The dangers of erasing Babri, Gujarat riots, Mughals, Gandhi from NCERT books

“There is no excuse for deceiving children. And when, as must happen in conventional families, they find that their parents have lied, they lose confidence in them and feel justified in lying to them.” The above quote by Bertrand Russell, the 20th century philosopher, alerts us to the dangers of lying to our children — a generation fed on lies will become a generation of liars. The danger is becoming an increasingly palpable one for India given how quickly facts are being snipped from the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks, which has been through four revisions in the last 10 years. Which is why we find that from questioning the now undeniable “Aryan” migration to removing sections on Gujarat riots 2002, the study material for Class 12 political science students seems to encourage an ostrich-like behaviour in students, where the obvious happenings of the past and the present are to be ignored instead of being properly addressed in schools. In fact, the director of NCERT recently stated that students do not need to know about riots, since that is likely to make them “violent and depressed citizens”. Accordingly, not just the Gujarat riots of 2002 but also the Babri mosque demolition as well as the events leading up to the demolition have been dropped from the textbooks. Following the same line of thought, an entire chapter on Partition and the gory riots that came after has also been deleted. It is not just the blatant erasure of history that is unsettling to me as a historian but the infantilisation of students is equally problematic as a teacher. I would assume that India’s educational institutions are safe spaces for students to learn about difficult topics such as violence and communal riots. It is indeed in the classroom that a student can freely debate and discuss such topics and develop critical thinking — the end goal of any education. However, the Indian education system is unfortunately not designed to develop a student’s analytical abilities, it is made to score marks and get a good job. medium111208621 This is perhaps also the definition for NCERT director’s “good citizens”, those who are unable to think for themselves and thus are unable to question governments on their policies, roles and excesses. This is also borne by the obvious saffronisation of NCERT textbooks, particularly that of history. Not only has an entire chapter on Mughals removed from the Class 12 history textbook but also a two-page spread enumerating the achievements of Mughal emperors such as Humayun, Shah Jahan, Akbar, Jahangir and Aurangzeb was also removed. Additionally, the devious role of Hindu extremist organisations in Gandhi’s assassination has also been dropped. But more shockingly, critiques of secularism have been introduced, whereby it is regarded as a tool for ‘minority appeasement’. medium111208961 Forcing narratives While the saga of history textbooks changing with each changing government is not new, the changes in the past decade are more worrisome since they not only withhold facts but also introduce alternate facts or “alt facts”. The false equivalence drawn between Aryan migration and the bogus idea of a continuity between the Indus Valley and Vedic people is one such example. Migration of Steppe Pastoralists from Central Asia, popularly the “Aryans”, is now an established fact courtesy two genetic studies published in the journals, Cell and Science. NCERT textbook for Class 12 claims that an archaeo-genetic study conducted on the Rakhigarhi site rejects Aryan migration when no such study exists. Furthermore, the continuity theory has no basis in fact yet was introduced in the NCERT textbooks as an “alt fact”. Such a troubling trend is compounded when issues that still plague Indian society such as caste discrimination are also removed from textbooks. The Class 6 NCERT history textbook in the chapter "Kingdom, Kings and Early Republic" removes lines on the hereditary varna system, on untouchability as well as on rejection of the varna system. In the same vein, lines detailing how Birsa Munda, the 19th century tribal hero, opposed Christian missionaries and Hindu landlords, had the word “Hindu” removed from it. Even more egregious, the Class 7 textbook has the word caste backgrounds changed to social backgrounds. Removing mentions of caste from NCERT textbooks is not miraculously going to alter India’s caste-ridden history. Caste is still India’s reality and students are bound to be curious about it. Instead of taking this as an opportunity to educate students to understand how caste based discrimination happens, and allowing them to think about ways to mitigate it, the NCERT would rather not expose them to such glaring inequalities. This not only whitewashes eons of caste-based oppression, which is nothing short of criminal but it also does not satiate a student’s natural curiosity to know about realities such as caste. Likely the students will then look elsewhere to get their questions answered and these may not always be the “correct” answers.Also read: Meet Maulana Azad, now erased from NCERT books A new script Apart from discouraging critical thinking, eliminating complexity, and failing to depict India’s plural and syncretic past, the new NCERT textbook changes also make the grievous mistake of either completely removing or downplaying the many social evils that Indian society is currently riddled with. How are we then to teach students how to address these social evils? Removing instances of powerful social movements such as Narmada Bachao Andolan and Bharatiya Kisan Union, further cripples the student’s ability to learn how to agitate and protest the many wrongs in the society. As a teacher, my most basic hope from an education system is to equip students with the knowledge and the ability to make sense of the world around them. And it is here where the current NCERT textbooks fail to do their job.Also read: How NCERT is fuelling Hindu-Muslim culture wars by rewriting history The changes are deliberately made to create a sense of compliance and not inquisition in the students, to ensure that they ask less because they are in general “less aware”. How else can one explain removing contemporary issues of communalism, caste and social agitations from the school curriculum? The problem underpinning these changes is also the nature of the NCERT itself, which is said to be an autonomous body but its history would tell you otherwise. Currently, out of those responsible for restructuring NCERT textbooks at least 24 members have links to the RSS. While the need for an independent body for school curriculum is an obvious one, in India such independence is regularly compromised. The result is a curriculum devoid of developing any critical thinking among students, all in the name of making them “good citizens” who are being taught to turn a blind eye to the many problems of Indian society. Lead illustration: Sandeep Adhwaryu The writer is a Delhi-based historian and professor