Author: Chandan Mitra
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: June 10, 2004
Sikandar ne Porus
Se kee thhi ladai
Jo kee thhi ladai
To main kya karoon?
I wonder how many in GenNow would
recall this humourous number that used to be a Vividh Bharati regular in
my student days. The song became popular because schoolchildren dreaded
history since the only apparent way to score in the paper was to commit
names and dates to memory.
I never learnt much about Alexander's
epic battle with Pururaj, the valiant Indian king till I read Dwijendra
Lal Roy's racy novel and later saw Sikandar-e-Azam, the film that showed
Porus going into battle on elephant back singing Jahan daal-daal par sone
ki chidiya karti hain basera/ Woh Bharat desh hai mera. The way history
was taught to us was, indeed, excruciatingly dry.
Nevertheless, I do not think, even
in hindsight, that our textbooks were biased or aimed at brainwashing us
into looking at India's past in a blinkered way. Probably, they were just
silly, about as silly as the disinterested teachers who dictated notes
to us from these. I remember every chapter had a summary of salient points.
The chapter on the evolution of
the Varna system, for instance, contained a summary headlined 'Merits and
demerits of the caste system', listing "purity of blood" among its positive
attributes. Fortunately, by the time we moved to Class IX, we got an extraordinary
history teacher in late Sudhir Kumar Bose who inculcated a sense of curiosity
in the subject, freely recommending out-of-syllabus books for reading.
For many of us in the humanities stream of the 1971 ISC batch from La Martinere,
Kolkata, (columnist Swapan Dasgupta being an eminent example), interest
in history was sustained, propelling the eventual acquisition of doctorates
in the subject.
I recall these personal anecdotes
only to underline my anguish at the latest attempt to rewrite history textbooks
and the tragic politicisation of the subject at the hands of Marxist apparatchiks
masquerading as scholars. In view of the flagrant abuse history is being
subjected to, I believe the time has come for every thinking person to
ask some fundamental questions about the way it should be taught.
The basic question is about the
very purpose of teaching history. As some of my colleagues often point
out, the only time most Indians learn any history is in school, pragmatically
assuming that 99.9 persons do not choose history as their subject in college.
In other words, their view of India's past is conditioned by what they
read in their formative years from say, six to 16. Even during this stage,
history is usually not the preferred subject and only one among the array
of disciplines they need to learn. That is why the teaching of history
in our schools must not only be authentic, but also adhere to a purpose.
That purpose cannot be to run down
the country's civilisation, selectively black out facts, delete whatever
is deemed "politically incorrect" and indoctrinate youngsters into believing
that everything good that happened to India was the contribution of foreign
invaders (pre-British) and all the bad was caused by indigenous forces
or white imperialists. (Sorry, at a time when a Left-sponsored Congress
leader of Caucasian origin is being extolled as goddess, I should be careful
of using the now-sensitive term "white" negatively, lest I be accused of
being racist and fascist).
The astonishing part of the proposed
rewriting of history by the Marxists is that interpretations change quite
merrily with their contemporary political proclivities. In our time, the
Congress was Enemy No 1; it was a bourgeois-landlord party that collaborated
with the imperialists to deny the people their true political rights. This
culminated, according to the Leftists, in a false freedom in 1947.
Promptly, therefore, the "toiling
masses" of India rose in revolt and an armed insurrection began in Telangana.
Gandhiji, we were told, was funded by the "comprador bourgeoisie" - collaborators
with British industrialists - who made profits by sucking the blood of
the Indian working class. That is why Gandhiji happily betrayed people's
struggles, be they the farmers of Bardoli or Pratapgarh, or workers of
Mumbai's textile mills.
With the rise of the BJP and the
growing challenge of "communalism", the focus has shifted to the need to
defend "secularism". Howlers are thus being perpetrated in history textbooks
so that impressionable students believe that all Muslim rulers were adorable
things viciously denigrated by trishul-wielding "RSS historians". I believe
the section on Nadir Shah's sack of (largely Muslim) Delhi has been whitewashed
in the SCERT textbook now prescribed for Delhi Government schools.
Meanwhile, Shivaji is dismissed
in a couple of paras, Sikh history is overlooked and both are clubbed as
inevitable revolts by people in outlying regions caused by a weakened,
post-Mughal Centre. An NCERT textbook altered by the NDA Government actually
contained derogatory references to Guru Tegh Bahadur which described him
as a bandit indulging in "rapine"!
The mindset of Marxist historiography
is besotted with demolishing popular faiths and beliefs. In their arrogance,
these historians assume that people know nothing; that all they believe
from legends and tales is erroneous; and they must be rescued from blind
faith and superstition. This zeal is comparable to that of the white missionaries
who came to India and Africa convinced they had to deliver the ignorant
inhabitants from the Dark Ages.
Take Romila Thapar's recent book
on the Somnath temple that I reviewed last February for India Today. The
entire exercise, albeit scholarly, was undertaken to exonerate Mahmud of
Ghazni of his criminal offence in ransacking the splendid shrine. She takes
pains to point out conflicting contemporary accounts to suggest nothing
so traumatic happened.
She quotes foreign sources to say
that Mahmud could have believed the temple contained the idol of the Arabic
pagan goddess Manat whose worship Prophet Mohammad had initially permitted
but later retracted claiming he was under Satan's influence while approving
this. Apparently, the reference to Manat is contained in the so-called
Satanic Verses later deleted from the Quran. She says it's also possible
that Mahmud thought the name Somnath was derived from the Arabic su-manat,
and thus connected to the pagan goddess.
I have no doubt that under the new
dispensation, this is the kind of history that shall be prescribed in schools.
Short of exhorting children to offer prayers to Mahmud of Ghazni, Mohammad
Ghauri, Nadir Shah and Aurangzeb, our new textbooks will do everything
to run down all indigenous achievements. Maharana Pratap, for example,
finds just a one-line reference in the SCERT book and Aryabhata none!
The unstated purpose behind this
savage attack on Indian history is not mere jobbery; it is a deliberate
attempt to berate India, its civilisation, religion and culture. It is
aimed at emaciating the people morally and psychologically so that instead
of taking pride in the country we become ashamed of its past. Once that
is accomplished, we shall no doubt be expected to quietly acquiesce in
many "nation-building" projects such as reconstruction of the Babri Masjid
in Ayodhya!
