The Hindu : 'Index of errors' in history textbooks

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jun 30, 2003

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'Index of errors' in history textbooks

By Anita Joshua

NEW DELHI JUNE 29. The Indian History Congress (IHC) feels that mere removal of linguistic and factual errors from the new history textbooks of the National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) would not convert them into acceptable learning tools for the students.

Six months after the IHC during its 63rd annual session in Amritsar decided to examine the history textbooks brought out over the past year, the committee appointed for the purpose has come out with a detailed 155-page "index of errors."

Approved by the IHC executive committee, it will soon be printed to serve as a "ready-reckoner for teachers and students.''

Four books — Makkhan Lal's "India and the World'' for Class VI and "Ancient India" for Class XI, Meenakshi Jain's "Medieval India" for Class XI, and Hari Om's "Contemporary India'' for Class IX — were put under the IHC scanner, and it was noted that they "uniformly suffer from similar defects.''

According to the report, " the language is poor with many spelling and grammatical errors, infelicitous expressions and obscurities, which is a primary error that any school textbook must avoid.''

While some errors were "mere products of ignorance,'' historians Irfan Habib, Suvira Jaiswal and Aditya Mukherjee — entrusted with the task of examining the books— were one in stating that many of the mistakes stem "from an anxiety to present history with a very strong chauvinistic and communal bias.''

In the text on ancient India, the effort, as per the report, has been to project India as the original home of the Aryans and the "Vedic civilisation" as the sole fountainhead of the Indian civilisation with the Vedic age being credited for "all substantive scientific discoveries from zero and decimal placement of numerals to heliocentric astronomy''; the Hindu religion as superior to other religions; and the caste system as having only `rigidities' and not inequities so much so that Dalits find no mention.

In the medieval text, the report found the focus to be on highlighting that "Muslims brought little new to India except oppression and temple-destruction.'' Further, the report states that "all dark corners are thoroughly presented in the narrative of medieval India while they are overlooked in that of ancient India,'' and the rise of a composite culture "ignored or downplayed.''

As for the modern India textbook, "Muslim separatism is the great bugbear while Hindi communalism is not even mentioned and the Hindu Mahasabha leaders appear uniformly as great patriots.'' Further, the growth of modern values of democracy, gender equality, secularism, welfare state, ... is "neglected or passed over in silence.''

Besides, "there is little or nothing on the Indian social reformers like Ram Mohan Roy, Keshav Chandra Sen, Jotiba Phule and even B. R. Ambedkar'' and "the mainstream secular and democratic elements in the national movement were unimportant or mere obstacles to the growth of Cultural Nationalism.''

"Harsh words are used for the moderates, there is a deliberate effort to either ignore or present in unfavourable light Jawaharlal Nehru and also the Left, especially the Communists''; the historians noted.

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