The change will be applicable for all the schools that follow NCERT across the country.
From Class 12, chapters related to ‘Kings and Chronicles; the Mughal Courts have been removed from the History book ‘Themes of Indian History-Part 2’. Continuing with the changes, two chapters namely – ‘Rise of Popular Movements’ and ‘Era of One-Party Dominance’ – from the Class 12 textbook ‘Indian Politics after Independence’ have also been removed. This kind of deletion of history portions on the basis of political whims is a wrong practice.
History provides public resources to manipulate. Every society has dug into its past to understand itself how it has expanded and what will be the next phase. Whatever it does in the present, draws the justification for it from its past, especially in the case of politicians.
The question now is who writes the past and who controls it? We have understood history from a particular perspective. Past has not been revealed to us completely. There are some gaps. A lot of the past is yet to be discovered and hence the past has been presented in a very selective manner, as per the convenience of the ruling dispensation.
Politicians always used history as a tool to justify their certain policy decisions, as people don’t accept anything new very easily. Even though the concept of democracy came from outside, we tried to discover liberal values, democracy from our own past, which still continues.
Manipulating history in textbooks by the government, irrespective of the party in power, is a convenient way of controlling the future. Removing certain chapters, glorifying someone or an event or deploring it to suit the political narrative…these are all attempts to shape the ideology of the future generation.
It allows the establishment to control the young minds by tweaking the history lessons and make them believe in what it wants them to believe in. When a limited version of the past is put in the history text books, it is learnt by generations.
By tampering with the school history textbooks, the establishment is trying to create a thought process amongst the youngsters, who would then justify the acts of the government by connecting it with the past events as cited in their textbooks.
This also helps in shaping the young minds in a way that they start following a particular ideology and become potential voters for the ruling party in the near future as many of them are on the threshold of turning adults and become first-time voters.
A certain kind of political ideology is then created in the minds of these young students, be it based on local, national or world events. Best example of it is the entire controversy surrounding Vinayak Damodar Savarkar or King of Mysore, Tipu Sultan.
Traditionally, Savarkar has been portrayed in a negative light, as a person who sought pardon from the British after being sentenced 50 years of imprisonment and put in the Andamans cellular jail. In the case of Tipu Sultan, we have always known him to be a hero, who fought the British. Now Savarkar is being portrayed as a Hindutva icon and Tipu Sultan a tyrant.
Savarkar is being branded politically and his actions are selectively mentioned. While Savarkar was an activist, an intellectual who was completely against casteism, this aspect of his is rarely highlighted in history books.
Such instances allow the government of the day to polarize the society. History becomes a casualty while manipulating the truth. Historical investigation should be done in a manner to bring out the whole truth.
History (pasts) is the site of ideological battle. The ruling establishment is playing with fire. Truth becomes the casualty under this political ideology slugfest. And as it is said, half-truth is more dangerous than a complete lie.
When truth suffers, the opinion making process suffers, as it is based on selective information. The people tend to fall prey to such divisive tactics by tweaking the history.
The mind of a youngster is like a clean slate, and will now be occupied by the versions of the past that the government wants them to believe in. This causes ideological differences, sows the seeds for a myopic vision of the society around them.
The obsession of the politicians to control the people’s minds by controlling the past is making us into a society always simmering with the fire of communal hatred, which is stoked by the politicians for electoral gains. Due to this, the country is always on a boil.
This kind of manipulation of facts and using it as a tool for propaganda during elections has become a norm. A lot of blood has been spilled on the streets by pitting one community against another. The society at large should reject this approach by voting against divisive forces.
