In recent decades, periodic revisions of Indian school History textbooks have become increasingly tenuous and worrying. From invention of fictitious narratives to erasure or inappropriate abridgement of important periods in history, revisions have assumed several questionable forms. New textbooks tend to present pieces of information that are sometimes contrary to facts, besides contradicting their own statements in some instances. Larger purpose of textbook revisions is to present a communally informed account of India's past that conceives of history as a story of antagonistic groups forced to share a geopolitical territory.
History is the discipline that tells us how we reached the present and what it meant to live in times when human lives were organised differently. Human lives were transformed by deep-seated processes involving introduction and increased use of metals, tools and weapons, fire, agriculture, livestock farming, wheel, alphabets and numbers, money, monumental architecture and more. Ideas, ranging from god, value, valour and hierarchy to justice, equality, democracy and peace have shaped human lives in profound ways. A lesson in History involves a nuanced understanding of this journey.
Do new History textbooks in our schools live up to this mandate? No, they do not. NCERT's new Social Science textbook for Grade IX, Understanding Society: India and Beyond - Part 2, is latest in a series of contestable textbook revisions. Released last Tuesday, book putatively aims to equip students with skills that are needed to grow... and to enhance their analytical, descriptive, and narrative capabilities. As it turns out, there is much to be desired in the book on these counts.
Consider the chapter, "India's Long Road to Independence", which is meant to be an account of a decisive phase in Indian history. Chapter turns out to be an assorted set of events presented chronologically. Little is said in it of historical processes that might encourage critical thinking. Colonialism and nationalism are not defined or discussed in conceptual terms, and processes such as growth of literature, development of capitalism and course of constitutional reforms are nowhere seen. There isn't a word on Ripon's local self-governance initiative or the Morley-Minto or the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms.
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Chapter begins with a "big question": "How did a land of diverse geographies, languages and religions come together to challenge and finally end nearly two centuries of British rule?" This is precisely kind of question that encourages critical thinking, but chapter ends without touching upon any of issues that "big question" flags.
Another chapter, "Cultural Currents: 13th to 17th Centuries," puts off a conscientious reader with its embarrassing "big question": "How did Indian culture endure and continue to grow richer during this period despite invasions and an unstable political context?" Chapter states that religious differences between Islamic invaders and local population were so striking that there wasn't really a meeting ground in sight for a time. The power of the Bhakti tradition, along with Sufism, allegedly helped India overcome this crisis. Chapter posits that monotheistic Islam and religion with several schools of thought were marked by a stark difference. A few pages later, it argues that Islam's idea of oneness of god was already present in the Upanishads. One is left wondering what stark difference was all about!
This chapter holds that Islamic invasions led to the imprisonment of women and their sale as slaves. As natural consequence, women began to make their public appearances less frequent. Use of purdah, ghunghat and other forms of veiling are presented in chapter as an attempt to protect women from invaders. The 10th-century traveller Abu Zayd's words are cited as evidence to effect that Indian women wore no veil befor advent of Islam. It is, then, mighty uncertain what Rama was referring to in the Pratima, a play attributed to Bhasa, when he told Sita, "apaniyataam avagunthanaam", "remove your veil". And what was Sudraka speaking of in Mricchakatika when he said that Sarvilaka covered Vasantasena with a veil - vasanatasenam avagunthya - after she relinquished her life as a courtesan? These aren't only factual inaccuracies in book.
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There are several more. But challenge that such textbooks pose is not with deliberate misrepresentation of facts or contradictory information. A learned class teacher can address these inadequacies in classroom effortlessly. Real issue lies in shifting emphasis increasingly to lionised accounts of certain periods in history and presenting past as set of acts by a variety of actors engaged in religious antagonism. Interrogative character of historical studies is less frequently seen in these textbooks. Students are told of thousands of soldiers marching, but not how soldiers were fed or from where they sourced their weapons. Students are told of high-quality steel produced in ancient India but not how furnaces worked. Students are told of fire sacrifices by Vedic people, but not told what it took to produce and maintain fire in an age when lighters and matchsticks did not exist. Students are given a checklist of great advances in astronomy but not told what an armillary sphere is and how it worked. Students are told that Bankim Chandra wrote Anandamath but not told how schools of day equipped children to be literate enough to read Bankim. The schools that made Indians literate in past 200 years have contributed in no small measure to making of India as we have known it in our lifetime. This important lesson from past should inform every line that a textbook committee decides to include in a book meant for our schoolchildren.
Tags: #NCERT #HistoryTextbook #ManuDevadevan #Education #Historiography #GradelX #IndianHistory #Curriculum #CriticalThinking