The two Chennai-based members in the newly constituted Indian Council of Historical Research on Monday expressed hope that they would be able to encourage research in local histories and move past ideological positions on Indian history.

“I am not interested in this debate between the Left and the Right,” said noted environmentalist and cultural historian Nanditha Krishna. “I think the Council should focus purely on bringing out more publications and encouraging more archaeological work,” she said.

The second member from the city who will be part of the Council, M.D.Srinivas of the Centre for Policy Studies, acknowledged that history had become a matter of contention. “The kind of history we are working with is sometimes negative about India’s past for the sake of being negative.”

Critiquing recent NCERT history textbooks, which attempt to “vitiate the minds of students”, Mr.Srinivas claimed they seem to be almost always written as if in reaction to some imagined person who is glorifying the past.

Though the Centre for Policy Studies has noted RSS ideologues, S.Gurumurthy and K.N.Govindacharya, as its trustees and concerns have been expressed in some quarters about the affiliations of several other new members of the ICHR, Mr.Srinivas said glorifying the past is not on the agenda.

“The issue is not one of glorifying the past or criticising the past. Both are absolutely meaningless. The issue is to understand the past,” he said.

Mr.Srinivas said he hoped to encourage scholarship among students that was less ideological, more objective and more empathetic of the society they are studying.