Until recently, professional historians and history departments in universities broadly recognised Indian history as divided between the Ancient, Medieval and Modern periods. The more contentious colonial division of Indian history into Hindu, Muslim and British periods was thus displaced. There have been some adaptations of the three terms, as in the use of Early India (rather than Ancient India), Early Modern (to refer to the 16th and 17th centuries as times when lively exchanges and experiments occurred). The Kerala government’s social studies textbook discusses the medieval period as the “era of exchanges” between the East and the West.
PREMIUM If there are any innovations in this new “truth-telling” exercise, they are pressed into the service of national pride. The same standard of truth-telling is not applied to Hindu kings, such as Shivaji, or Maharana Pratap, as Akbar and Aurangzeb. (PTI)
These re-periodisations of history have been enabled by historians going beyond political and diplomatic histories to include social and economic structures, the lives of ordinary people (including those long neglected by the textbooks), histories of technologies and objects, and the histories of stable geographical elements — rivers, oceans and seas.
But now, under the guidance of Michel Danino, the NCERT social science textbooks have announced a new phase of historical writing which transcends known periods and historical methods (which may earlier have been powered by nationalist, Marxist, or Annales frameworks). He has ushered in, he modestly says, a period of “honest history — based on the data available — where we aim to do justice to the past”. Now, this approach immediately thrusts the sophisticated productions of three generations of post-Independence historians in the dubious category of being dishonest — sanitised, or produced under political pressure. Danino has distanced himself from these stains: “No political leader came to us saying, ‘You have to include this, or mention this particular figure or fact’”.
Still, he does admit that his team wanted a (dis)proportionate amount of attention given to Shivaji and the Marathas, who have earned a chapter of their own. The book’s focus on what Danino called the “darker chapters in history” — coterminous with the regions and times under Muslim rulers — comes with the equivalent of small print, a disclaimer that reads, “Some of the invaders and rulers mentioned above committed terrible deeds and atrocities … we must keep in mind that this is about people in the past, not people of today … we, today, bear no responsibility for actions of individuals hundreds of years ago.”
In fact, the textbook writers take no responsibility for the likely outcomes of this so-called truth telling. Danino’s proclaimed independence of the political establishment displayed naïve ignorance of the travails of textbook production in India. The 2005-06 textbooks underscored the importance of focusing on pedagogical, rather than ideological goals. Despite this, there were literally hundreds of petitioners, from those who felt that their region/pain/experience had to be included to those who believed that the textbook should not speak about certain inequalities and struggles, since the concerned community had left those times behind. And there was everything in between.
Do the new NCERT books once more subordinate pedagogy to ideology? If there are any innovations in this new “truth-telling” exercise, they are pressed into the service of national pride. The same standard of truth-telling is not applied to Hindu kings, such as Shivaji, or Maharana Pratap, as Akbar and Aurangzeb. Better still, while Anglo-Maratha wars are described in some detail, Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan and the Anglo Mysore wars have “disappeared”. Standard VII and VIII have returned us to a style of historical writing (divided between Brave Queens/Bad Kings, etc, trenchantly critiqued in all historical method classes) that had long been decentred in favour of social, economic and cultural history.
But the team has learned the hard way that proclaiming truth and honesty does not prevent outrage from several quarters: One community strenuously objected to the inclusion of Jaisalmer in the map of a sprawling Maratha Empire (included in the Std VIII textbook). Another questioned the absence of the Paika (Odisha) rebellion of 1817. There will be more objections to follow as sub-nationalisms and community historians raise their demands. And they will not be from the nationalist, Marxist, or other “despised” historiographical stables.
Nothing reveals the grave undermining of the historical method in the new textbooks than the module entitled “Partition Horrors Remembrance Day”. It is not intended to inform but to inflame. It is not to teach about Partition, but to commemorate August 14 (Pakistan’s Independence Day) as Partition Horrors Remembrance Day (though the lines of Partition (August 17), and the violence happened after that date). It does not acknowledge at least four decades of research that highlighted hitherto unknown distinctions between the experience of Partition in the east and the west. In more sensitive accounts, there is acknowledgement that what makes the Indian partition unusual was that the violence was not between one set of victims and one set of perpetrators (as the module suggests throughout). Victims could become perpetrators and perpetrators could become victims. Even the armies were not above attacking the very people they were supposed to protect. The newspaper cuttings — as proof of “truth” — are of violence against Hindus alone. Excellent work done by feminist historians on the experience of women, especially following the Abducted Person (Recovery and Restoration Act of 1949) by both India and Pakistan, has been conveniently ignored.
The module targets the Congress, the leading voice of the freedom movement, by suggesting that “in 1947, for the first time, Indian leaders themselves willingly handed over a vast part of the country permanently outside the national fold — along with tens of crores of its citizens — without even their consent or a war”. They (mistakenly) “limited their discourse to a binary of ‘native vs. foreign’”, forgetting the (presumably more important) historical “realities” of Hindu-Muslim relations. A discussion of the Hindu Mahasabha’s place in this historic moment would have added nuance. Instead, included is the most pernicious suggestion that “even though a separate country was created for Muslims, about 35 million Muslims did not shift and continued to stay in India. Pakistan was demanded and created as a homeland for all Indian Muslims. The entire calculation, political or territorial, was based on that assumption.” Students are asked to remember that “the actual forces that drive human behaviour [are] self-interest, greed, fear, hatred, anger, vengeance, etc.” If this is not a call for revenge in the present day, what is?
Janaki Nair is a historian. The views expressed are personal