If you can’t make history, then just make it up. This strategy, that India’s political parties relish exercising when in power to further their ideological footprints, is a textbook case of what ails the country’s education system.
Many SST School books made by Government Of India are rewritten. Like Class 10 History Book, The involvement of Muslims is a lot in our Freedom. But still, they aren't mentioned in school books.
Verma says other than “saffronisation” of textbooks, school curriculum under 15 years of the BJP’s Dr Raman Singh had many howlers and inaccuracies that require correction. For instance, a class 10 social science textbook published by the Chhattisgarh Board of Secondary Education, had observed that unemployment spiralled after Independence as more women started working.
Representational image. Getty images
“Before Independence, few women were employed. But today, women are employed in all sectors that has increased the proportion of unemployment among men,” it read.
Baghel and Verma say they need to find a way on tackling the tricky issue of RSS-affiliated private school chains like Vidya Bharati having their own curriculum. Samples from Sanskriti Gyan Pariksha, or cultural knowledge, go like this:
Q) Which Mughal invader destroyed the Ram temple in 1582?
A) Babur
Q) From 1582 till 1992, how many Ram bhakts sacrificed their lives to liberate the temple?
A) 3,50,000
In Jaipur, chief minister Ashok Gehlot has asked his education minister Govind Singh Dotasra to “restore” roles of national icons such as Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. The minister, in turn, has directed the education department officials to prepare a status report to enlist revisions made in the textbooks during the Vasundhara Raje regime.
"Education is political,” said renowned educationist Anil Sadgopal. “Each time a BJP government was formed in the Indian Union, an attempt was made to give an ideological slant to education. As a consequence, each time a Congress, Left or centrist regime comes to power, a renewed effort has to be made for a course correction.” Professor Sadgopal, who was part of the Central Advisory Board of Education of the Union government, said frequent changes in textbooks create confusion and chaos for students.
Among the three formerly BJP-ruled states, Rajasthan had perhaps taken the most ‘creative liberties’ to reinforce a Hindutva revivalist agenda and attempt to erase Muslim identity. In history textbooks, for instance, Prithviraj Chauhan is called the king “who defeated Bharat’s invader, Mohammad Ghori several times”. In February 2017, state education minister Vasudev Devnani had supported a proposal to teach children an alternative version of history. He had insisted that in the battle of Haldighati in 1576, Maharana Pratap defeated Mughal emperor Akbar, and not the other way round, as the history books suggest. “We have maintained all along that Maharana Pratap has not been accorded his due place in history,” Devnani had boasted. Even the seemingly innocuous title of a chapter Ajmer ki Sair was changed to Ajmer ki Yatra.
In a class 8 book, the practice of ‘Sati’ was described in glowing terms. A Rajasthan school textbook referred to the Indus Valley Civilisation as the Sindhu Ghati Culture. And Aryans were described as “natives” of India, though credible historians say that Aryans had migrated to India.
In May 2016, the Vasundhara Raje government had dropped Jawaharlal Nehru’s name as the country’s first prime minister from class 8 textbooks. Sachin Pilot, who was heading the Congress unit in Rajasthan, had reacted sharply to it and told the media: “This is taking saffronisation to the next level. The BJP’s ideological bankruptcy has stooped to such levels that it is erasing the country’s first prime minister from school history books. But they should know that this does not mean they can erase Nehru’s memory and his contribution from the nation’s collective conscience.”
This needs to be changed, The Government should not interfere in Education. We should be taught in the same way how it happened and not how our Government wanted.