Author: Jaideep Mazumdar
Publication: The Hindustan Times
Date: May 2, 2002
Even while crying themselves hoarse
over the Sangh parivar's efforts to saffronise history, the Marxists in
West Bengal have launched a fresh move to explain recent developments around
the world from their own perspective.
The education czars of West Bengal
have started the process of revising history and social science textbooks.
According to sources in the school education department, the disintegration
of the Soviet Union and overthrow of repressive Communist regimes in eastern
European countries since the mid-eighties would be interpreted from a purely
"people's [read Marxist] point of view". At present, such developments
find little or no mention in the history books at the secondary and higher-secondary
levels.
The revision process has been sparked
off, ostensibly, by the realisation that in this age of satellite television
and communication revolution, it is no longer possible to exercise thought
control.
"Schoolchildren are not getting
to know much about the Soviet Union's break-up from their textbooks, but
they gather totally wrong notions of this from other media. This is because
imperialist forces of the West control the media. The media will never
put such developments in the correct perspective. Hence, it is imperative
for us to explain recent developments properly in the history books," said
a CPI (M) leader who's behind the move to revise history textbooks.
What, according to the Marxists,
is the "correct perspective"?
Take, for example, the break-up
of the Soviet Union. The Marxists will have the students believe that it
was an elaborate game plan of the US and the NATO that led to it. Gorbachev
acted at the behest of the US while allowing constituent states of that
country to break away. The people of Russia and all the states that made
up that "great country" have been suffering ever since. But communism,
they would tell the children, is staging a comeback in Russia and all the
other former Warsaw Pact nations.
Schoolchildren would learn that
the Soviets went into Afghanistan at the invitation of the Afghan people
to establish "people's rule" there. But criminal gangs were propped up
by the Western nations, primarily the US, to thwart this and the Soviet
troops left Afghanistan since they did not want more bloodshed there.
The downslide into ethnic strife
and the eventual destruction of the country happened after the withdrawal.
The US and the West is only reaping what it has sowed (reference to Osama
and September 11).
