Ranjona Banerji: Make history by changing it

A file picture from the Millat Nagar district in Ahmedabad during the 2002 riots RSS scholar Dina Nath Batra wants a reference to nearly 2000 Muslims being killed in the riots in Gujarat to be removed from textbooks File picAFPAfter a welcome break RSS scholar Dina Nath Batra raises his voice again His target is the same school textbooks As a former school teacher and former head of the Vidya Bharati the RSSs education wing Batra understands the importance of early inculcation of bogus facts very well indeed You only have to check your WhatsApp messages email forwards and social media to know the amount of rubbish that floats to the top and even worse the number of people who believe that rubbishThe last time we met him in 2014 Batra had written supplementary textbooks for Gujarat schools which included the usual bleats of the insecure that cars stem cell research and television were all invented in ancient India Added to this the bizarre stories about Swami Vivekananda and Sarvepalli RadhakrishnanNow as head of the Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas of the RSS Batra wants several people words and facts removed from NCERT text books The names include thoughts of Rabindranath Tagore a couplet by Mirza Ghalib and an extract from MF Husains autobiography The words include stanza English and poshaak Urdu All highly offensive stuff as is clear to the naked eyeAlso to be removed a passage from 19thcentury feminist Tarabai Shinde on patriarchy all references to Mughals that show them in a slightly normal light anything that shows the RSS and Hindutva in a bad light a reference to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs apology for the 1984 killing of Sikhs and a sentence that says that nearly 2000 Muslims were killed in the 2002 riots in GujaratBatras earlier triumphs against education were getting academic and mythologist Wendy Doningers book on Hinduism off the shelves and indeed pulped by the publishers and an essay by poet and literary scholar AK Ramanujan off the Delhi University syllabusWe talk a lot about education in India but we rarely bother about what goes into primary and secondary schooling and focus almost exclusively on higher education on jobrelated skills and on marks This practical approach is perhaps understandable when you look at the enormity of the Indian population But it is selfdefeating because our foundations are so weakSchool textbooks have long been fair game for politicians to tinker with as they try to gain political mileage The cost that India has to bear is ignored or more likely no one cares But this environment of alternative facts or in other words lies and ignorance in which we live in spite of all the access to accrued human knowledge at our fingertips points straight to weak or tampered with foundations And that of course starts with schoolsThe RSS objective is clear build up some idea of India as a superpower from a million years ago to now remove all traces of argument or reason or questioning only showcase Hindu achievements portray Muslims as unworthy deny all evidence of discrimination by upper castes Hindus towards everyone else downplay the freedom struggle in which the RSS played no part blank out references to riots in which the RSS or its affiliates played a role In the words of Anil Kothari secretary of the Nyas Several things are baseless biased There is an attempt to insult members of a community there is also appeasement We have found these things objectionableThe intent is not couched or hidden it is there in plain sightThe problem with history is that there are many versions of the victor and the defeated of the rulers and the oppressed of men and of women and so on No one version can be correct which is why as many aspects as possible have to be taught and presented Not knowing provides no benefitsMany years ago I met a historian from Pakistan who was banned from teaching in his own country because he did not agree with the policy to exclude vast swathes of history connected to India from Pakistani textbooks The glory of Pakistan was more important than the story of PakistanIs that the sort of nation we want to become Partial facts masquerading as inspiration and creating a society of ignorant bigots who live their lives on Whatsapp forwards It is a choice only we can make for ourselvesI offer little hope that we will make the right one History is against usmiddays group sports editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance He tweets ClaytonMurzello Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycom