5 WRITING HISTORY TEXTBOOKS: A MEMOIR
I wrote two textbooks on Indian history for Middle School, one on Ancient Indian History for Class VI (age group 11-13) and one on Medieval Indian History for Class VII (age group 13-14). The books were used for about forty years and were revised a couple of times. They have been replaced by other textbooks in the last few years. The story of how these books came to be written and why they were replaced touches on much that is happening to history textbooks in many parts of the world and is tied to political changes. I would like to relate the story in the context of India and in the form of a personal memoir. ■ My first acquaintance with history textbooks for schools came about when UNESCO asked me in 1961 if I would do a review of a sample of textbooks used in the teaching of history in various schools in the Union Territory of Delhi. I had never thought of such an idea before and it interested me, so I agreed. The sample consisted of about twenty books if I remember correctly and I submitted the report fairly soon. I was appalled by the information contained in these books, with their adherence to outdated ideas and to colonial views of the Indian past, a totally banal narrative and predictable illustrations of a poor quality. I was thanked for the review and for the moment heard no further. The review it seems coincided with a committee on history textbooks appointed by the government under the Chairmanship of Dr Tarachand. The Editorial Board consisted of the most eminent historians of that time: Professors Nilakanta Sastri, Mohammad Habib, and P.C. Gupta. The Ministry had established the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), as part of being generally alerted to the problems of school education in India. One of its functions was to commission the writing of textbooks for school. Mr M.C. Chagla, the then Minister, a thoughtful lawyer with a liberal bent of mind, was concerned that textbooks in history should not recite myths but be secular and rational explanations of the past. It was presumably thought that if the books were to have some quality they would have to be written by, or at least supervised by, academics of recognition in the subject. Among the committee were included three senior historians from Calcutta and Delhi universities: Professor R.C. Majumdar who had written extensively on all periods of Indian history, Professor Bisheshwar Prasad who was an historian of Modern India and Dr Dasaratha Sharma whose field was ancient Indian history. Subsequently, R.C. Majumdar was made chairman of the Editorial Board and he invited me to join it, but I declined as I had just started writing the first textbook in the NCERT series. It was decided to start with Class VI and a book on Ancient India. Quite how my name came up as a possible author is unclear to me. My initial reaction was that I wished to continue my research and not spend time on writing a textbook, and furthermore that I had no interest or expertise in writing for children. My only venture in this field was a small book of stories for children, Indian Tales, and this was hardly a qualification for writing a school textbook. However, I was eventually persuaded to do so by some of my colleagues at Delhi University where I was then teaching, who argued that this was a national cause and as such I should agree. I would like to emphasize that even though India had become independent a long time ago (in 1947) the notion of a national cause was very strong in many of us. My generation had been imprinted with the nationalism of the forties and early fifties. Its essential characteristic was the enthusiasm that we were involved in the building of a new nation. We could therefore move away from conventions so as to encourage the implanting of new ideas. It was from this perspective that I agreed to write a textbook for Middle School. The syllabus that had been worked out had two concerns: that the child should envision the ancient past as more than just the recital of conventional ‘glories’ and become acquainted with some of the multiple facets of life and action; and that it must be heavy with information rather than explanation. I enjoyed exploring the first but had problems with the second. But the syllabus remained the skeleton of the book. My own research was based on a critical re-examination of the nationalist interpretation of history, emerging out of a critique of the colonial view of ancient Indian history. The colonial view had been faulted on many grounds, but the nationalist interpretation was also by now being regarded as somewhat ambivalent in relation to certain themes. There had been a hesitancy to analyze the inequities of caste, or the varied treatment of women, or the degree to which the social articulation of religions shaped societies. Whereas colonial views of the recent past were critiqued, nationalist interpretation was hesitant in critiquing the ancient Hindu past or the Islamic past which were as much in need of critical analysis as the modern. Pre-modern history had to be a narrative of greatness and glory on the whole, with little reference to that which could be prised apart and viewed without preconceptions. The second problem was that of the amount of information a textbook should contain. There was a listing in the direction of putting in more, the argument being that at least some of the information would stick. The decision as to what could be omitted as not so relevant became a source of contention with the committee. I would try out my chapters on the age group for which they were intended and some found them heavy going and too stuffed with ‘facts’, which I had to then make more accessible. Arguing with a committee was not easy and there were many occasions when I wished that there had been some schoolteachers on the committee rather than only high-powered historians. Nevertheless one kept trying and slowly the chapters began to take shape. Unfortunately, by then this committee of rather elderly historians began to lose its enthusiasm for the project, which in any case had not been a matter of great prestige or of central interest to its members. There was a quiet whiff of disdain at being involved with school textbooks, especially since they were otherwise involved in major publications of multi-volume projects, such as ‘The History and Culture of the Indian People’ and ‘The Role of the Indian Armed Forces in World War II’. So my textbook which had been written and approved of by the Committee, rather drifted along without getting anywhere owing to the inactivity of the same Committee. To get the project moving the ministry decided that a more active committee was required and therefore replaced the old committee with a new one. The new Editorial Board as it was called consisted of Sarvepalli Gopal as the Chief Editor, and as editors had Nurul Hasan from Aligarh University, Satish Chandra from Rajasthan University and myself, with S.K. Maitra as Secretary. The textbook project leapt into life and the first book went to press. This was Ancient India written for Class VI, and published in 1966. In 1968 I revised it on the basis of reactions from teachers and historians and further discussions in the Editorial Board. The textbook for Class VII on Medieval India was published in 1967. In the 1970s the Editorial Board commissioned further books for highschool level. These were Ram Sharan Sharma’s Ancient India, Satish Chandra’s Medieval India, Bipan Chandra’s Modern India and the third book for Middle School, India and the World by Arjun Dev and Indrani Dev. The High School books were substantial in size and involved extended discussion. This entire set of textbooks constituted what I shall call the NCERT Textbooks (Set 1), since there were two further sets to follow. There was a certain sense of excitement in being able to provide the kind of history that we thought contributed to the Indian child’s understanding of our past. We were distancing our history from that written under imperial auspices— the writing of historians such as Vincent Smith, Thompson and Garret, and Rawlinson, or even their Indian counterparts. For Vincent Smith, Indian history led up to the inevitability of the British Empire that brought the pax Britannica to India. The model was the Roman Empire that Britain was said to be emulating. The heroes were kings and the sign of triumph was victory in campaigns. The historian set the pace of how events moved and separated the heroes from the villains. In ancient history a major focus had been the glorifying of the coming of the Aryans and Aryan civilization, a theme that was underlined by Indian nationalist historians as well. Medieval history meant reiterating the division between Hindu and Muslim communities and referring to them as the two nations of India. Orientalist scholarship from the eighteenth century onwards, when it searched for histories of the ancient past in Sanskrit literature, found only one and that too of a limited kind, the Rajatarangini, a twelfth-century history of Kashmir. This was in part because they were looking for Enlightenment type histories. They were largely scholars in the colonial administration, such as William Jones and H.H. Wilson, who saw their role as having to discover the Indian past given that they believed there was an absence of historical writing in India. This knowledge was to enable them to understand the colony that they were governing. Incidentally, they also claimed to be bringing historical knowledge to the Indian over whom they ruled and who had lacked this knowledge from his own tradition. They were primarily interested in codifying and translating the texts that their brahmana informants told them were the most important. These were in the main, the Vedas—providing information on the origins of Hinduism and the Dharmashastras—texts concerning the social codes and therefore focused on rules of caste and social obligations. The codification of the texts bore the imprint of European systems of classification and the translations were naturally conditioned by the intellectual and social ambience of attitudes to the Orient. These texts were regarded as containing first order knowledge about the Indian past and even Buddhist texts were not given the same importance. Access to these Sanskrit texts led to the conviction that religion was the foundational factor in Indian civilization. Where Orientalist scholars had a positive image of ancient India, it tended to be that of a golden age directed by a concern for spirituality and social harmony. In the nineteenth century those who called themselves liberals and positivists, contested this understanding of the Indian past. James Mill and T.B. Macaulay for instance, representing what might be called the liberal-progressive view of those times, were critical of the Indian past and advocated legal measures to restructure Indian society. Some of their criticism was also meant as an aside on current British society. We have observed in earlier essays that Mill was the first author who in writing the history of British India, divided it into periods that were identified by the religions of the dynasties: the initial Hindu civilization was succeeded by a Muslim civilization and then by a British period. This periodization became axiomatic until recent times. Mill also gave currency to the idea of Oriental Despotism, that Asian societies had been ruled by despots and were static societies not undergoing any change throughout their history. By the late nineteenth century there was a firm imperial control over India. The colonial power had succeeded in subordinating revolts of soldiers and peasants and was slowly beginning to face the emergence of nationalism from the nascent middle-class. Historical writing was necessary to contest this nationalism. It was argued that Indians had always been subordinated by alien powers and the history of India was thus a recital of invasions. Further, that the most persistent of these invaders were Muslims who settled and ruled in India giving rise to a powerful Muslim community. This inaugurated the undiminished strife between the Muslim and Hindu communities, strife that had been temporarily brought under control by the arrival of British power. Nationalist historical writing reacted to all this, agreeing with some but disagreeing with much. A key function of nationalist history was to establish an Indian identity. This had to draw on the unity and uniformity of India throughout history. Attention to a common culture became axiomatic and this inevitably meant a historical discourse about the upper castes and the aristocracy. It was believed that these were the groups that made history. The new textbooks tried to draw attention to other groups of supposedly lesser status that also contributed to history but this was a less popular aspect of the books. Possibly the idea was not emphasized with sufficient examples. For nationalist history the ancient past was particularly useful in constructing identities as it invariably is in all nationalist history. The sources are almost exclusively from elite groups, the period is so remote that much can be said that is imagined but cannot be questioned for lack of detailed evidence. Consequently, golden ages abound and nationalist historians took their cue from some of the Orientalist scholarship. The obsession with the Hindu golden age was such that for some the Muslim period was contrasted as one of decline, to the extent that this allowed the British to conquer India. Anti-colonial nationalism does not always obstruct other more specific nationalisms, some of which become central to the creation of nation states. Religious and ethnic nationalisms have been frequent since the twentieth century. In the Indian situation, given the kind of history projected by colonial authors and up to a point endorsed by some nationalist historians, there was the emergence of what have been called Hindu and Muslim nationalisms—also of course entwined with the politics of the twentieth century in India. Hindu and Muslim nationalisms each argued for different pasts: the ancient past was Hindu and the medieval past was dominated by Muslim dynasties. Ancient and medieval became areas of controversy and the site of ideological struggles in defining a national history. This difference led to the notion that these religious communities constituted two separate nations and the ensuing history was used to justify the creation of two separate nation-states. Religious nationalism takes an extreme form in communal historical writing. Pakistan is projected as a Muslim nation-state in such histories. At home, many historians are opposing political attempts to project India as a Hindu state. The other theme prominent in the Hindu communal view of the past was the insistence on the Aryan foundation of Indian culture, a view that still prevails. Whereas in the nineteenth century it was held that the Aryan language came from across the Indo-Iranian borderlands, there is today no concession to this view among the Hindu religious nationalists. As we have seen, their claim is that the Aryans were indigenous to India, were the authors of the earliest Indian civilization—that of the cities of the Indus and the northwest—and that wherever there was a language akin to Indo-Aryan it came through Aryan out-migration from India. In 1969, members of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee wanted the textbook on Ancient India to state categorically that ‘the Aryans’ were indigenous to India—a demand that was rejected by the Editorial Board and by me as the author. At most scholars might argue that Aryan culture, if it can be recognized as that, is an evolved culture with multiple inputs from a variety of sources, some coming with migrants from the borderlands and some from those settled in the plains of the northwest of the subcontinent. With Indian independence in 1947 came an increased interest in questions relating to the economic and social evolution of Indian society. Inevitably there was a turning to historians for information on the nature of traditional economies and social structures, and the histories of communities and castes. Historians were activated in ways different from before. There was less focus on political and dynastic history and more on social and economic history that in turn affected the discussion of historical causation. Broadening the explanations for historical change introduced many new sources and the evidence they provided enriched the scope of historical causality. And just as inevitably, pre-modern history was drawn into the circuit of the social sciences. The study of ancient India shifted from being a subject within the fold of Indology to gradually becoming a discipline of the Social Sciences. This was a major shift away from golden ages, oriental despots and religious periodization to investigating a different set of themes that had to do with economic resources, the forms of social organization, the articulation of religion and art as aspects of social perceptions, and above all to tracking the major points of historical change in a history of three millennia. In writing about Indian achievements an attempt was made to explain the interaction of various factors and how they contributed to diverse outcomes. This shift is irksome to those who argue for a mono-causal, religion-derived cultural uniformity. The history of ‘the nation’ also became a focus. Was the nation a creation of the colonial experience? Or did it emerge from factors related to modernization such as the coming of industrialization and capitalism as well as the need for a democratic and secular society? The issue was not just of building a nation which required a common history, memory and culture but also of explaining the nature of the societies and economies of the past that contributed towards the sense of a shared past. Because of a dependence on textual sources the perspective was from the elite cultures of the past. What some referred to as the ‘living prehistory’ of India—the cultures of the forest tribes—or that of the lower castes, received less visibility. At the same time it is necessary to recognize that the definition of the nation was largely in terms of the aspirations of what were referred to as the dominant castes and classes. For some, the ‘one-ness’ of the nation lay in the syncretistic thought and action of diverse groups that fused in the idea of the nation. For others it was what was described as India’s composite culture that assumed diverse social and religious units in harmonious co-existence, each giving space to the other. For yet others, the definition of one-ness was in being Hindu and this was to be protected against Muslim rule. A history of the nation needed a central perspective. Colonial and nationalist histories had been written with the Ganga valley as the epicentre. But with the growth of interest in regional history this was becoming problematic. The image of the one-ness of the nation had also to face the demands of regional histories. The provinces of British Indian administration, whose boundaries had been arbitrarily imposed, gave way to the creation of linguistic states with more realistic boundaries based on language. This intensified regional identity since linguistic states worked their history through their own language sources as well as through manifestations of regional culture in archaeological antiquities. On two occasions it was said that my textbooks in emphasizing the nation had not done justice to regional personalities. There was a demand for a separate chapter on Guru Nanak, whose teachings had been the foundation for Sikhism, for the books used in the Punjab; and similarly one on Shivaji the Maratha for books used in Maharashtra. On both occasions the Board felt that if the states wished to make the change it could not be stopped, even if it resulted in an imbalance in terms of the national perspective. Furthermore, since the books were intended as model textbooks they could only be a guide and could not be imposed. But it was agreed that permission from the NCERT would be required for making changes. I insisted that copyright was invested in the author and if changes were made my name as the author of the book should be deleted. The balance between the nation and the region was a delicate one and more so when the historian was writing on a period when the nation did not exist. For such periods it was a question of dominant and subordinate states, but subordination became a sensitive matter in itself. What has now become problematic is the dominance of the identity of the region, over the smaller subcultures, which was earlier hidden by the national culture. The historical change became more marked in the 1960s and 70s when Marxist historical writing encouraged a paradigm shift as did the input from other social sciences. The debates on Modes of Production among academic historians had the fallout effect of releasing more information resulting in further interpretations of social and economic history. Whether or not one participated in the debate, historical research introduced questions of state formation, the role of agriculture, the extension of trade and the degree to which changes were made by religious movements or were reflected in art and literature. Historical interest had moved towards another dimension, irrespective of whether or not it conformed to Marxist models. The debate was largely among those who worked on the post-Gupta period from about the eighth to the thirteenth centuries, what is now called the early medieval period to distinguish it from the medieval period, the latter basically being once again the period of Muslim rule. This definition of the medieval period resembles the value-loaded categories of the earlier paradigm and is therefore not very helpful. The use of the label ‘medieval’ echoes the periodization of European history. As a forerunner of the medieval, the label of early medieval says little about either. The post-Gupta period had earlier been described as ‘the dark age’ of small kingdoms as against the previous ‘[the] golden ages’ of large empires. In intellectual terms the darkness was dispelled because of the debate that brought to the fore the history of new kingdoms, their economies and governance and the role of local courts in defining culture. Such historians as were bogged down, by the Hindu-Muslim divide of medieval times —both early and late—rarely participated in this debate. For them the finer issues of the formation of states, or local cultures were of little importance. For the earlier period the breakthrough came from extensive archaeological excavations. The major sites of the Indus Civilization, such as the cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, were located in Pakistan. There was therefore a concerted effort to discover similar sites on the Indian side of the border and the effort met with astonishing success. The Harappa culture was far more widespread in the northern and western parts of the subcontinent than had been assumed earlier. This interest spurred on the determination to find the archaeological equivalent of the Aryan culture, a determination that continues undiminished. Such a discovery is of course not possible in the absence of a decipherable script since Aryan is essentially a language label. But all this activity gave a centrality to archaeological data and therefore to the inclusion of material culture in historical interpretation. The colonial construction of early Indian history in concepts such as Oriental Despotism, periodization by religion, an insistence on Indian society being static and castes being races or frozen social entities, and the widespread existence of isolated, self-sufficient village communities, were the generalizations that were being systematically unwound in the new ways of investigating history. Some concepts that nationalist historiography had appropriated from colonial views, such as ‘golden ages’ and ‘dark ages’, were also axed in this new history. These were the historical debates current in the 1960s and more so in the 1970s when the NCERT Textbooks (Set 1) were being read in schools run by the central government. Appreciation for the books lay in their more expansive vision of history, the recognition that the information they presented was reliable evidence and not wishful thinking, and that there was logic to the way in which the narrative was set out. Possibly this was part of the reason for the later criticism that they were not as user friendly for children as they could have been. Critical reactions to their contents came from Hindu and Sikh religious organizations that felt that their respective religions and religious teachers had not been glorified. Certain religio-political organizations such as the Hindu Mahasabha and the Arya Samaj claimed that a statement made in the book ‘went counter to the religious sentiments of the Hindu nationality’ (whatever this may mean). In Ancient India, I explained that the ancient Aryans venerated the cow but like cattle-herders elsewhere, ate its flesh on ritual occasions or when honouring a guest. R.S. Sharma had made a similar statement in his textbook. The protest against this statement emanated from the Hindu political mobilization around the demand for cow protection and a ban on beef, since it was argued that not eating beef was axiomatic to Hinduism. A lengthy article in a leading newspaper argued that there was no mention of the eating of beef in ancient Sanskrit sources. I countered by quoting from texts that are unambiguous on this matter, and from excavation reports such as the Shatapatha Brahmana (3.1.2.21) and the excavation report of B.B. Lal on the site of Hastinapur, in Ancient India 1954-55, Nos. 10 and 11. The argument then turned to the question of whether it was moral to tell children that beef was once eaten by the Hindus and later forbidden. I was told off for questioning orthodox opinion and encouraging young minds to do likewise. Objections were also raised to another statement in the textbook that the shudras, the lower castes, were not always treated well. This was of course a reflection on the upper castes. But since social inequality was not a major issue in those days this comment did not lead to major objections. Similarly, an organization of the Sikhs wanted me to reformulate what I had said about the founding and early history of the Sikh religion, to bring it into conformity with its own view. These were changes I could not agree to since they changed the historical accuracy of what was being stated in the textbook. It is worth pointing out that the objections came from religious organizations and later from political parties and not from historians. In 1975 Indira Gandhi declared a state of Emergency that closed down free discussion. She was voted out of power in 1977 and the Janata Government—a mixed bag of parties—was elected with Morarji Desai as Prime Minister. It was expected to be a reasonably liberal government, but as it turned out was so dominated by the feuds of party factions and by issues of Hindu religious nationalism that it did not last its full term. But it did manage to fire the first governmental salvo against the NCERT Textbooks (Set 1). Morarji Desai supported and forwarded an anonymous note to the Education Minister, asking that these history textbooks be banned as they were anti-Indian and antinational in content and prejudicial to the study of history. The note was leaked to the press and when we as the authors heard of it we decided that it should be publicly debated. We argued for the legitimacy of independent interpretations, emphasizing the proviso that they be based on reliable evidence and logically feasible explanations. The issues that were raised by our critics were routine and predictable: why was there a mention of beef-eating; why was it not said that the Aryans were indigenous to India; where was the necessity to mention the disabilities of the lower castes; why did we not consistently depict Muslim rulers as oppressors and tyrants, and so on. For three years from 1977 to 1980 the usual Sunday papers carried articles for and against the textbooks and the issues raised. I hoped that the public debate would demonstrate that history is not just a body of facts that is packaged and handed on without change from generation to generation; but that history involves interpreting evidence, and that the evidence had grown and the methods of interpreting it had changed and become more precise and analytical as compared to earlier times. We heard that in November 1977 a committee of reputable historians had been asked to examine the textbooks. They apparently approved of the books and their consensus was that the books should continue to be prescribed. Subsequent to this, some ‘liberal’ intellectuals began to criticize us heavily, focusing on one point. They maintained that writing textbooks for a state agency like the NCERT was an act of connivance with the state in the first place, therefore there was no justification in our now complaining that the books were being banned. Ironically, those who took this position were working for statefunded research institutes. At any rate nothing was done before the government fell. The joke that did the rounds of Delhi was that no action was taken to ban the books because there were many thousand copies that had already been printed and were stacked in the NCERT stores, and that the Audits and Accounts Department of the Government of India objected to them being trashed! The issues raised by the controversy made one fully aware of the growing tension between two groups. One was that of the political parties and the organizations appropriating and claiming to represent nationalism, but obviously of the religious majority, a claim that was becoming an electoral plank. Some historians and archaeologists were sympathetic to this view. The claim was used to target the other group of professional historians who were not making concessions to the political requirements of religious nationalism. The earlier notion that anyone and everyone could claim to be writing history was being questioned by the work of the latter. This was particularly so in the writing of ancient history where it was becoming even clearer that some technical expertise in reading excavation reports, epigraphy, numismatics and textual criticism was a prerequisite to being a historian. As the author of a textbook I felt that I had the responsibility of helping to educate a generation to think differently and in new ways about the subject. Yet I was aware that this was subjecting me to political assault. One had to debate with oneself and with one’s colleagues as to the implications of this. On the issue of beef-eating, for instance, we were aware that apart from the historical importance of making the statement, it would raise political issues that had to be countered. What was made apparent was that writing a textbook was not just an academic exercise. Ancient history in particular had a primary role in the formulation of conservative identity and it vision of Indian society—even if the formulation was based on questionable ‘history’. The same was true of other religious nationalisms that were seeking a political edge by reformulating history in a specific way. Those of us nurtured on the earlier anti-colonial nationalist tradition, as the members of the Editorial Board had been, had no hesitation in contesting a communalism that used only religion as a political foundation. The more sensitive question, it seemed to us, was to contest nationalism in its guise of making concessions to religious communalism. Occasional strands of communal thinking had had a presence in some aspects of the nationalist view of ancient Indian history, and this presence became more evident as it was played out in the politics of the late twentieth century. Towards the latter part of the 1970s the structure of school education was reorganized. The books that had been written or were being written for High School in the earlier system had to now be adjusted to the new curriculum. A new Editorial Board was created with Satish Chandra as chairman; R.S. Sharma, M.G.S. Narayanan, Barun De, Sumit Sarkar and S.H. Khan as members; and Arjun Dev as Convener. This board saw the High School textbooks to completion and publication. They were viewed as a continuation of those written for Middle School and therefore part of what I have called Set 1. The books were revised again in the late 1980s and continued in use. We had a respite of fifteen years and then the attack started up again. This time it came from a collective of Hindu right-wing nationalist organizations labelled the Sangh Parivar. It propagated its version of Indian history encapsulated in the ideology of Hindutva. (I have discussed this at some length in the previous chapter.) It came into its own successfully when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies were elected to form the government of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in 1999. Hindutva history claims a uniform, monolithic Hindu identity for Indian civilization, often defined as Aryan, which makes it upper caste. The multiple variant and lesser cultures are either ignored or at best marginalized. From this perspective the NCERT textbooks that we had written were unacceptable and we were described as anti-Hindu, anti-Indian, traitors to the nation who were propagating perverted views that distorted the truth. Ministers of the BJP government frequently voiced these statements in Parliament—presumably so that they could abuse us and yet claim Parliamentary privilege. This assault on us—from virulent abuse to death threats—continues to embellish a number of websites on the Internet, largely controlled by wealthy Indians settled in the First World. The attempt to proscribe the books did not succeed, so passages from them were literally and laboriously blacked out in each copy before these were sold in the market. This was followed by a more efficient idea, that of deleting such passages before printing the book. The next step was the decision to replace books and there was a frenzied writing of new textbooks in record time. The NCERT, now under the control of the NDA government, commissioned new books conforming to the Hindutva version of history, and constituting the NCERT Textbooks (Set 2), some of which were prescribed just prior to the fall of the BJP/NDA government. This was only one move among many others to terminate history as a social science and convert it into a catechism. The attitude was not one of discussing variant interpretations of history but instead terminating all other views barring those that conformed to the Hindutva version. The BJP/NDA Government fell in 2004 and one consequence was that their NCERT Textbooks (Set 2), have since been replaced. The new government, with its core from the Congress Party and somewhat less committed to religious nationalism than the BJP, decided on a completely fresh set of textbooks, NCERT Textbooks (Set 3). However, since textbooks cannot be written in a hurry, the Set 1 textbooks were used again for the interim period. When Set 3 was ready then all earlier textbooks of Sets 1 and 2 were discontinued. Rather ironically, acrimonious criticism of the Set 1 textbooks, and arguments against their being brought back even for a short period, came from some ‘liberal’ historians. They did not denounce the contents of the books so much as their authors for being ‘statist’, in the same way as they had denounced us three decades previously. We were ‘statist’ because we agreed to write the books for a state agency and because we wrote them from a nationalist perspective. This echoed what had been said in 1977 almost as if there was no new way of critiquing the books. Having been previously called antinational it was difficult to juxtapose this with now being accused of having a nationalist perspective. The historians who are authors of NCERT Textbooks (Set 3) have not yet been dubbed as ‘statist’! The NCERT Textbooks (Set 1) were seen by some as an attempt to standardize history. This is a comment that may not be easy to sustain. They were intended as model textbooks and states were free to modify them as they did in some cases. They were prescribed largely in schools run by the central government and these formed hardly ten per cent of the total number of schools. Nevertheless, the textbooks these schools use carry some influence in other broad-based teaching. Schools established by a variety of ‘cultural’ and religious organizations, use entirely different textbooks and some that even run riot with the subject, teaching what is hardly recognizable as history. In such schools the NCERT books are used for answering examination questions (if the school is linked to particular examination boards), but the students are told that the real history is in the fantasy textbooks. Textbooks such as mine that had been used for forty years would inevitably have had to be replaced by newer ones more representative of another generation of historical thinking. But there is a pedagogical problem that needs urgent attention. When my textbooks were prescribed in the 1960s, schoolteachers found them different from the books they had been using. The shift away from conventional dynastic history and the introduction of comments on dominant and subordinate castes, on patterns of landownership and the use of labour, on the difference between barter and markets, on monuments not just as structures in a landscape but institutions of community life, were quite different from narratives limited to kings, courts, campaigns, territorial control and administration. We were trying to show historical interconnections in the making of a society. The concept of the society was however unitary and I, for one, felt that introducing multiplicity at an elementary stage might be confusing for the student. Two generations of teachers taught these books, and after they were swapped, teachers had to move to teaching NCERT Textbooks Set 3. This required a far greater input into teacher training than the government or the NCERT was perhaps prepared to invest in. India has immense technical resources which state educational bodies seem reluctant to use. Yet no government should be afraid of an educated public. There could be an enlightened change in the comprehension of history by teachers and students alike if additional teaching were to be done imaginatively through radio and TV. This was worked out in some detail more than ten years ago by a group of educationists. As a member of the then Prasar Bharati Board I had submitted recommendations for the implementation of such programmes on TV and radio as part of an education channel. But not surprisingly, no interest was shown in the idea, neither by the HRD Ministry nor by Prasar Bharati. An even more fundamental change is necessary if textbooks of quality are to survive. This narrative about the NCERT textbooks has a recurring refrain: textbooks change each time the government changes. The pattern will continue unless the legal status of the NCERT in its production of textbooks is changed. In 2005, I wrote in the newspapers arguing that we have to make bodies such as the NCERT autonomous and give them statutory status so that irrespective of a change in government they would still be able to retain textbooks of quality. But the idea fell on deaf ears. Admittedly it will be a hard fight against governments determined not to do so but at least legal support might help. If this is not done then we shall have a chameleon-like educational system that will change its colour with each change of government. The student will never know whether to state in the exam that 2+2 = 4 or whether 2+2 = 5, and may end up having to say that it could be either, depending on the political party in power. Ancient history in particular has a special significance for contemporary times especially in developing societies. In part, this is because so much of the ancient past is still perceptible even if not immediately so. But more importantly identities, as also the heritage linked to nationalism, still hinge on the interpretation of early history. In any broader understanding of the present it helps to be informed about the past, and even more so, the remote past. That is where myths have found comfortable berths and where a well-grounded critical history has most to contribute in offering connections that are exploratory and provisional rather than mandator
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