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Hindu rewriting of history texts splits IndiaPublished: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2002
By Rama Lakshmi
NEW DELHI: One out of three people in India cannot read nor write. At least 100 million children are out of school. And 45 percent of those who join school drop out before finishing even five years of basic schooling.
And yet the shrillest education debate in this billion-plus nation today barely touches on any of these themes. Instead, it revolves around the rewriting of school history textbooks. In the past four years since the Hindu nationalist-led coalition government, headed by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, came to power, a systematic attempt has been made to change the curriculum of school history textbooks.
The Hindu nationalists want to build a Hindu nation out of what is officially a secular country with rights accorded to religious minorities. Education and the interpretation of history is central to their ideology.
The Hindu nationalists allege that much of Indian history has been written from a Euro-centric, colonial perspective and urgently needs to be "Indian-ized." But critics maintain that the changes are merely an attempt to legitimize a militant, theological agenda proposed by the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
"This is the battle against a colored and dangerous version of history which will place people of one faith against another and breed suspicion," said Satish Chandra, a historian whose history textbooks are among those being replaced now. "This kind of history will not hold the country together."
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For almost five decades since it won independence from British colonial rule, India has struggled to keep its fragile, quilt-like social fabric together by a cautious secular policy in every sphere, including education — a tightrope walk in this multi-religious democracy. But Hindu revivalists have long felt that the nation's secular creed had assumed a definite anti-Hindu slant.
Authors sympathetic to their cause were brought in to rewrite the history books. Some basic foundations of Indian history were questioned. In response to popular demand in some instances, changes also included deletions of negative references to some ethnic groups and religious leaders from history.
"It is not a question of revivalism," said J.S. Rajput, director of National Council of Educational Research and Training in New Delhi, the body spearheading the efforts to change the school curriculum. "Every country should write its history from its own point of view. Our history books have been written from a Euro-centric view because we were a colony for so long. History books should instill a sense of pride in the young mind and should be rooted in our culture."
But many historians charge that the task of history writing is not one of mythmaking and patriotic nation-building.
They accuse the new authors of trying to portray the 5,000-year-old Indus Valley civilization, which is said to predate the birth of Hinduism, along Hindu lines. The critics say that the Aryan race, hitherto referred to as herdsmen who arrived from near the Caspian Sea and gave birth to Hindu thought, are being portrayed as indigenous Indians. The textbooks, critics say, also undermine the medieval period, when Islam arrived in India. The Hindu nationalists consider India's 13 percent Muslim population as a suspect community and frequently take up the theme of "invasions by Muslim rulers" during the medieval era.
But one of the most glaring omissions is the assassination of Mohandas K. Gandhi, regarded as the father of the nation. The event is not mentioned at all in the new history books. Gandhi was assassinated a few months after independence in 1947 by a Hindu fanatic who believed that Gandhi's policies appeased the nation's Muslims. The gunman, it was later found out, had once belonged to a militaristic Hindu brotherhood that spawned the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
The new textbooks also neglect the oppressive structure of social hierarchy of the Indian caste system, sanctioned by Hindu theology, where every person was assigned a rigid role at birth.
Hindu right-wing groups attached to the Bharatiya Janata Party believe such changes are necessary because the old history textbooks did not adequately focus on India's strengths. "There is too much emphasis on the medieval period when we were repeatedly invaded," said Dina Nath Batra, head of Vidya Bharati, a Hindu group that runs 22,000 private schools imparting education with a "nationalistic" consciousness. "There is not enough in the history books that focus on our ancient Hindu civilization and its contribution to science, mathematics and astronomy," he said.
Secular activists and critics have called the moves "an assault on history.""They want to omit any uncomfortable references to Hindus and merely glorify Hindu culture in the name of Indian culture," said Arjun Dev, a noted school historian and an educationist. "This version of the past is crucial to their political and religious ideology of Hindu supremacy. They will go to any lengths to achieve this, even put forth a fake, invented past."
Hindu rewriting of history texts splits India - International Herald Tribune
Once again, Pakistanis have their equal.