By Chiranjib Haldar
At a recent literature festival, RSS Akhil Bharatiya Prachar Pramukh Sunil Ambekar lauded that many positive changes have been introduced in history textbooks and the epithet ‘the great’ is no longer used to describe Mughal emperor Akbar or Mysore patriarch Tipu Sultan. He reiterated gleefully that though the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has made phenomenal changes in history text books till Class XII, ‘nobody has been removed from these textbooks as the new generation should know their cruel deeds and should also know because of whom we were victimised.’ Some historians have also harped that understanding history through an indigenous lens is essential for a clearer sense of national identity.
The Indian History Congress has claimed that the NCERT modules distort partition history, promoting a communal bias. By portraying the Congress as complicit in the nation’s slicing and exonerating the British in tandem, the NCERT was spreading ‘falsehoods, with a clear communal intent.’ In a resolution adopted unanimously, the History Congress has reprimanded NCERT’s new Partition Horrors Remembrance Day modules and warned that juvenile minds were being fed ‘distorted, polarising history.’ Is it just the fracturing of memory and historiography at loggerheads where versions etched for centuries are being remodeled into a regime’s favourable version? We can witness for ourselves the deliverance of History as a battleground for skirmishes.
We never thought that History would become a battleground of ideologies and narratives. The NCERT modules prepared separately for middle school (class 6 to 8) and senior secondary levels (class 9 to 12), describe Muhammad Ali Jinnah as ‘the culprit of partition’, who demanded it. Congress Party is a willing recipient and Lord Mountbatten as one who formalised and implemented it. They also state that the British ‘tried their best to preserve India as one until the end.’ The Indian History Congress (IHC) opposed to this narrative, arguing that it tainted history and dealt a sledgehammer blow. ‘Turning history completely upside down, the modules hold not only the Muslim League but also the Indian National Congress responsible for the Partition of the country. Quite in tune with the loyalist stance of the communal forces during the freedom struggle, the British colonial rulers are given a clean chit in these modules,’ the IHC resolution underlined vehemently.
Sessions of the Indian History Congress have long been known for partisan, political claptrap and skullduggery. Dignitaries, especially in critical sessions, are carefully chosen, keeping in mind their political leanings and sotto voce questions letting the cat out of the bag. Earlier, letting go of India’s Mughal past had raised a furore among historians and chroniclers. The deleted chapter ‘Kings and Chronicles: the Mughal Courts’ and other themes removed include the portion on Mahatma Gandhi’s life and assassination, Maulana Azad’s contributions, communal riots, caste and gender inequalities and Dalit writings. Denial of these histories purges on our sense of self. Diversity of interpretation has always been behind history slugfests and one needs to introspect Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s sermon ‘…partition swept away the muck, but a little dirt still remains’.
Historians also allege that the modules selectively omit key facts. The two-nation theory propounded by Hindutva icon V.D. Savarkar in 1937, in his presidential address to the Hindu Mahasabha is brushed under the carpet. ‘India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and homogenous nation, but on the contrary, there are two nations in the main, Hindus and Muslims, in India.’ India’s genius was never in purity, but in its alchemy turning diversity into strength. The Mahabharata thrived on moral ambiguity, Ashokan edicts were carved in Greek and Aramaic alongside Brahmi. Our challenge isn’t choosing between Chola or Akbar, Hindi or Tamil, but reclaiming what our childhoods knew instinctively that identity isn’t a checkbox but a kaleidoscope, where light looks truest when fractured through many prisms.
Pedagogy of history is processional, which entails relating to processes instead of detached events. Rajendra Chola and Akbar, both rulers who saw themselves as divine are reduced to political pawns. The Chola who carried the Ganga south is now claimed as either a Tamil hero or a national icon. Akbar, who entwined faiths together through Din-i-Ilahi, is either feted as secular or doomed as despotic. The utmost sardonicism is that neither ever imagined ‘nation building’. We imposed that modern fixation on their stories centuries later. Truth resists simplification, their conquests were brutal and their legacies were complex. But their shared civilisational arc holds the real moral. This isn’t your past versus mine. It’s ours, in all its messy magnificence.
The resolution, passed by the IHC executive committee, further claimed that the portrayal of nationalist leaders as ‘culprits’ was misleading. It is ironical that sectarian communalists are never included in the list of those responsible for Partition. But among the chief ‘culprits’ are said to be the nationalist leaders when the entire spectrum of the national movement, Moderates, Extremists, Gandhians, Congress Socialists, Communists, Revolutionaries all believed that India had a long civilisational history of being able to live together with difference. The Indian National Congress, which since its inception in 1885, struggled relentlessly against religious communal division and Mahatma Gandhi are projected as one of the main perpetrators of partition. Do we call this a travesty of history?
Causation in history is thus a series of sequential interrelated developments and occurrences. Invoking violence of the monarchs in the present is a culture of despising the past rulers which entails shock and vitriol against historical personages in order to divide people in current democracies. Colonial historiography made cautious attempts to deride the Delhi Sultans and Mughals as barbaric and ruthless to whitewash the atrocities and subjugation the British unleashed on the Indian populace. No monarchy is pacific or benign in the true sense and thus Mughal acts of cruelty cannot be isolated from other contemporary rulers who were equally vicious. The ‘chastising’ of the syllabus can be understood as a defamation of Mughal rulers because it tends to focus on xenophobia and religious identity. This may be a flaw because history validates how rulers like Alauddin Khilji or even Akbar manipulated the Sharia (Islamic Law) to their own liking. The fundamental issue is the fallacy of viewing mediaeval dynasties through the prism of Islamism.
While the NCERT text links Partition to subsequent conflicts such as Kashmir and terrorism, historians argue it promotes ‘a hateful polarised future’ instead of a balanced reckoning with the tragedy. Reading pages of history detailing how India was repeatedly invaded and subdued through power and brutality only reinforces a narrative that portrays us as a people meant to be ruled. This does little to help us truly understand or reclaim our past. Most of us refuse this new hopscotch, jumping between squares labeled ‘us’ and ‘them’. The poacher turned gamekeeper conundrum only works when lines blur. Like Tagore’s vision, like our childhood parks, like sufi and jazz strains the real India exists in the spaces between. Our school reunions are one such space where history lives in microcosms.
(The writer is a commentator on society and politics.)
