Hindu right rewriting Indian textbooks

[Sahasranama]

Here is a picture of a similar "Viman" found on a panel in Mohenjadaro.

It depicts a Sail Boat, one that "rode the wind" along with paddle.

 

[cloud_9]

Knock! Knock.
Who's there?
Internet!

 

[cloud_9]

The whole article talks about Gujarat and somehow the title is Indian textbooks.

 

[Sugarcane]

Actually someone else invented a "donkey plane".It is true and proven,that is why there are hundreds who are willing to die for this invention,literally

what is this?

 

[SarthakGanguly]

Hence, they have been introduced as "supplementary reading" for the students. These books are stored in the libraries and are made available to students any time they want.

What an unprecedented piece of crap from Al Jazeera. No surprises there.
A guy wrote books, and the books are in the library. This is NOT in the syllabus.

Anyone with some basic knowledge about the Indian education system will know that curriculla is decided by the Boards and not by the Sangh Parivaar. D. N. Batra's books ARE NOT in the curriculla. Even Zakir Naik's books are in many libraries. Wonder what al Jazeera has to say about that.

 

[Levina]

Books by Hindu nationalists merging myth with reality proliferate in PM Modi's home state of Gujarat.

Ahmedabad, Gujarat - You cannot blame Bhavana Vaja, 12, for telling you that the first aeroplane was invented during the mythical Dvapara Yuga, when the Hindu God Ram flew from Sri Lanka to Ayodhya in India with his wife Sita and brother Laxman in a Pushpaka Vimana - a swan-shaped chariot of flowers.

By claiming that they familiarise students with India's ancient heritage, some books printed by the education department of western Gujarat state teach children that aeroplanes existed in India since Lord Ram's era. And that is just a sample of how religious content is included in science, history, environment, and mathematics books.

"Every week we are asked to do projects in our science and social studies classes. We refer to these books then," says Saras Solanki, age 9.

The Gujarat government has introduced nine new books this academic year for classes 1 to 12. These books, written by Hindu nationalist ideologues, have been delivered to 42,000 elementary schools across the state free of cost.

Eight out of the nine books have been penned by Dina Nath Batra, founder of the Hindu nationalist organisation, Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti. Batra was responsible for forcing Pengiun India Publishers towithdraw all copies of Wendy Doniger's book The Hindus in February this year.

Enthused by its success, Batra went on to force two other publishers - Aleph and Orient Blackswan - to withdraw books that he deemed "hurtful to Hindu religious sentiments".

'Supplementary reading'

Taking a leaf from Batra's book, India's prime minister and former chief minister of Gujarat state, Narendra Modi, last week said that genetic science existed in ancient India.

In fact, Modi wrote a foreword in Batra's books saying his "inspirational literature will inspire students and teachers".

Education in India is the responsibility of both the state governments and the federal government. A state textbook board formulates curriculum based on the guidelines specified by the National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT). However, these nine books deviate vastly from those guidelines by relying heavily on religious subjects and mythology.

Hence, they have been introduced as "supplementary reading" for the students. These books are stored in the libraries and are made available to students any time they want. Use of these books for extracurricular projects and presentations are encouraged.

"I find that children want to show off their knowledge. More often than not, they are averse to textbooks. Though, they are happy to sit in the library and leaf through other books so their presentation can be better than others in the class," said Jayashree Ben Solanki, a 6th grade teacher at a municipality school in Ahmedabad, the capital city of Gujarat state. "Therefore, these books end up being read more widely than textbooks."

"Gujarat is an experimental ground," said Gaurang Jani, a professor of sociology at Gujarat University. "The BJP and the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] will test their methods in the state and if found successful, will replicate it throughout the country," he told Al Jazeera.

"The move to infuse right-wing ideology in mainstream curriculum has been started by printing books with a religious bias using taxpayers' money. If the books are received without major opposition in Gujarat, they will introduce such books at the national level as well," Jani said.

'Saffronisation'

There is already some talk of changing the school and college curriculum at the national level.

In Indian political context, "saffronisation" is used to refer to the policies of right-wing Hindu nationalist organisations, which, according to critics, are divisive. The term refers to the saffron-coloured robes worn by Hindu sages.

Barely four days after India's new right-wing government was sworn in this May, Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani, a former TV actress, issued her first statement saying the Vedas, the Upanishads and otherancient Hindu texts should be introduced in the classrooms.

Consequently, in July, a consultative body called The Bharatiya Shiksha Neeti Ayog (Indian Education Policy Commission) was constituted by the Hindu nationalist organisation, RSS and is mandated "to study the present education system and suggest corrective steps to make it Bharat-centric." Bharat is the Hindi word for India.

"The problem is that they are equating India to Hindus. What about the India that houses the Muslims, Christians, Jains, Sikhs and other religions? India's defining character is its diversity - including religious. That will be subtly and efficiently destroyed by introducing religious content in school books," said Sveta Joshi, a former professor at Delhi University who has done extensive work on the 2002 religious riots in Gujarat.

One of the nine books in question urges students to visit Hindu pilgrim places like Jagannath, Badrinath and Rameshwaram to "cleanse themselves".

"Students who are slightly older do question the lack of any Muslim or Christian places of worship," Solanki, the elementary school teacher, said.

"Four of the nine books are titled Prerna Deep, they are meant to have short biographies of 'inspiring Indians'." Dalit, Jain, Sikh, and Buddhist heroes are mentioned prominently. The mention of Muslim and Christian heroes is almost negligible though," said Jani of Gujarat University.

Questioning perspectives

Since 1952, when it founded the first Saraswati Shishu Mandir (nursery school) in Gorakhpur in northern Uttar Pradesh state, the RSS, the ruling party BJP's mother organisation, has always had schools that propagate its ideology. In subsequent years, the RSS founded Vidya Bharati, an umbrella body for thousands of educational institutions based on Hindu values, from the nursery to the post-graduate levels.

"Until now, the Hindu system of education was running parallel to the regular NCERT curriculum, which was formed collectively by eminent scholars from all walks of life. But now, the danger is that they want to merge the two," said Jani. "The Sangh ideology is slowly becoming the state ideology," he adds.

"If children are taught from a young age about Hindu supremacy and glory, they will not question it at a later stage in their life," said Lila Visariya, a scholar at the Gujarat Institute of Development Research, at a conference organised in Ahmedabad last month.

Achyut Yagnik, founder of the Centre for Social Knowledge and Action, said that the "saffronisation of education" began in Gujarat slowly and subtly since the BJP established power in the late 1990s.

A report by NCERT states: "While communal perspectives have been present in textbooks in earlier periods too, studies done of textbooks rewritten from this perspective, for example in Gujarat, highlight their ready potential to contribute to a culture of divisiveness between religious communities …"

Gujarat was witness to gory religious riots in 2002, which killed about 1,000 people, mostly Muslims. Religious faultlines in the state, however, go back several centuries.

Last year, the Committee for Resisting Saffronisation of Textbooks protested against the textbooks in another Indian state, Karnataka, which, they said, strengthened stereotypes of Muslims and Christians and subdued the voices of women, Dalits and non-Vedic traditions. The textbooks remain unchanged.

"If anyone has problems with any of the books, I urge them to go to court," said Harshad Patel, the media coordinator for Gujarat BJP. "Let them do what Dinanathji did. Get the court to pass orders to withdraw the books," he told Al Jazeera.

Source:-
Hindu right rewriting Indian textbooks - Features - Al Jazeera English


So it has begun........


@Oscar

I'm not getting a good feeling about it.
I agree we were not taught some truths of pasts like Tipu Sultan slaughtering hindus and forcing them to convert.Instead we were taught to look upon him as a hero. He is a hero in his own right but its very human to err.He did have a darker side.
I hope the books released would give an unbiased opinion about the past.And that the next generation will not be mislead.
I do doubt that ppl 're merely jumping into conclusion that there's gonna be a saffronising of our history because such a revision is being done under BJP's rule.

A more likely Pushpak Viman which will be owned by the King of SL.

Ramayan says Ravan took the vessel from his brother "kuber" the richest man (Trader) in India.

View attachment 145537

Viman would mean something that flies. IMO

Nothing wrong in learning our culture and tradition thing rather than bullshit story of Shahajahan...who built Tajamahal for his wife...Such a low life king who wasted public money for his wife's memory...

Thats exactly what Aurangzeb thought about his father.
But its a boon in disguise..today Tajmahal is the symbol of India..recognized world over.

 

[notsuperstitious]

What an unprecedented piece of crap from Al Jazeera. No surprises there.
A guy wrote books, and the books are in the library. This is NOT in the syllabus.

Anyone with some basic knowledge about the Indian education system will know that curriculla is decided by the Boards and not by the Sangh Parivaar. D. N. Batra's books ARE NOT in the curriculla. Even Zakir Naik's books are in many libraries. Wonder what al Jazeera has to say about that.

Thank you for the clarification. The inability of some people across the border to comprehend this part should serve as a warning to us of why mixing mythology with history should not be done. It affects objectivity.

 

[Sahasranama]

Viman would mean something that flies. IMO

Viman means "VEHICLE". Even a chariot is a "Viman". Viman can also mean 'ship', like air ship, sea ship etc.

 

[INDIC]

What an unprecedented piece of crap from Al Jazeera. No surprises there.
A guy wrote books, and the books are in the library. This is NOT in the syllabus.

Anyone with some basic knowledge about the Indian education system will know that curriculla is decided by the Boards and not by the Sangh Parivaar. D. N. Batra's books ARE NOT in the curriculla. Even Zakir Naik's books are in many libraries. Wonder what al Jazeera has to say about that.

BJP is going to clean the history book like Aryan invasion theory. So, expect lots of such articles coming. But this is no more 1990-2000,Indian people these days are more acquainted with both sides of the history due to internet.

A guy wrote books, and the books are in the library. This is NOT in the syllabus.

Mythologies and folklore are also the part of culture, if you don't teach those thing your kids means you are keeping them away from their culture. Guess, why so many Europeans take extreme pride in their Greeco-Roman and Pagan folklore and mythology.

 

[Levina]

Viman means "VEHICLE". Even a chariot is a "Viman". Viman can also mean 'ship', like air ship, sea ship etc.

Agreed but ramayana describes it as a flying object and thats how jatayu meets his fate.

 

[Brahma Bull]

Its "Burraq" ...

what is this?

 

[Sahasranama]

Agreed but ramayana describes it as a flying object and thats how jatayu meets his fate.

Ramayana is the oldest epic and it has undergone alternations with every story telling and with its 10,000 revisions over 2,000-3,000 years.

Vanavasi / Van-ara can become vanar.

 

[SarthakGanguly]

BJP is going to clean the history book like Aryan invasion theory. So, expect lots of such articles coming. But this is no more 1990-2000,Indian people these days are more acquainted with both sides of the history due to internet.

Correction: BJP is NOT doing any revision. BJP is a political party. History is a living organism, or rather should be. It is natural that old and false theories will give way to new ones. Also just like the left, the right wing also has a full right to tell their story from their PoV. But the syllabus is not decided by a political party but by the NCERT for example. And there is no indication that it will be able to push an unilateral bias easily. Al Jazeera is just playing to the gallery. All I see in the OP's post is no substance and only boasting.

Perhaps a belated attempt to see some equivalence in India wrt Pakistan's Education System. It's like - 'we have done damage to ourselves and see, you are doing it too...you are no better' - kinda fun.

 

[INDIC]

Correction: BJP is NOT doing any revision. BJP is a political party. History is a living organism, or rather should be. It is natural that old and false theories will give way to new ones. Also just like the left, the right wing also has a full right to tell their story from their PoV. But the syllabus is not decided by a political party but by the NCERT for example. And there is no indication that it will be able to push an unilateral bias easily. Al Jazeera is just playing to the gallery. All I see in the OP's post is no substance and only boasting.

Perhaps a belated attempt to see some equivalence in India wrt Pakistan's Education System. It's like - 'we have done damage to ourselves and see, you are doing it too...you are no better' - kinda fun.

Yes, I meant the same thing. Hope they also remove the glorification of the communism. We had National Geographic channel, thus we know the reality of communism in many European and Asian countries.

 

[WAR-rior]

What an unprecedented piece of crap from Al Jazeera. No surprises there.
A guy wrote books, and the books are in the library. This is NOT in the syllabus.

Anyone with some basic knowledge about the Indian education system will know that curriculla is decided by the Boards and not by the Sangh Parivaar. D. N. Batra's books ARE NOT in the curriculla. Even Zakir Naik's books are in many libraries. Wonder what al Jazeera has to say about that.

U r complaining as if our dear Analysts of PDF really have a strong sense of logic. Their desperate attempt since 7-8 decades to show India is relegiously bigoted so as to satisfy their rejected ideology. I still dont understand how can some ppl misrepresent freedom of speech as jingoism. Its freedom n democracy that we have all kind of ideology in LIBRARIES n not OFFICIAL SYLLABUS. Poor Guyz.