This interesting post on Desicritics seeks to examine the controveries surrounding the rewriting of, or the politicizing of history textbooks by governments around the world. Diganta, the author of the article digs up several interesting findings related to this controversy. I’m not knowledgeable enough about textbook controversies around the world.

The controversy around Indian history textbooks however, is an area I have observed closely for more than five years.

The controversy actually became a…well, controversy when Arun Shourie’s Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, and Their Fraud was published in 1998.

Related Links: Ashuddo | Book Review on India Star | After Selling Himself in the Flesh Market |

Eminent Historians actually awakened a whole generation of Indians to the fact that accurate history-writing is crucially important for a nation to preserve its faith in itself. The book itself deals with several scandal-worthy episodes in the professional and private lives of a group of historians who had formed a clique and highly recommended each others’ works. These worthies called each other “eminent” historians–hence the title. But that is just by the way.

What is significant is Arun Shourie’s questioning of their credibility as historians fundamentally, much less scholars. The facts that emerge are interesting: we find is that all of these were invariably Marxists, who used Marxism to “interpet” Indian history. None of them had any knowledge of Sanskrit, yet wrote several tomes about Vedic civilization. They whitewashed the brutal record of Islamic invasion and reversed the roles of victim and oppressor. When challenged on factual, they resorted to ad hominem attacks.

Romila Thapar led this group as a sort of leader.

Which is why Diganta’s post both amused and appalled me. Apart from the sheer one-sidedness and gross factual inexactitudes in his post, his research comes across as flimsy:

Historian Romila Thapar pointed out correctly, “it wants to “project a unified, continuous Indian identity where Aryanism, encapsulated in the culture of the Vedas and the upper castes, is the major cultural expression of India.” [Ed: removed some formatting]

No serious scholar will still try to hold on to Aryan Invasion, Aryanism, etc except “historians” like Romila Thapar. One can even excuse Thapar because the Aryan Invasion Theory is the foundation her whole career rests upon. And that is exactly why ad hominems prove handy: any talk dismissing the Aryan Invasion/migration can be easily beaten with the “BJP/RSS-agent” stick. That is exactly what Diganta does in his (her?) post, too.

Related Links on Aryan Invasion: Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate | Aryans and Ideology | The Aryan Invasion Theory and Scholarship

Diganta states that he (she?) was

…involved in a research project on textbooks worldwide and the ways in which they are taught in schools.

One would perhaps understand if this post was made by a layman with limited access to resources but not to a researcher. It seems to me that Diganta has focussed on just on one side of the issue. This glaring omission is evident in his assertions about the BJP, and Romila Thapar. If I let that go, I find it hard to accept Diganta’s credentials as a researcher in the Shankaramurthy debate (with which he opens the post). One, because it is very recent and two, because the debate revealed the true picture of Tipu Sultan and the politics of history surrounding him. I refer to novelist S.L Bhyrappa’s detailed reaffirmation of Tipu as a mass-murdering religious bigot that appeared in the Kannada daily, Vijaya Karnataka on Oct 8, 2006. You can read a translation of the article here.

Related Links on Tipu Sultan: Tippoo loved by his people | How Tippoo fought for freedom | Tippoo’s humane treatment of non-Muslim prisoners |

Diganta further writes about Rajasthan and Gujarat (sic):

For a little humourous touch, a Rajasthani textbookcompared a housewife to a donkey… [and] … The best of them all was not surprisingly a Gujarat textbook promoting Nazis and went onto include a chapter on the “internal achievements of Nazism”! It rubbishes the Holocaust and projects Hitler as a true leader!

I’ll assume Diganta has done his (her?) homework on the Rajasthani and Gujarat textbooks. Which makes me want to use the same logic, used above (BJP rewriting textbooks to gain political mileage) and ask Diganta why he (she?) chose only Rajasthan and Gujarat? Because they’re BJP-ruled states? And why does Diganta cite only these examples and not other books which have proven factual inaccuracies? For example, books written by Romila Thapar and company glorify Aurangzeb as a forerunner of modern secularism; his acts of unprecedented temple destruction are either whitewashed or suppressed, that Ghazni Mohammed’s temple destruction is justified in terms of economic rationale… I can cite several instances but these will suffice.

All these lead to the inevitable conclusion that either Diganta’s credentials as a researcher are suspect, or he operates from a biased agenda.

The sad fact of life is that governments all over the world attempt to rewrite textbooks; which is what happens if you politicise everything. This applies not just to history. Stalinist Russia tried to teach science (genetics to be precise) in terms of Marxism–it was rewarded with a Lysenko. This is the sorry consequence of a system which fails to maintain a respectable distance from education.

On the other hand, we can learn something from countries, which rectify errors when they’re found. Several US textbooks now admit that Christopher Columbus was really a murdering pirate. They don’t brush that uncomfortable fact under the mat under the illusion that it is against secularism.

What does this attitude tell us?

Cross-posted on Desicritics.

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