Detoxification and other Policies Of The New Govt

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<b>Must read....</b>
<b>History in the making </b>

By Sanjay Basak

It can be described as a clash of ideologies. The Indian student appears to be trapped between two ideologies, that of the extreme Left and the ultra-Right. To an extent, the saffron rulers are of the opinion that “history is linked to patriotism.” But for the Left, “patriotism ruins history.” And the result of this disagreement: history is being written, and re-written, by the victors. Under the then Human Resources Development minister, Dr Murli Manohar Joshi, the students were taught about their “matribhoomi”, “how great Indian civilisation is” and all about “Hindu society”.

Then came Arjun Singh, who launched a crusade against what he described as “saffronisation of education” by the previous Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance regime. The saffron historians were weeded out and replaced with the reds. The National Council of Educational Research and Training, under former director J S Rajput, was already waging a battle with the Left historians, who claimed there was “not merely an attempt by the BJP-led NDA regime to communalise education, but that saffron history was replete with factual errors.”

The Human Resources Development minister swung into action to set up an advisory committee to rectify the “inaccuracies and distortion of facts in the history books” brought out by NCERT during Dr Joshi’s tenure. Rajput had, however, admitted to certain factual errors in the books and claimed these occurred mainly due to pressure brought on by court litigation. But he attacked the “tendency of some intellectuals and school authorities to seek the umbrella of political parties to give vent to their ideological leanings.”

While the Left historians ridiculed the “saffron” text books, which claimed there was evidence for the use of sindoor in terracotta figurines of ancient India, Rajput claimed there was “historical evidence, including terracotta figurines, pointing to the use of sindoor in ancient India.” He refuted the Left charge as “the ignorance of critics.”

The Marxists accused Dr Murli Manohar Joshi and a team of historians of trying to give a saffron tinge to Indian history and criticised so-called “facts” stating that the “Hindu civilisation is superior to all other civilisations (Page 2: Ancient India for Class XI)”. Rajput, while defending his books, accused the Left historians of “undermining the glory of the Indian heritage and civilisation”.

Witnessing his history being torn to shreds, Dr Joshi launched a “save education campaign”. Known as a saffron hawk even in the BJP camp, Dr Joshi blasted the Left historians. “These archaic historians need to brush up their history. Arjun Singh believes our nation should not be referred to as matribhoomi. This is most unfortunate and amounts to putting on British glasses for understating Indian history,” he retorted.

The HRD minister replied in a manner that could only be termed politically correct: “This is only an argument of people who are despaired of everything else. Everything I am doing is according to the Common Minimum Programme. I have had fairly exhaustive discussions with the Prime Minister and other senior colleagues.” For minister Arjun Singh, “detoxification is not a shot in the dark. Why should I try for something which is not available?”

Incidentally, Left historians and intellectuals who describe the existing history text books (NCERT publications) for Classes IX, X, XI and XII as “BJP books”, have come up with the “correct interpretation of history.” After going through the text books, out some “saffron distortions” have been highlighted and, as the Left historians claim, their “corrected versions”. The books in question are still being taught in schools affiliated to Central Board for Secondary Education.

Eminent historian Professor Arjun Dev said the books should have been replaced by the previous ones, which were authored by Romila Thapar, Bipan Chandra, R S Sharma and Satish Chandra.

CONTEMPORARY INDIA: HISTORY BOOK FOR CLASS IX
by Hari Om
The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi does not find a place in this text book published by NCERT. The government body explained, “Gandhi’s assassination is omitted due to space constraints.” J.S. Rajput, while admitting that Gandhi’s assassination should have been mentioned, said, “If there are errors and omissions, they will be corrected and upgraded.” He then clarified, “In any case, all details will be there in the Class XII book.”

<b>Apart from Gandhi’s assassination, even the Holocaust does not find mention. The author had said on record: “Why not write about those things that happened during Lenin and Stalin’s periods in the USSR? The truth is, I had to leave out a lot of things due to space constraints.”</b>

<b>Pg 3: Vasco da Gama, taking a round of the African continent, landed at Calicut...
Correct version: Vasco da Gama sailed round the Cape of Good Hope, and did not take a round of the African continent</b>.

<b>Pg 3: In 1765, the steam engine was invented in England.
Correct version: “The correct date is 1769, when James Watt patented his steam engine.”</b>

<b>Pg 6: Trade led to political conquest and political power was used to propagate Christianity... The English East India Company, in the name of religious neutrality, was giving maximum support and encouragement to Christianity.
Left Historians argue: “The idea that the major aim of colonialism in India was the spread of Christianity is in line with the anti-Christian bias of the book. The East India Company, in fact, had been wary of missionary activity in India, seeing it as a possible cause of popular unrest.”</b>

Pg 23: Tilak defended the Chapekar brothers stoutly in Kesari and invited the charge of sedition against themselves.
Left historians claim: “Hari Om here openly glorifies individual violent resistance to the British as against non-violent mass resistance. In the process, he presents a grossly misleading account. Tilak was not prosecuted for sedition because he defended the Chapekar brothers. He was prosecuted for writing articles before the murder of Rand, for which the Chapekar brothers were arrested. Secondly, Tilak strongly criticised their action as the horrible action of a fanatic.”

<b>Pg 23-24: Similarly in Bengal, the return of Swami Vivekananda and the foundation of the Ramakrishna Mission electrified the whole political situation.
Left historians argue: “The author seeks to link Hinduism, especially Vivekananda, to this strand of violent resistance or the cult of assassinations, which he calls the new spirit... It also overlooks the fact that the Ramakrishna Mission was and has been a non-political organisation</b>.”

Pg 26: ...<b>the Muslims had participated in the 1857 uprising in a big way. They had taken part in the anti-British struggle in order to regain lost ground and restore the Mughal Empire to its pristine glory</b>.
Left historians say: “Indeed! So, while the Hindu sepoy died for the freedom of the country, the Muslim sepoy fighting the British along with him died only for the sake of the Mughal Empire! Muslims, it is thus insinuated, could not have loved this country or fought for its freedom. What deadly venom is here sought to be transmitted to the young readers of the book.”

Pg 27: Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and the emergence of the Muslim League.
Left historians state: “By putting Sir Syed Ahmed Khan under the emergence of the Muslim League, Hari Om wishes to link him with the Muslim League, although he died some eight years before it was founded. He had nothing to do with its formation. Syed Ahmed Khan’s contributions to the spread of scientific education and his essentially modern thought are totally ignored in the account...”

ANCIENT INDIA FOR CLASS XI
by Makkhan Lal
Pg 3: Ashoka, in his Rock Edict IX, insisted on the following measures and practices to maintain harmony, peace and prosperity in society...
Left historians state: “These are not at all to be found in Ashokan edicts, including Rock Edict XII, which is essentially concerned with religious tolerance and removal of sectarian discord.”

<b>Pg 13: Karl Marx and F. Engels acknowledged their intellectual debt to F.W. Hegel...
Left historians say: “Marx and Engels acknowledged their debt to the elements of dialectics in Hegelian philosophy. Even so, they rejected Hegel’s idealism and his entire view of history.”</b>

<b>Pg 20: But with the excavations at Mohenjodaro, Kalibangan and Harappa, the antiquity of Indian civilisation has gone back to about 5,000 BC...”
Left argues: “....Nothing at the three sites can be possibly dated before circa 3,200 BC. If civilsation means presence of cities, no city in India can possibly be dated earlier than circa 2,600 BC.”[/B]

MEDIEVAL INDIA FOR CLASS XI
by Meenakshi Jain
Pg 26: ...Thus from the first Arab foray into the Sind to the Turkish conquest of Lahore, it took the invaders four hundred years to establish a foothold in the continent...”</b>
<b>Left historians argue: “The Arabs held Sind and southern Punjab from the early 7th century onwards and that was surely enough of a foothold. The Arabs and Ghaznavids are lumped together as invaders. The author might have still better gone back to Alexander, then she could have said that it took 1,300 years for the invaders to establish a foothold here!”</b>

Pg 30: Meanwhile another slave Bakhtiyar Khalji....
Correct version:<b> “Bakhtiyar Khalji was not a slave, but a free-born man of the Khalji tribe.”</b>

Pg 79: “The near-unanimous contemporary condemnation of the Sultan could perhaps be attributed to Muhammed Tughlaq’s open consultations with Hindus and jogis, which provoked chroniclers like Isami and Barani to denounce him as irreligious.”
<b>Left historians state: “Such statements tend to portray medieval writers as far more communally inclined than they actually were.[B] Barani, our major historian, never castigates the Sultan or holds him to be irreligious on the ground that he consulted with Hindus</b>. On the contrary, he criticised him for encouraging rationalism. Ibn Batuta, while he saw him consulting jogis, does not at all criticise him for this. It is only Isami who makes the consulting an issue...”

Pg 84:<b> He (Firuz Tughlaq) then blockaded an island near the sea coast, where nearly a hundred thousand inhabitants of Jajnagar (Orissa) had taken refuge and converted the island into a basin of blood by the massacre of unbelievers...
Left historians state: “There is no island off the Orissa coast that can possibly contain one lakh people, or even a tenth of the number.”</b>
Pg 85: “<b>The Mughals were actually Barlas Turks, not Mongols, though they also acknowledged their links with the latter...”</b>
Left historians state: “<b>The Barlas tribe was a genuine Mongol tribe and traced its descent from the legendary Mongol ancestry with whom the imperial line of Chengiz Khan also originated. Such Chengisied houses like Barlas and other Mongol clans took to the Turkic tongue and so became Turkicised, but continued to regard themselves as of Mongol origin</b>.”


MODERN INDIA: HISTORY TEXTBOOK FOR CLASS XII
by Satish Chandra Mittal

Pg 246: “...Subhash Chandra Bose met Veer Savarkar, who suggested to him to escape from the country, like his elder brother Rash Bihari Bose.”
The Left historians point out: <b>“Rash Bihari Bose was not Subhash Chandra Bose’s brother... the error is unpardonable.” </b>Subhash Chandra Bose, in the book Indian Struggle, talks about his meeting with Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Savarkar and stated that he was disappointed with both leaders.<b> There is no evidence of Savarkar advising Subhash Chandra Bose to leave the country</b>.

Pg 246: Subhash Chandra Bose formed a new group within the Congress, which came to be called the Forward Bloc. This invoked sharp reactions from the Gandhiites, leading to his resignation from the presidentship of the Congress...”
Left version: “Subhash Chandra Bose formed the Forward Bloc after he had resigned from the presidentship of the Congress.”

Pg 246: “...<b>On 13 March 1940 the former Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab, General Dyer, was shot dead in London by Sardar Udham Singh...”
Left version: “General Dyer had died in 1927 of cerebral hemorrhage. The Lieutenant-Governor who was shot dead was Michael O’Dwyer.”</b> <!--emo&:o--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ohmy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ohmy.gif' /><!--endemo-->

Pg 185: “...Savarkar engaged himself in the activities of the Hindu organisation...”
The Left historians argue: <b>“The organisations, including the Hindu Mahasabha, remain unnamed.</b> It is nowhere stated in the book that he was a leader of the Hindu Mahasabha and presided over its annual session in 1937, where he expounded his two-nation theory.” The Left historians also complain that “as is to be expected, there is quite a lot about Savarkar in the book, including his advice to Subhash Chandra Bose to escape from the country.”

<b>It was also pointed out by the Left historians that on pages 243, 244 and 245, the book dedicated a “whole page to the Communists’ opposition to the Quit India Movement, while it stated that Savarkar only directed his followers not to take part in the movement”. The Left historians also object to the description of the Hindu Mahasabha’s objective as the “revival of social and cultural consciousness among the Hindus</b>”.

CONTEMPORARY WORLD HISTORY: FOR CLASS XII
by Mohammed Anwar-Ul Haque, Himansu S. Patnaik and Pratyusa K. Mandal

The Left historians claim: <b>“This book adds a new dimension to NCERT’s new history. Some of it reads like old US-inspired Cold War propaganda of McCarthyite variety.”</b>

Pg 92: <b>Communism, like Fascism, was an equal contributor to World War II... The Nazi dictator (Hitler) remains the world’s most infamous war-monger. But there is a difference now. In the estimate of contemporary scholars, he has to share that infamy equally with Joseph Stalin</b>.

<b>Pg 144: ...In 1974, the Salazar dictatorship was overthrown...

Correct version: Salazar had died in 1970...
On Pg 172, two different dates are mentioned for the setting up of the Warsaw Pact — first in 1945, the second in 1955</b>Sunday Chronicle,
Deccan.
http://www.deccan.com/Sunday%20Chronicle%2...Description.asp