amnesia — spotlighting medieval religious persecution while overlooking caste violence and court-documented communal atrocities, as multiple analysts have noted.
• The Modi government's NCERT textbook revisions, documented by The indian Express, constitute their own act of curated forgetting, undermining the moral authority of the 'remember what was erased' framework.
• India's core problem, analysts argue, is not that one side taught forgetting — it is that every political project treats memory as electoral ammunition rather than honest reckoning.
• Ranganathan remains one of India's most-watched commentators, per YouTube and tv engagement data, but his consistent data-alignment with the ruling dispensation — as assessed from his public commentary — complicates his posture as a dispassionate truth-excavator.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the background of anand Ranganathan?

anand Ranganathan is a molecular biologist and author who was trained at JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University), according to publicly available academic records. He has become one of India's most prominent right-leaning political commentators, appearing frequently on news television and social media.

Is Dr. anand Ranganathan Tamil?

According to his public appearances and media profiles, Ranganathan has tamil roots and has been seen speaking tamil, though he is primarily known as a Hindi-belt media commentator based in Delhi.

Is anand Ranganathan still in JNU?

While Ranganathan was associated with JNU's scientific research community, he is now primarily known as a public commentator, author, and media personality rather than an active JNU faculty member, according to available media profiles.

What did anand Ranganathan say about 70 years of historical injustice?

According to News18, Ranganathan argued that for more than 70 years — essentially the entire post-independence period — indians were systematically taught to forget historical injustices, particularly relating to religious persecution and temple destructions during medieval rule.