21

Jun

“Revise By All Means But Please Don’t Rewrite History”

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Prof Shivaji Sarkar

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New Delhi, 21 June 2024

History can neither be deleted nor rewritten but in the light of new facts, it can be revised with the additional evidence to enrich it. The call for rewriting as per a notion or political belief is doing injustice.

Changing history is inappropriate. Everyone has the right to know the past.

The autonomous National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT) has entered into an unnecessary debate about deleting history.

The process of historical revision is a necessity and usually uncontroversial process that develops and refines the historical record. The NCERT unfortunately is not revising history but deleting that involves a reversal of the basic concept of history writing. The Piltdown Man has been the worst fraud of faking a Stone Age skull. It is still part of world history to apprise how to deal with falsities.

Article at a Glance

 

The National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT) has sparked controversy by deleting historical events from textbooks, including the Babri Masjid demolition and subsequent communal violence.

This move has been criticized for sanitizing history and denying children the right to know the past. Historical revision is a necessary process, but deleting events is inappropriate and does an injustice to the concept of history writing. The NCERT's decision to remove certain chapters on the Mughal Empire has also attracted criticism.

History should be presented as it happened, without tampering or omission. Education should not be subject to political or social biases. The NCERT must correct its books by adding clarity and context to historical events, rather than deleting them. This will ensure that future generations learn from the past and avoid repeating mistakes.

The NCERT has given a new twist to the historical description. It has removed the name of the Babri Masjid structure that was at the Ramajanmabhumi site in Ayodhya from the new NCERT Political Science textbook. Also, the name of Ram does not find a place in the chapter.

In the new NCERT textbook the following changes were made:

- Babri Masjid has not been called Babri Masjid but is described as a three-domed structure.

- Apart from this, information about Babri Masjid, Kar Seva, Rath Yatra, and the violence that took place after the structure demolition has been removed from the book.

- The chapter named Ayodhya Dispute in the earlier book has also been renamed as Ayodhya Subject instead of Dispute.

- Earlier the Ayodhya dispute topic was spread over 4 pages.

- It has now been shortened to only 2 pages.

- It even deletes the name of Lord Ram.

Why was the topic of the Babri Masjid demolition or the communal violence that took place after it was removed, NCERT director Dinesh Prasad Saklani says that children should not be taught about riots. The NCERT director believes that if children are taught things like violence and conflict, they could become violent.

This has led to a nationwide discussion on the role of the NCERT. The apex body must know that education is not the subject of any political domain. The scholars decide the syllabus and even the director cannot decide without the approval of subject experts.

It’s a wonder that the chapter is so sanitized about an event that changed the political and social structure of the country.

Historical events should be presented the way they happened. All the incidents like Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s movement since 1984, which included shankhadwani, sanyas, demolition of the structure on Dec 6, 1992, subsequent Mumbai blasts and riots, the Palampur resolution of the BJP that laid the political movement for the temple, Ekta Yatra of Murli Manohar Joshi, LK Advani’s rath yatra from Somnath and Rajnath Singh’s from Bhubaneshwar and related events have been removed as if nothing has happened.

The movement is a story of conflict, negotiations, and peaceful solutions between Hindus and Muslims through the courts of law.

Saklani says that he does not want incidents like riots to be mentioned in books and its negative impact should be directly felt on the children of the country. If that’s so every war is an act of violence. Should the country desist from mentioning Emperor Ashok’s war of Kalinga or the three Panipat wars that changed the course of the country? Because war is violence and by that logic, the mention of history should be removed from the textbook. If we look at all the wars, be it the World Wars the Quit India Movement, or the Direct Action of the Muslim League that led to the formation of a Muslim Pakistan are violent events.

The NCERT had announced its decision to erase certain chapters on the Mughal Empire from class 12 history textbooks too. This move of erasing Mughal history from the syllabus also attracted severe criticism from various factions of the political arena.

History is taught for one reason that the adage, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” justifies. The country should not commit the mistake of playing with events as per whims - political, social, or religious. West Bengal has omitted the ruthless Maratha Bargi loot 200 years back from their textbooks. Not even adults today remember what kind of devastation it caused to the regions of Bengal, Jharkhand, and Odisha.  That increases ignorance. In the words of Lord Krishna it's “smritibhrasta that leads to buddhas” (from memory lost to injudicious decisions).

No one has any right to tamper with history. The history has to be told the way as facts unfold in the news. Many irregularities are being seen in the new education policy that was recently introduced. Under the new education policy, graduation has been made a four-year course and a total loss of three years. It needs rectification.

Social media is replete with accusations against Congress and the Left for having changed history. They are not aware of RC Majumdar, HC Raychaudhury, Jadunath Sarkar, Radha Kumud Mukherjee, DD Kosambi, Ishwari Prasad, HD Sankalia, VS Wakankar, and several others, who had no political affiliation. Irfan Habib is said to have left the association. But his concept of the People's History and the peasants’ history changed the way history is looked at. He added to the realities.

Perceptions can be different. But nobody has the authority to remove it. New dimensions to it can be added. India was ruled by the Mughals and the British, there were Mahatma Gandhi's Satyagrahas as also incidents like the Kakori case, Jallianwalla Bagh or and Chittagong armory raid or Bengal Partition in 1905 that led to the shifting of capital to Delhi from Calcutta. These are landmark events and need to be told to have pride in ancestors.

Similarly, there should be no compromise with any history teaching and must be told as the events happened. Changing history is chaotic. The NCERT must correct their books with additions and more clarity to the developing social situation.

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