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V
Here is an example of the
outright attempt to rewrite history by the Hindut nationalist as
exposed by Prof. K.N. Paniker.
Recasting the Past in India
K.N.Panikkar
Former professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
One of several eminent historians whose two-volume treatise on Modern
Indian history,
“Towards Freedom”,
was summarily withdrawn by the Indian Council of Historical Research
Since coming to power three years ago, India’s 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. 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. 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, India’s demography reflects
the coming together of a variety of groups–racial, linguistic and
ethnic–during the course of the last two millennia and raises the
question of who the “outsider” 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 country’s
long tradition of “scientific” history.
Note: The government has defended its recently introduced National
Curricular Framework for School Education which suggests that
textbooks be revised. Denying that “any religious bias” had been
introduced into history textbooks, the Human Resources Development
minister,
Murli
Manohar
Joshi, insisted that his government was “merely following the changes
recommended by the NCERT
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