Textbook politics and the return of revisionism

Don't include chapter on my life says PM Modi even as his HRD minister seeks to introduce ancient Hindu texts in school curriculum

“I firmly believe that the life story of living individuals should not be included as a part of the school curriculum,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted on Friday, quashing any proffer by devoted state ministers keen to include a slice of his life into school texts. The country “has a rich history of several stalwarts who made India what it is today” and “young minds should read about these greats and emulate them,” he added.
 
In a pedagogic system where rote memorisation and emphasis on static theory have long prevailed over critical reasoning, some realpolitik, by way of a chapter on the extant prime minister’s dynamic life, wouldn’t hurt some argued. Several states have in the past had the stories of their chief ministers told as part of the curriculum too. Why not Modi’s then?

 
Because Narendra Modi cannot be written about or taught dispassionately.
 

The storm triggered by the principal of St Xavier’s College criticising Modi prior to the elections is a single example of how difficult it can become for teachers to avoid airing personal ideological biases while teaching current political theory. And given the penchant of politicians from all ends of the spectrum to politicise textbooks, one can imagine what a chapter on India’s most controversial prime minister would have looked like. Would it have included a paragraph on Godhra?
 
Modi is spot on when he suggests that students instead be taught the history of other stalwarts that shaped India’s destiny. With the passage of time, passions about past events ebb, and students can be pushed to question, inquire and reason rather than venerate the lives and times of….

 
History can sure benefit from the wisdom of hindsight. When it is drawn up by partisan politicians of the day though, it can’t but be deceptive and hagiographical.
 
REVISIONIST FERVOUR

While he continues to get it right, Modi’s human resources minister Smriti Irani remains in the eye of the storm for more reasons than one.
 
Even as she refuses to clarify on the discrepancy in her educational qualifications in the election affidavit, it is learnt from different press reports that Irani has begun work on setting up a committee to introduce the study of ancient Hindu texts – the Vedas, Upanishads and what not.

 
Is that an euphemism for the BJP’s long treasured dream of revisionism?
 
The RSS has been more unconcealed with its demands. Dina Nath Batra, the Sangh veteran who had petitioned for the ban on Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus, has sought a ‘complete revision’ of school texts and the ‘creation of a new moral universe’ according to The Times of India.
 
One can’t help but get a nasty sense of déjà vu. Who can after all forget the huge row under NDA-I when it unleashed a radical rewriting of the history syllabus which the nationalists claimed was held to ransom for years by a secular propaganda of the left intellectuals imprisoned by a colonial bias. The Congress then summarily “de-saffronised” it after coming to power. But not a single party can rightfully claim the moral high ground on this matter. Tampering with NCERT text books has been an all-party pastime and education has been used the world over by political parties to legitimise their ideological leanings.

 
“The NCERT should take it upon itself to evaluate books all the way down the line in order to make differentiation between that which is a catechism as is the Hindutva history, and that which is a free, open and widely debated history that gives an insight into the past,” said Romila Thapar, the noted historian in a 2004 interview to Karan Thapar on the programme Face To Face where she sought statutory procedures with a :near legal function” to be established in order to stop the “uprooting of education”.
 
Irani is unlikely to solicit academic insight from Thapar who is prime among the list of historians the revisionists have held culpable for distorting history. But she doesn’t need to get into an intellectual debate about the Aryan invasion. She could do well to merely look at the abysmal statistics in the ASERs – Annual Status of Education Reports to appreciate that promoting a puritanical Hindu record cannot be her first priority amid a grave crisis of a much larger magnitude at India’s schools.