On History Textbooks Review

Nalini Taneja

ARJUN Singh, minister Human Resources Development, after a lot of noise about the need for “de-toxification”, has decided not to withdraw the history textbooks of the NCERT for the time being. He has merely set up a three-member Committee of well-known historians to do a “quick review”, with a brief to confine themselves to providing a list of recommendations to enable the texts to continue being in use for this year. To quote the minister, the “recommendations should be for removing distorted and communally biased portions and for inclusion of short passages which will fill in the gaps that some of these books are supposed to be having or could develop after the removal” of the objectionable passages (The Hindu, June 13, 2004). The historians who constitute this committee are the former chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research, S Settar, the former director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies at Simla, JS Grewal, and founder director of Maulana Azad Institute for Asian Studies, Barun De. This response of the minister falls far short of what the new government has incorporated in the Common Minimum Programme in its section on education. 

COMMUNAL VIEW OF HISTORY

The last six years have seen strong protests by academics and concerned citizens against the communalization of education, particularly the revision of history textbooks by the NCERT, in order to bring school education in line with the political agenda of the Sangh Parivar. History has been important in this agenda because as a discipline it not only gives children a view of their past but also incorporates a vision of the future. The Sangh Parivar saw the potential for using history to do their spadework for creating a consensus around the agenda of a Hindu Rashtra. A communal view of history ties up very well with what the RSS shakhas have been preaching for decades, and the history textbooks were revised by the NCERT during the BJP regime to introduce in a big way into the educational mainstream the communal political propaganda propagated daily by the RSS shakhas.

The BJP sponsored texts tell us that India is essentially a Hindu Rashtra, that its civilization has its roots in the Vedas, the Aryans are the oldest and the only original inhabitants of this country and that the present day Hindus are their descendents, while those belonging to other religious groups are outsiders. The date for the Vedic civilization is pushed back by thousands of years to show it is the oldest and the richest civilization in the world, which taught to all other civilizations of the world but needed to learn little from them because it was blessed with its own indigenous Vedic genius. The medieval period is shown as one unending era of Muslim conquests that saw little advance in cultural terms, important social reformers of the early and later modern period are given short shift, and freedom is seen as the effort of mainly Hindus. There are numerous negative references to Muslims and Christians, and women count for little in history.

Thus one can see that the problem of a communal historiography and its replacement by a secular history teaching cannot be a matter of adding some details or eliminating some passages. What is required is a total rejection of a viewpoint that is divisive, obscurantist and based more on fiction than on fact. The offending books should have been withdrawn immediately as a political act by the new government.

POSTPONING DECISIONS  

We are familiar by now with committees, which postpone decisions, and are meant to cool tempers without doing anything much, least of all offending those whose conduct or actions they have been constituted to inquire into. This review committee constituted by the new education minister serves just this purpose. The BJP must be quite relieved, and Murli Manohar Joshi can continue to boast of his effectiveness in the face of such dithering and ineffectualness.

While some may applaud such caution, many more people could as easily ask the minister: have these books not already been reviewed, and in fact dissected and written about in public fora by competent and well known historians and various academic bodies? The unambiguous and operative conclusions of all such exercises since these books came out are that these books are strongly and clearly violative of the spirit and letter of the Constitution, and should simply not be there. There are numerous authoritative reports and reviews that the minister could have drawn strength had he so desired and had the will to really “de-toxify”. As it happens he has not only initiated yet another review, but has actually sanctioned their continuance in the near future by asking for making them palatable by removing the most offending passages and errors.

Once this pleasing act has been done (to the satisfaction of the minister, if no one else) no doubt many would then justifiably ask as to why there should be a further need for scrapping them. One would then have to wait while futile efforts go into now revising these and precious time is wasted before this can happen—if it can happen at all, that is, in some near future. Most likely, if the communal books are not withdrawn immediately to take the opportunity of the popular mandate for secularism and the displeasure with its communal policies, it may not be easy at all later. After all what is seen as acceptable for the present and is sanctioned for the immediate future can as well acquire new legitimacy at the hands of the new regime if it does not act decisively enough today.

WITHDRAWAL OF HISTORY TEXTBOOKS

Indian History Congress (IHC), the premier organization of historians has been concerned from the very beginning when the BJP decided to change the curriculum framework in order to justify its inventions in history writing. At its Calicut session in 1999 it already expressed reservations in this regard. At the Kolkota session in 2001 it passed a detailed resolution questioning the way history was to be treated in the school curriculum, and the way “values” were being linked to “education in religion”. After the new books began to be published in 2002, the IHC at its session in Amritsar decided that the Executive Committee should arrange for a scrutiny of the textbooks, after which a Committee was formed (with Irfan Habib, Suvira Jaiswal, Aditya Mukherjee as members), which after obtaining the input from numerous other historians published a report.

This report has been looked at and approved by the Executive Committee, and has the sanction of its general body. It was published by the Indian History Congress in 2003, and apart from a short report it also contains an index of errors, which runs into 130 pages (just for the first four books published by the NCERT). According to the report, the errors are endless and could have resulted in almost an error for every page had the authors of the report not been constrained for reasons of space and size of the publication! The unambiguous conclusion of this report is that these textbooks are “beyond the realm of salvage, and they need to be withdrawn altogether”. Almost already anticipating the compromise of Arjun Singh’s response, the report clearly states: “With such parochialism and prejudice as the driving force behind these textbooks, it is clear that these cannot be converted into acceptable textbooks by mere removal of the linguistic and factual errors pointed out in our Index. In many cases the basic arguments in the textbooks are built on these very errors of fact, and so the errors cannot be removed without changing the main ideas behind the textbooks.”

DESAFFRONISATION OF EDUCATION IN CMC 

Numerous historians have individually written on these textbooks and on the implications of the RSS view of history, particularly its role in creating hatred against the minorities, the elimination of dalits from any role in history, and the prejudice and discriminatory attitude towards women inherent in this view of history--apart from the backward shift in historiography that these books represent. Several teachers and students organizations have consistently protested against them, as also many cultural organizations.  The Parliamentary Forum for Education formed during the BJP regime has raised several questions and voiced strong criticism in Parliament on this issue. Education ministers of fourteen non-BJP ruled states resolved at a convention organized by SAHMAT two years ago to not allow the implementation of the BJP’s Curriculum Framework or the NCERT textbooks in their states. Members of parliament across a broad spectrum of political parties have voiced concern at the communalization of education. The Left parties have consistently and strongly opposed the BJP on its education policy, and were instrumental in getting desaffronisation of education included in the Common Minimum Programme.

Does the new government require yet another review to tell them what they already know—that the books in question are against the values of the Constitution, contain much that is anti constitutional, and are simply bad because they present myths as facts and history? As pointed out by historians, ``communalism is not just another bias. But it is like racism or anti-Semitism. Removal of the communal bias is the civilisational and Constitutional imperative of the government.'' And that ``if the ministry takes a leisurely attitude to the textbook issue, then the books will continue to be used. This would be insulting to secular democracy and the mandate that has put the UPA in office.'' 

The minister has a lot to fall back on in terms of the reports and resolutions of various academic bodies and the commitments and positions adopted by the secular political leadership of this country. He would not only be acting in accordance with the popular mandate, but also in accordance with expert opinions and sanctioned due and proper process and procedure were he to withdraw the offending textbooks.

Nothing short of complete withdrawal of the books, stoppage of their distribution and sale, and their de-prescription by the new government in this very school session, along with allowing for the old NCERT books in the meantime, will resolve the political problem of the choice between a secular and a communal education.