History can be rewritten, distorted, but facts cannot be erased

Children are like clay who can be shaped, crafted; their young receptive, pure and imaginative minds garner and process knowledge without bias. These are the young minds which build the future India. School education builds the very foundation of knowledge, shapes the young mind to become a good human being and an aware citizen of the country.

Any biased, negative or agenda-driven impregnation of the young innocent minds of children, is detrimental to society and dangerous for the country. Unfortunately, since the past eleven years since the BJP –led NDA has been at power at the Centre, attempts at rewriting history to fit Hindu nationalist agenda, have come to the forefront.

The new editions of political science and history text books published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) drew controversy over the amendments, some of which were introduced quietly and without the usual public notifications.

School textbooks were edited to remove references to Mahatma Gandhi’s opposition to Hindu nationalism, Gandhi’s message of Hindu-Muslim unity as being the foundation of a strong secular India, a mention of a controversial religious riot in Gujarat, and removal of chapters on the history of the Mughals, the Muslim rulers who controlled much of India between the 16th and 19th centuries.

Aditya Mukherjee, a professor of contemporary Indian history at Jawaharlal Nehru University, said the removal of Mughal history from the textbook was an attempt to weaponize and erase history to suit the government’s political agenda. The NCERT chief, Dinesh Saklani, defended the move and said the changes should not be blown out of pro portion and all changes had been made by an ‘expert panel’.

A view strongly refuted by the Indian History Congress, which said the expert panel had only BJP RSS minded politicians, not unbiased subject experts or academicians. Obviously, the BJP has defended itself saying it was not rewriting history but instead rebalancing the biased approach of some historians.

Indeed, a distortion of facts has happened, because the school textbooks written for the NCERT by some of the tallest scholars in the country like Romila Thapar, RS Sharma, Satish Chandra and Bipan Chandra were removed, and in their places, books with a clear sectar ian, majoritarian bias were introduced in 2002.

The BJP in the present case, and any other political party which tries to doctor historical facts for suiting its own vested interests and agenda, do not realise that an open and inquisitive mind cannot be dictated or controlled for ever. Anyone who wants to know all sides of the story will go to any extent to research and gather that knowledge.

And once all the facts, without bias or prejudice, are present, a proper educated, academic and analytical mind will decipher the true meaning out of it and interpret it. Narrow agenda-driven politics in shaping knowledge and minds, is but a short-term game.