12-05-2006, 11:30 PM
K.N.Panikkar*: recasting the past in india
Since coming to power three years ago, Indiaâs ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has actively sought to impose a new history curriculum. This attempt has nothing to do with new trends or methodology within the discipline. By restructuring educational institutions, rewriting curricula and textbooks, and making major personnel changes, the government is attempting to recast the past by giving it a strongly Hindu religious orientation.
The right-wing party now controls the Ministry of Human Resource Development (which includes Education) and the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) which produces most school texts. These, along with other public institutions like the Indian Council for Historical Research, are rapidly losing their academic freedom, as renowned historians are replaced by bureaucrats and academics willing to toe the political line.
The current rewriting of Indian history is part of a larger long-term political plan aimed at reordering the secular character that has informed the educational and cultural policies of the country since its independence. The BJP seeks to redefine the character of the nation as Hindu, and to lend legitimacy to the politics of cultural nationalism. To inculcate a sense of national pride, Indian history is seen through stereotypes rooted in religious identity. <b>No aspect of history has been spared, be it social tensions, political battles or cultural differences. The achievements of ancient Indian civilization are identified only with Hinduism and are grossly exaggerated.</b> The BJP would have us believe that humankind and all scientific discovery, from bronze-casting to printing and aeronautics, originated in northern India, the original home of the Aryans.
The period of the Rig Veda (a religious treatise) has been pushed back to 5000 B.C. against the general scholarly consensus of 1500 B.C. in order to associate the Aryans with the Indus Valley civilization which flourished in Harappa and Mohenjodaro, now in Pakistan.
These distortions are not limited to the past. The more recent history of the national movement has been altered to glorify leaders of staunch Hindu organizations, even if they were collaborators of colonial rule.
The Hindu view attempts to exclude all those who migrated to India and their descendants as foreigners or the enemy. In reality, Indiaâs demography reflects the coming together of a variety of groupsâracial, linguistic and ethnicâduring the course of the last two millennia and raises the question of who the âoutsiderâ really is.
Fortunately, there is a strong resistance from academics and historians against this trend. They are doing all they can to fight the gradual introduction of new textbooks and to uphold the countryâs long tradition of âscientificâ history.
Ed. note: The government has defended its recently introduced National Curricular Framework for School Education which suggests that textbooks be revised. Denying that âany religious biasâ had been introduced into history textbooks, the Human Resources Development minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, insisted that his government was âmerely following the changes recommended by the NCERT...We have prepared the frame in the most democratic manner,â he said.
* Former professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. One of several eminent historians whose two-volume treatise on Modern Indian history, âTowards Freedomâ, was summarily withdrawn by the Indian Council of Historical Research.
Since coming to power three years ago, Indiaâs ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has actively sought to impose a new history curriculum. This attempt has nothing to do with new trends or methodology within the discipline. By restructuring educational institutions, rewriting curricula and textbooks, and making major personnel changes, the government is attempting to recast the past by giving it a strongly Hindu religious orientation.
The right-wing party now controls the Ministry of Human Resource Development (which includes Education) and the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) which produces most school texts. These, along with other public institutions like the Indian Council for Historical Research, are rapidly losing their academic freedom, as renowned historians are replaced by bureaucrats and academics willing to toe the political line.
The current rewriting of Indian history is part of a larger long-term political plan aimed at reordering the secular character that has informed the educational and cultural policies of the country since its independence. The BJP seeks to redefine the character of the nation as Hindu, and to lend legitimacy to the politics of cultural nationalism. To inculcate a sense of national pride, Indian history is seen through stereotypes rooted in religious identity. <b>No aspect of history has been spared, be it social tensions, political battles or cultural differences. The achievements of ancient Indian civilization are identified only with Hinduism and are grossly exaggerated.</b> The BJP would have us believe that humankind and all scientific discovery, from bronze-casting to printing and aeronautics, originated in northern India, the original home of the Aryans.
The period of the Rig Veda (a religious treatise) has been pushed back to 5000 B.C. against the general scholarly consensus of 1500 B.C. in order to associate the Aryans with the Indus Valley civilization which flourished in Harappa and Mohenjodaro, now in Pakistan.
These distortions are not limited to the past. The more recent history of the national movement has been altered to glorify leaders of staunch Hindu organizations, even if they were collaborators of colonial rule.
The Hindu view attempts to exclude all those who migrated to India and their descendants as foreigners or the enemy. In reality, Indiaâs demography reflects the coming together of a variety of groupsâracial, linguistic and ethnicâduring the course of the last two millennia and raises the question of who the âoutsiderâ really is.
Fortunately, there is a strong resistance from academics and historians against this trend. They are doing all they can to fight the gradual introduction of new textbooks and to uphold the countryâs long tradition of âscientificâ history.
Ed. note: The government has defended its recently introduced National Curricular Framework for School Education which suggests that textbooks be revised. Denying that âany religious biasâ had been introduced into history textbooks, the Human Resources Development minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, insisted that his government was âmerely following the changes recommended by the NCERT...We have prepared the frame in the most democratic manner,â he said.
* Former professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. One of several eminent historians whose two-volume treatise on Modern Indian history, âTowards Freedomâ, was summarily withdrawn by the Indian Council of Historical Research.