- Oct 17, 2011
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The Taj Mahal is one of India’s most iconic sites. But this year, millions of students across India won’t delve into the Mughal Empire that constructed it.
Instead, Indian students have new textbooks that have been purged of details on the nation’s Muslim history, its caste discrimination and more, in what critics say warps the country’s rich history in an attempt to further Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda.
The textbooks omit references to the 2002 riots in the Indian state of Gujarat, where hundreds of Indian-Muslims were killed while Modi was the state’s leader. Details on India’s caste system, caste discrimination and minority communities are missing.
Passages that connected Hindu extremism to independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi’s assassination were pruned as well, such as the 12th grade political science textbook line: Gandhi’s “steadfast pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity provoked Hindu extremists so much that they made several attempts to assassinate [him].”
“This is actually an intensification of something that’s been happening. It is a way of ‘Hindu-izing’ South Asian history and ignoring all other kinds of diverse plural histories that have existed,” he said.
BJP leaders are applauding the move, tweeting that it was “a great decision,” and referring to the prior content on India’s Mughal Empire as a “false history.”
“At the heart of the pattern is a fear that history-learning by students will produce rational or progressive citizens,” Chattopadhyaya said. “Both the U.S. and India have pretty complex, very challenging histories. The job as a historian or history teacher is to convey the complexity and the challenges to the student, and I think the right in the U.S. and the right in India do not want critical-thinking, rational-thinking, progressive students, because that is not something they think is valuable to a right wing agenda.”
Instead, Indian students have new textbooks that have been purged of details on the nation’s Muslim history, its caste discrimination and more, in what critics say warps the country’s rich history in an attempt to further Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda.
The textbooks omit references to the 2002 riots in the Indian state of Gujarat, where hundreds of Indian-Muslims were killed while Modi was the state’s leader. Details on India’s caste system, caste discrimination and minority communities are missing.
Passages that connected Hindu extremism to independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi’s assassination were pruned as well, such as the 12th grade political science textbook line: Gandhi’s “steadfast pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity provoked Hindu extremists so much that they made several attempts to assassinate [him].”
“This is actually an intensification of something that’s been happening. It is a way of ‘Hindu-izing’ South Asian history and ignoring all other kinds of diverse plural histories that have existed,” he said.
BJP leaders are applauding the move, tweeting that it was “a great decision,” and referring to the prior content on India’s Mughal Empire as a “false history.”
“At the heart of the pattern is a fear that history-learning by students will produce rational or progressive citizens,” Chattopadhyaya said. “Both the U.S. and India have pretty complex, very challenging histories. The job as a historian or history teacher is to convey the complexity and the challenges to the student, and I think the right in the U.S. and the right in India do not want critical-thinking, rational-thinking, progressive students, because that is not something they think is valuable to a right wing agenda.”
