Until the lions have their own history, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. The African proverb, recounted by the great Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, is an apt metaphor for the power exercised by dominant groups on knowledge.
School-level social science textbooks, especially the officially designated ones, are perhaps the greatest bearers of this burden. In most countries, including India, history, political science, and sociology textbooks are not only shaded by politics and carry imprints of the regime in office, but their drafting exercises often invite controversy.
India’s National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) was established in 1961 to improve the quality of teaching material. In about a decade, it began publishing model textbooks. Since Independence, the country’s school curriculum has undergone four revisions — in 1975, 1988, 2000 and 2005. In the past 10 years, the NCERT’s modus operandi has changed somewhat.
Instead of creating new content, it has been tweaking the books that first entered the market in 2005. The most substantive of these changes have taken place in the last two years — parts dealing with Gandhi’s assassination, mediaeval history, caste, protest movements and the Emergency have been “pruned”.
The textbook-framing agency’s justifications have ranged from reducing the burden on students after the Covid pandemic to “rationalising” content. This week, the NCERT’s director has again talked about student well-being. Sections dealing with Babri Masjid demolition of 1992 and the 2002 Gujarat riots were shortened or deleted, he has reasoned, because studying these events can “create violent and depressive citizens”.
Before examining such noble concerns, let’s pause a bit and turn our attention to an alternative view of textbooks — one that holds that accounts of the hunt need not always be that of the hunter’s bravery. In the US, for instance, there is nearly a century-long history of African-American educators taking issues with racist ideas of learning so that “the story of the hunt reflects the agony, as well as the bravery of the lion”.
In other words, education is a catalyst of change and empowerment. Pedagogy can prepare students for life. School textbooks further this endeavour in at least two ways. They are a source of basic information required to understand a discipline. The combination of a good teacher and good textbook can encourage students to ask questions, to make sense of society, politics, and culture.
In India, initiatives to write textbooks that serve as tools of critical enquiry have almost always had to navigate a system rarely receptive to criticism. The National Education Policy 2020, with its ostensible aim of nurturing critical thinking, could have furthered a more expansive outlook. Instead, the NCERT’s edits rupture the threads between today’s events with those of the past.
About three decades ago, the Ram Janmabhoomi movement whipped up passions claiming that the Babri Masjid was built after the Mughal emperor’s army destroyed a temple to Lord Rama. The destruction of the 16th century mosque by a politically charged mob on December 6, 1992, triggered violence in several parts of the country which claimed thousands of lives. The BJP used the movement and the demolition of the masjid to propel itself to relevance and power.
On January 22, a temple for Lord Rama was consecrated at the Babri Masjid site, enabled by a Supreme Court ruling, which the tweaked Class XII political science textbook describes as a “classic example of consensus”. It is, however, silent on the Court’s strictures, on the fact that the five-judge bench had also described the destruction of the mosque as “an egregious violation of the rule of law”.
In India, where an overwhelming number of instructors lack autonomy on classroom teaching, the textbook is the ultimate authority on the subject. This means that from now on, in the political science class of most schools, the Babri Masjid is not likely to have a name. It will instead be referred to, after NCERT’s latest change, as “a three-domed structure”. There will be no mention of the lives claimed by the enmity and bitterness in the aftermath of December 6, 1992.
The classroom will also be innocent of one of the worst outbreaks of communal bloodshed in independent India — in Gujarat in February 2002 under the watch of India’s current prime minister and home minister. The Supreme Court has dismissed allegations of “a state-sponsored crime”. Even then, “to create positive citizens,” the textbook has avoided reference to Gujarat 2002.
The NCERT director is right. Textbooks can be springboards for positivity. But to do that, a senior school student, very likely a voter in a year or two, deserves knowledge that can help make connections. He’s also right about the unfortunately large number of riots in the country. That’s why acquainting learners with what happened on December 6, 1992, or Gujarat 2002 could be a stepping stone to fathom how distrust between communities turns into rage — as it did, perhaps, in Delhi in 2020. Who knows: Today’s young adults could tomorrow find better resolutions than envisaged by scholars, politicians and policymakers.
Revisions are, indeed, a global practice. Social science demands rewrites — at times, hunters have to cede place to lions. But the NCERT’s changes have been framed around limiting knowledge. The erasures remind us of the Soviet state airbrushing Leon Trotsky’s photographs after his execution, China’s Communist Party forbidding discussions on Tiananmen Square or the silence of US educators on the extermination of indigenous Americans. A government that places a premium on decolonisation should also keep in mind that the NCERT’s changes are of a piece with the UK’s curricula not acknowledging the Empire’s role in the impoverishment of large parts of the world.
Or are there new hunters today, armed with a shield they call students’ “well-being”?
kaushik.dasgupta@expressindia.com
