Nationalists, Hindu or just Early 20th century Historians

As a teacher I always face this dilemma of putting historians and their writings in an ideological straight jackets. For more committed to a certain ideology it may be simpler as all they have to do is to toe the party line. They may not feel that the historians of other schools are as bad they are portrayed but then the party line or own 20-30 years of research may be under threat. Accepting another view or another angle to view may negate the work of their lives. So they become Viking Warriors to protect Thier skin and turf. In most cases there is little substance. It may be plain stupid reductionism. The so called Nationalist or Hindu nationalist historians like Sir Jadunath Sarkar or historians of Allahabad school has been condemned as nationalists or Hindu nationalists by these ideological vikings who had to establish their brand of history writing. In the process they had to debunk the whole lot of historians.
These so called nationalist historians were the first scientific historians who made large scale use of original sources, wrote on various aspects of Indian history and gave us an updated history to be proud of. They certainly were inspired by the Congress and national movement for independence and genuinely believed in the greatness of Indian society, culture and people. And that included Indian rulers. they felt the need to paint a glorious picture of Indian past. They were right then as the urgent need was to create a nation in India which can look up to common ideals, glorious past and admirable heroes as the colonial rule had systematically destroyed all that was good in the country and had painted a very bad picture of Indian past. The official colonial historians, anthropologists and other academics had an agenda and that was to denounce Indian history, culture and traditions and underline the inevitability and superiority of the British rule in India.
To achieve that they started chronicling Indian history with intention to demoralise the Indians and they were hugely successful in that. Indians lost the sense of history and pride in themselves. They were constantly told about being native, uncouth, uncultured, despotic and at best exotic east full of Rajas and snake charmers. they were kept out of public spaces and were educated to become lowly clerks and helpers. The government was run by the British for their limited colonial interests. Historians like W.H.Moreland, Col. Tod, Grant Duff, Vincent Smith and lane Poole all had similar brief: to prove the goodness and inevitability of the British rule in India.
The English educated first generation Indian historians like Jadunath Sarkar, A.L.Srivastava, B.P.Saxena, R.P.Trpiathi etc. were too influenced by the national movement, Congress programmes and the personna of Gandhi to be untouched. But the research methodology of the colonist historians and the very handicap of using the colonial language forced them to model their writing on their British predecessors/contemporaries. Also the strict Imperial/colonial rules also would not have allowed them to chart an independent course. There was lots of censorship and state control over intellectual pursuits. Therefore the Indian historians had to write cautiously and yet they created heroes like Ashok, Akbar, Rana Pratap and Shivaji in who Indians could find inspiring leadership. They also gave a fairly scientific and reliable account of all periods of Indian history.
But the later generation of historian debunked them and very simply labelled them as Hindu nationalist historians. This was uncalled for and most unfortunate. The whole school and their valuable contribution was negated. It is true that living and working in independent India, the new bunch of Marxist historians had better access to sources and had exposure to Marxist tools of social historical analysis and hence could produce reliable history, but in their enthusiasm for their own works they did a disservice by debunking the early 20th century history writing. I would loathe to call it nationalist as if they are called so what do we call Marxist historians: anti national?
The best nomenclature for the so called nationalist historians would be early 20th century historians or Liberal historians. historians writing such histories in west have been called liberals and not been condemned. There are stages in the development and growth of any discipline. And as when the access to sources become better and linguistic sophistication influences the scholarly writing, a new school emerges. Like the way slowly but surely Marxist school of History writing in India is past its prime. The road is open for travel, only Marxist historians have run out of gas. History is repeating itself. And it must, in order to remain alive.