Author: Hari Om
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: October 18, 2002
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/archive_full_story.php?content_id=11474
Introduction: As the author of one
of the new NCERT textbooks, I find the response to them petty
On October 1, NCERT released Contemporary
India, a social science textbook for Class IX among other new texts. This
has provoked a few left-oriented historians and activists to carry out
a relentless vilification campaign against the NCERT and those who have
authored the history portions of these condemned textbooks.
Professor Arjun Dev, who once was
NCERT's head of the Department of Education in Social Sciences and Humanities
is in the forefront of this campaign for obvious reasons. He and his associates
have been using all kinds of invectives while seeking to paint the NCERT
and its authors, including this writer, black. Incidentally, it is I who
wrote the history portion of Contemporary India.
That this propaganda blitz against
the NCERT would be unleashed against us was well-known. It was expected
that they would scrutinise our books, meticulously catalogue all the 'blunders'
and then go public with them in a big way. In fact, I know for a fact that
nearly 50 persons, including Professors Arjun Dev, K.M. Shrimali, D.N.
Jha and CPI-M MP, Nilopat Basu, did assemble on October 4 under the banner
of Sahmat at VP House in Delhi to do the necessary homework before launching
what they call their academic attack on the unacademic, politically-motivated
NCERT and its 'incompetent' history authors. They also took the substantial
step of sharing their anger with the media.
And they have succeeded in their
gameplan as far as media coverage goes. How else would one interpret the
decision of such a prestigious and ever-watchful national daily as the
Indian Express sparing two of its invaluable pages for the controversy
(Sunday Express, Oct 6)? What has provoked Prof Arjun Dev and his associates
to denounce the history portion of Contemporary India and castigate me?
Just one factual error, one wrong
picture, five interpretations and two commissions. This is what their laboriously
prepared three-page note on the 'New Social Science Textbooks of NCERT'
suggests.
I would have welcomed their criticism
had it also held some positive suggestions. Such an approach would have
helped me enrich my knowledge and greatly served the cause of students,
for whom the textbooks were meant. I am one of those students of history
who is always open to debate and who believes in the doctrine that 'facts
are sacrosanct and that the facts without interpretation are no history'.
At the same time, I have always
held the view that it is the right of a historian to interpret the facts
in the way he deems fit and that no view is final - with the rider that
facts have to be interpreted objectively.
This is not to mean that I should
be condoned for the two glaring mistakes I have committed - one, with regard
to the exact location of Madagascar and the other with regard to the photograph
of Vasudeo Balwant Phadke, the Maharashtra revolutionary.
I must point out that I myself had
detected the first mistake and had urged that it be rectified before the
textbook was published. It is heartening to note that NCERT has taken cognisance
of these mistakes and taken remedial measures.
As for the two omissions, I can
only say that it was neither possible nor desirable to include each and
every happening that took place during the period I had to cover within
64-odd pages. To say that I have deliberately suppressed facts would be
nothing but an act of unwarranted criticism.
