As part of a series of texts on what is called the ‘Hindu Nationalist Movement’, and in response to changes in school curriculum by the NCERT, here’s an extract on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s influence on school education, particularly the teaching of history, from a book by Aditya Mukherjee, Mridula Mukherjee and Sucheta Mahajan.

 

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This is part of a series of texts connected with what is today referred to as the ‘Hindu Nationalist Movement’. We will be publishing credible texts documenting the history of this movement from various (often differing) perspectives.

 

The following text is the first chapter, titled ‘RSS and School Education’ from the book RSS, School Texts and the Murder of Mahatma Gandhi, written by Aditya Mukherjee, Mridula Mukherjee and Sucheta Mahajan (hereinafter referred to as “the authors”), and published in 2008.

 

If, over the past nine years, there have been innumerable news reports about school curriculum being changed in accordance with the ruling dispensation’s ideology, the recent ‘rationalisation’ of school syllabus by the NCERT, resulting in the removal of content pertaining to Mughal India, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s assassination and the history of caste from history textbooks, represents a flashpoint of sorts to some. However, none of this, not even the omissions, is new. This text is an introduction to the history of such occurrences, and the process behind them, before 2014.

 

In a foreword of the book, also available here below, historian Bipan Chandra talks about “communal ideology” constituting the “core of the communal project” and goes on to state how this “communal ideology” is instilled in young minds via school history textbooks that present a “distorted, often totally false and imagined version of history which corroborates the negative and hostile image of other religious communities that the RSS wants to promote”. He also disagrees with the description of “Hindu nationalists” for those whom he (and Indian nationalists during the freedom movement) would simply call “communalists”.

 

The chapter here below begins with how the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) combine has been communicating its ideology to young minds through, “tens of thousands of its Saraswati Shishu Mandirs and Vidya Bharati primary and secondary schools, and through its Shakhas (morning neighbourhood assemblies). The essence of the narrative is that religious communities other than Hindus, particularly Muslims and Christians, are foreigners in India, who are disloyal and unworthy of trust. As evidence, the authors present the findings of the National Steering Committee on Textbook Evaluation consisting of widely respected eminent scholars (names in text below) who considered NCERT (National Council of Education, Research and Training) reports on textbooks brought out by the Saraswati Shishu Mandir Prakashan and Vidya Bharati publications in 1993 and 1994.

 

On the Saraswati Shishu Mandir Prakashan publications the committee said:

 

“ …the totally uninhibited way historical ‘facts’ have been fabricated are designed to promote not patriotism, as is claimed but totally blind bigotry and fanaticism… These textbooks should not be allowed to be used in schools.” 

 

On Vidya Bharati publications it said:

 

“ …much of the material in the so–called Sanskrit Jnan series is ‘designed to promote bigotry and religious fanaticism in the name of inculcating knowledge of culture in the young generation’. The Committee is of the view that the Vidya Bharati schools are being clearly used for the dissemination of blatantly communal ideas… The state governments may also consider appropriate steps to stop the publication of these materials which foment communal hatred and disallow the examinations which are held by the Vidya Bharati Sansthan on the basis of these materials.”

 

The authors then present extracts from the textbooks which comprise unverified historical interpretations as well as misstatements of fact. A consistent trope is the superiority and sway of the ancient Indian civilization over the rest of the world. For instance, Buddhism, under Ashoka, and its key tenet of non violence is held responsible for the cowardice and weakness in the North Indian kingdom. India is said to be the most ancient country in the world and Kshatriyas, the ancestors of the ancient Chinese. Indians were the first people to inhabit China and Iran and light the light of culture in China. Valmiki’s Ramayana, “the great work of the Aryans”, influenced Greece and Homer and the languages of the indigenous North Americans were derived from ancient Indian languages.

 

The second and most important trope is the portrayal of Muslims as marauders and invaders who sought the destruction of the great Indian civilization. To this end Islam is portrayed monochromatically as a force wrought upon India via invaders “with a sword in one hand and the Quran in the other.” The destruction of houses of prayer, universities, libraries and religious books followed. “Mothers and sisters were humiliated (this was in a textbook for Class IV students).” Delhi’s Qutb Minar is said to have actually been built by Samudragupta and its real name is held to be “Vishnu Stambha”. A Class V textbook claims that with Hindus forcibly being made Musalmans “on the point of a sword”, “the struggle for freedom became a religious war”.

 

The authors also write that the RSS founder Keshav Baliram Hedgewar and his successor Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar get pride of place in this text book which says: “These Swayamsevaks removed the evils which hundreds of years of slavery had given… This Sangathan became an object of pride for the country.”

 

Many booklets have a section on ‘Sri Ramjanmabhumi’ which presents “propaganda in the form of catechisms to be memorized by the faithful as absolute truths”, as per the authors. They teach that the first “temple on the birthplace of Shri Ram in Ayodhya” was built by “Shri Ram’s son Maharaja Kush”, destroyed by “Menander of Greece (150 BC)”. Then the “present temple” was built by Maharaja Chandragupta Vikramaditya, invaded by Mahmud Ghazni’s nephew Salar Masud and destroyed by Babur. Foreigners have “invaded Sri Ramjanmabhumi” “seventy-seven times” and “three lakh fifty thousand” devotees have laid down their life to “liberate Rama temple from AD 1528 to AD 1914”. And so on and so forth. The narrative on the movement extends to more recent times, spelling out significant dates and with questions like: “Mention the names of the young boys who laid down their life while unfurling the saffron flag (on the Ramjanmabhumi).”

 

Islam is also vilified in various other ways and, similarly, Christian missionaries are depicted as “engaged in fostering anti-national tendencies” .

 

The NCERT report on these textbooks says: “Much of this material is designed to promote bigotry and religious fanaticism in the name of inculcating knowledge of culture in the young generation. That this material is being used as teaching and examination material in schools which, presumably, have been accorded recognition should be a matter of serious concern.”

 

The authors then trace the growth of the schools that teach these textbooks. The first Saraswati Shishu Mandir was set up in 1952. By the time the Vidya Bharati was established in 1977, there were “about 500 RSS schools and 20,000 students”. By 1993-94, after encouragement from BJP governments in states, Vidya Bharati ran 6000 schools with 40,000 teachers and 1,200,000 students. BJP came to power in the centre in 1998. In 1999 there were 14,000 Vidya Bharati schools with 80,000 teachers and 18,00,000 students. In 1998, the UP state government, run by BJP’s Kalyan Singh, “sought to link all state run schools to the RSS shakha”. It became “compulsory to involve RSS pracharaks for imparting naitik shiksha or moral education”.

 

To emphasize the RSS’ influence on state education bodies, the authors then cite a passage from the Gujarat State Social Studies text for class IX: “ …apart from the Muslims even the Christians, Parsees and other foreigners are also recognised as the minority communities. In most of the states the Hindus are in minority and Muslims, Christians and Sikhs are in majority in these respective states.”; and another passage from a class X text for the same subject which glorifies Hitler’s achievements while seemingly staying silent on the holocaust.

 

This leads on to a new trend the authors bring to light: “the attempt to use government institutions and state power to attack scientific and secular history and historians and promote an obscurantist, backward looking, communal historiography through state sponsored institutions at the national level.” They recollect 1977 when the Jan Sangh merged with the Janata Party which came to power and when, “an effort was made to ban school textbooks which were published by NCERT who had persuaded some of the tallest historians of India, like Romila Thapar, R.S. Sharma, Satish Chandra and Bipan Chandra to write. A country wide protest including from within the NCERT and other autonomous institutions put paid to this attempt.”

 

By the 1990s, however, “the lessons of the previous experience were well learnt by the BJP.” The party appointed “those who were willing to serve as its instruments as Directors, Chairpersons and Council members” in educational bodies like the NCERT, UGC (University Grants Commission), ICSSR (Indian Council of Social Science Research) and the ICHR (Indian Council of Historical Research).

 

A new curriculum was arrived at, and NCERT history books written by luminary historians like Romila Thapar, R.S. Sharma and Satish Chandra were deleted without widespread consultation despite the fact that education is a concurrent subject and state education ministers have a say in these matters.

 

These were coupled with attacks – verbal and in print – against those who “did not agree with the kind of interpretations or fabrications promoted by the Hindu Communal forces”. Such people, in academia and media, were called “anti-Hindu-Euro-Indians” and ‘intellectual terrorists’, far more dangerous than ‘cross-border terrorists’.

 

Furthermore, the NCERT director and Education minister asserted that religious heads and experts would be ‘consulted’ and any material “connected with religion” would be “cleared” by them before their incorporation in the textbooks.

 

The authors write that, “the communal attempts to distort Indian history and to give it a narrow sectarian colour in the name of instilling patriotism… in fact obfuscates the truly remarkable aspects of India’s past of which any society in the world could be justifiably proud.” They quote Amartya Sen and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, to point to the fact that India has for long had and retained, “persistent expressions of heterodoxies” and a “tradition of skepticism” and that has contributed to scientific and mathematical advancement.

 

But to return to the history at hand, in 2002 – 2003, the authors note that the NCERT textbooks written by eminent scholars (from which passages were deleted) were finally withdrawn altogether and replaced by books written by those “whose chief qualification was their closeness to the Sangh ideology and not recognized expertise in their field of study”.

 

In 2003, a volume called History in the New NCERT Text Books: A Report and an Index of Errors, written by Irfan Habib, Suvira Jaiswal and Aditya Mukherjee, was published by the Indian History Congress (an over 80 year old national organisation of professional historians). Quoting from this volume, a summary of these errors have been presented by the authors in point form. These include holding India to be the home of the Aryans, with no concern being shown for the origins of those speaking Dravidian and Austro-Asiatic languages. The unhistorical dating of the Vedic Civilization (supposedly the fountainhead of Indian civilization) to which all substantial scientific discoveries are assigned.

 

Buddhism and Jainism are said to have emerged out of the Upanishads and Hindus alone are held to have been true patriots, especially in the modern freedom struggle.

 

The caste system, is shown as having been “fine” in the beginning only developed “rigidities” in later stages. Dalits, in effect, are excluded from these history books.

 

Abductions of women are seen as a legitimate form of marriage and a neutral and even admiring gaze is directed towards practices such as sati or jauhar in ancient and medieval India.

 

Foreigners are portrayed as having taught nothing to Indians and Muslims as having brought little other than oppression and temple-destruction. Dark corners are peered into in medieval India and overlooked in ancient India.

 

The idea of a composite Indian culture is ignored or downplayed.

 

In modern India while “Muslim separatism” is emphasised, Hindu communalism goes unmentioned and the Hindu Mahasabha leaders are projected as patriots.

 

Values such as democracy, gender equality, secularism and welfare state are downplayed or passed over, as is the work of reformers like Ram Mohan Roy, Keshav Chandra Sen, Jyotiba Phule and even BR Ambedkar. And finally, there’s a deliberate attempt to present Jawaharlal Nehru and the Communists in an unfavourable light. The same goes for the Moderates and secular and democratic elements in the National Movement who are presented as insignificant or obstructions for the growth of (Hindu) “Cultural Nationalism”.

 

The volume concludes: “These textbooks are therefore beyond the realm of salvage, and they need to be withdrawn altogether.”

 

“There is an uncanny similarity between the distortions in these NCERT books and those produced by the RSS Shishu Mandirs and Vidya Bharati and the ideas of the RSS/Hindu communal ideologues Golwalkar, Hedgewar and Savarkar,” the authors write. “The distrust of minorities, particularly Muslims, the insistence that the Aryans originated in India and that the Vedic civilization predated any other in India and was superior to other civilizations and sometimes their creator, etc., are constant motifs throughout.”

 

To end, the authors Mukherjee, Mukherjee and Mahajan point to the underplaying of “the role of the Mahatma and completely ignoring the role of the Hindu communal forces in the elimination of perhaps the greatest person to walk the earth in the 20^th century”. In the first edition of Hari Om’s ‘Contemporary India’ for Class X, Gandhi’s assassination wasn’t even mentioned.

 

Upon a furore, after this fact, a reprint edition inserted this bare sentence:

 

“Gandhiji’s efforts to bring peace and harmony in society came to a sudden and tragic end due to his assassination by Nathuram Godse on January 30 1948, in Delhi while Gandhiji was on his way to attend a prayer meeting.” (p. 57)

 

 

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Foreword by Bipan Chandra

 

During the election campaign for the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly in April 2007, it was found that some audio-visual CDs were being circulated with the intention of spreading vicious communal poison. It was vicious enough for the Election Commission to order the Uttar Pradesh Government to lodge an FIR with the police against several BJP functionaries including the national president of the party, Rajnath Singh. The BJP typically denied responsibility for it (the book shows how the Hindu communalist from its very inception presented a sharp contrast to the nationalists in this respect, in that, unlike the latter, they rarely owned up when caught on the wrong side of the law). The CDs, for example, show how Muslims pretending to be Hindus acquire cows from unsuspecting Hindus and slaughter them mercilessly (elaborate footages showing profuse bleeding from the throat of the animal) and how Muslim boys abduct Hindu girls by deceit and forcibly convert them. They warn that while Hindus produce two children, Muslims would marry five times and produce a litter of 35 pups (pillas) and make this country into an Islamic state (see The Hindu, 7 April 2007, for a detailed account of the CDs).

 

This episode drives home a shocking truth: sixty years after independence vicious communal propaganda continues to spread its poison in large parts of the country. The communal forces (both majority and minority communalisms) in the colonial period acted as a major bulwark against Indian nationalism and now seriously threaten the nature of the independent state based on the values of the national movement; values such as secularism and democracy.

 

This book highlights some critical aspects of the Hindu or majority communal project. The book is divided into three parts. Part I focuses on the attempt by the Rashtriya Sevak Sangh (RSS) to promote communal ideology by attempting to poison the minds of children through school textbooks. Communal ideology constitutes the core of the communal project. Once society has been converted to a communal way of thinking by spreading communal ideology, the communalization of state institutions such as the legislature, bureaucracy, police and educational institutions follow and so does communal violence characterized by riots and even genocide.

 

The CDs, for example, show how Muslims pretending to be Hindus acquire cows from unsuspecting Hindus and slaughter them mercilessly (elaborate footages showing profuse bleeding from the throat of the animal) and how Muslim boys abduct Hindu girls by deceit and forcibly convert them.

 

The RSS recognizes this fact and therefore gives its ideological work the utmost importance. This book recognises this and brings before us how the RSS through school textbooks creates hatred towards other religious communities in young and impressionable minds. It shows how the effort is made chiefly by promoting a distorted, often totally false and imagined version of history which corroborates the negative and hostile image of other religious communities that the RSS wants to promote. This version is then presented to young minds as historically proven fact. The book also points out how no civilised society any longer tolerates spreading of prejudices like that of racism (communalism is akin to racism) among school children, though in India it is still rampant.

 

Communal ideology constitutes the core of the communal project. Once society has been converted to a communal way of thinking by spreading communal ideology, the communalization of state institutions such as the legislature, bureaucracy, police and educational institutions follow and so does communal violence characterized by riots and even genocide.

 

In Part II the book focuses on the role of the Sangh combine (the authors correctly do not use the description ‘Sangh parivar’) in the murder of Mahatma Gandhi. This is done partly because Gandhi’s assassination symbolises the ‘murder’ of the values of the India National Movement of which the Mahatma was the greatest adherent and populariser. Partly, Gandhi’s assassination not only shows the extreme consequences of the Sangh type of activity but also provides a very good example of the mode of functioning of the RSS. It, for example, shows how vicious ideological propaganda indulged in by the Sangh combine prepared the ground for the murder, making the issue of who actually pulled the trigger of lesser importance. It shows the fascist mentality promoted by the combine where the method of dealing with opposition was readily ‘elimination’. It underlines the contrast between Gandhiji and the Sangh combine where the latter legitimized any means for the achievement of their ends whereas Gandhiji was convinced that no good can be born of evil means. It shows how duplicity and lies are resorted to habitually by the Sangh combine. It shows how this communalist strand, in sharp contrast to the Indian nationalists, refused to accept responsibility for their actions and in fact readily disowned their actions in order to avoid punishment. In fact, often, in order to achieve certain immediate benefits they hypocritically pretended to value the very objects of their hatred. After all let us not forget that the descendants of the  Sangh combine which masterminded Gandhi’s murder and which was viscerally anti-communist had no hesitation in trying to pass themselves off as ‘Gandhian Socialists’ (this is how the BJP described itself at the early stages of its formation in the 1980s) a few decades later.

 

Part III of the book analyses the basic elements of the Hindu communal ideology, as propounded by some of its founders like Savarkar and Golwalkar, which we see reflected in all the activities of the Sangh combine, including in the ideological propaganda attempted through school education. It is shown here how the Hindu communalist ideologues not only, by definition, exclude the non-Hindus from their conception of the Indian nation but cast them in the image of anti-nationalists and therefore objects of hatred. They also glorify Hitler and the fascist methods used by the Nazis to annihilate the Jews are held up as an example of what the Hindus could do to the Muslims. Further, it shows how the Hindu communalists (who in practice remained as loyalist as the minority communalists) tried to masquerade as nationalists. They changed the very definition of nationalism (seeing it primarily as a fight against Islam) so that they looked like nationalists and the actual nationalists (who swore by Hindu-Muslim unity and the centrality of the struggle against colonialism) looked like the enemies of the people.

 

In fact it is disturbing that in recent years many well meaning secular people have inadvertently begun to accept the Hindu communalists’ description of themselves as ‘Hindu nationalists’. Many secular scholars and a substantial section of the media now refers to them as ‘Hindu nationalists’, a description scrupulously avoided by the nearly hundred year long Indian national movement. The Indian nationalists referred to them as communalists. In a multi-religious society like India the very term Hindu nationalism (or for that matter any nationalism linked to a particular religion) is a contradiction in terms. Such a nationalism would by definition exclude other religious communities from the nation and thus inevitably push towards partition of the nation or expulsion, if not annihilation, of the other communities.

 

In sum, the book brings home to us in a dramatic manner the great threat communalism poses to our society. The defeat of the communalists in the 2004 general elections provided the secular forces with a historic opportunity to combat communalism and to restore the “civilisational values of the freedom struggle” which were getting severely eroded. To the extent that this opportunity is not being used on a war footing, to the extent that thousands of RSS schools can still spread communal poison and elections can be routinely conducted with communally inflammable material, to the extent secular parties for the sake of short term electoral advantage turn a blind eye to or even cooperate with communal forces, it suggests full justice is not being done to this historic opportunity.

 

 In fact it is disturbing that in recent years many well meaning secular people have inadvertently begun to accept the Hindu communalists’ description of themselves as ‘Hindu nationalists’. Many secular scholars and a substantial section of the media now refers to them as ‘Hindu nationalists’, a description scrupulously avoided by the nearly hundred year long Indian national movement. The Indian nationalists referred to them as communalists.

 

This book is an urgent wake up call. History has taught us the bitter costs of such missed opportunities which have to be paid by several generations.

 

 

Bipan Chandra

 

 

 

 

RSS and School Education

 

The values of democracy, civil liberties, secularism, equality of all citizens irrespective of religion, caste, region or gender, which the Indian people had fought for in the course of their national liberation struggle against colonialism, and had proudly nurtured for over half a century after independence, are today under severe threat. The civilisational values of the freedom struggle which got enshrined in our constitution are today threatened by communal forces, which had not only not participated in the struggle against colonialism but had increasingly emerged as its chief prop or ally.

 

The loyalist role of the Muslim League representing Muslim communalism is quite well known and generally accepted. However, the fact that the Hindu communalist played the same loyalist role is often overshadowed as the representatives of majority communalism tend to masquerade as nationalists just as the minority communalists resort to separatism. Both the communalisms however fed on each other and apart from playing a pro-British, loyalist role in the colonial period they seriously endanger the values of secularism, democracy and national interest as envisaged by our national movement in Independent India.

 

This book focuses on the threat posed by the Hindu communal project.

 

The communal challenge, which has been there since virtually the rise of modern nationalism itself, has in recent years acquired monstrous proportions with the communal forces coming to power in several states and even in the centre. We are now witness to a situation where the communal forces have spread the tentacles of their hate ideology at the grass roots level even among children and in various state apparatuses such as the bureaucracy, police, media, the education system and even the judiciary.

 

 

 

 

The Sangh combine or cohorts (Parivar or family connotes a decent, humane value and cannot be associated with organizations that promote hatred and murder) led by the RSS have been very clear that communalism could establish its stranglehold only if communal ideology was spread effectively. Hence it is in the ideological sphere that they have focused their maximum efforts. What better place to start than by poisoning the tender formative minds of young children with hatred and distrust about other (non- Hindu) communities. For many years now, the RSS, for example, has through tens of thousands of its Saraswati Shishu Mandirs and Vidya Bharati primary and secondary schools, and through its Shakhas, undertaken this project. Part of the hate project is to portray all communities other than the Hindus as foreigners in India, who are disloyal and unworthy of trust. Particularly, the Muslims, whom the RSS founder, Hedgewar, described as “hissing Yavana snakes” (C.P. Bhishikar. Keshav: Sangh Nirmata, Suruchi Sahitya Prakashan, New Delhi, 1979, p. 41), had to be put in place or they were to face extinction become “dead as a dodo” (Organiser, 4 January, 1970).  It is claimed that Ashoka’s advocacy of Ahimsa (non-violence) and the growing influence of Buddhism spread “cowardice” and that the struggle for India’s freedom became a “religious war” against Muslims, and so on. It is not surprising that Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of non-violence and the builder of the freedom struggle as a common struggle of the Hindus and Muslims against British imperialism, got described in the RSS lexicon as a ‘Dushtatma’ who had to be eliminated. In recent years with the active use of state power the RSS has succeeded in spreading this hate agenda to unprecedented levels in the name of spreading education and culture.

 

 

For many years now, the RSS, for example, has through tens of thousands of its Saraswati Shishu Mandirs and Vidya Bharati primary and secondary schools, and through its Shakhas, undertaken this project. Part of the hate project is to portray all communities other than the Hindus as foreigners in India, who are disloyal and unworthy of trust.

 

 

It is this which has made it absolutely imperative that the secular formations take on the communal challenge on a war footing. It becomes the duty of the government to ensure that in no school is a child exposed to communal prejudice and hatred. Keeping the communal bias out of school textbooks does not amount to just introducing another historiographic or political bias of the Left or Right variety. It is a civilizational and constitutional imperative. Communalism is akin to racism and anti-Semitism. No civilized society in the world today would allow racist prejudice to be propagated at the popular and particularly at the young child’s level. The role of the Government is not only to provide the funds for building the educational infrastructure and to remain non-interventionist as far as the curriculum is concerned. It has to ensure that the basic civilisational values, which our freedom fighters fought for and which are enshrined in our constitution, are not violated. We must remember that Gandhiji, the fiercest defender of and fighter for civil liberties, made one exception. He believed that state power should be used to ban “all literature calculated to promote communalism, fanaticism …and hatred…” (Harijan, 2 May, 1936).

 

The costs of not doing so are very high. As studies of the post-Godhra Gujarat experience have shown, it was the poisoning of the minds of schoolchildren that had been going on for nearly two decades, which made the subsequent human carnage almost inevitable (Secular activist and editor of the journal Communalism Combat, Teesta Setalvad, has been making this point repeatedly). (The communal penetration of the government, bureaucracy, police, media and even the judiciary enabled this carnage to take on monstrous proportions.) Let us not  forget that the communal ideology promoted by Murli Manohar Joshi, his lieutenant J.S. Rajput and the hate textbook writers makes it possible for the Modis and the Togadias to successfully mobilize fascist mobs which revel in pulling down places of worship or dismembering helpless women and children.

 

 

Keeping the communal bias out of school textbooks does not amount to just introducing another historiographic or political bias of the Left or Right variety. It is a civilizational and constitutional imperative. Communalism is akin to racism and anti-Semitism. No civilized society in the world today would allow racist prejudice to be propagated at the popular and particularly at the young child’s level.

 

 

The next section will try to outline some aspects of the content of the divisive hate ideology of the RSS and the strategy of spreading it through the education system. The influence of the Saraswati Shishu Mandirs, the first of which was started in 1952 in the presence of the RSS chief, Golwalkar, has now multiplied manifold.  It will be in order, to first examine what these ‘Mandirs’ or ‘temples’ of learning dish out in the name of education.

 

A National Steering Committee on Textbook Evaluation consisting of widely respected eminent scholars was set up before the BJP regime came to power to look into school textbooks. The committee consisted of Professor Bipan Chandra, Professor Emeritus, Jawaharlal Nehru University, National Professor and Chairman, National Book Trust, as Chairman of the Committee; Professor Ravinder Kumar, former Director, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library; Professor Nemai Sadhan Bose, former Vice Chancellor, Vishwa Bharati University, Shantiniketan; Professor S.S. Bal, former Vice Chancellor, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar; Professor R.S. Sharma, former Chairperson, Indian Council for Historical Research; Professor Sita Ram Singh, Muzaffarpur University; Professor Sarojini Regani, Osmania University, Hyderabad and Shri V.I. Subramaniam as members and Professor Arjun Dev, Dean NCERT as Member Secretary. In its meetings held in January 1993 and October 1994 the Committee considered reports prepared by the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) on textbooks in use in various states and those brought out by the RSS run Saraswati Shishu Mandir Prakashan and Vidya Bharati Publications. Extracts from the Committee’s recommendations to the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and the educational authorities of various states and the reports prepared by the NCERT given below reveal the nature of partisan and communal poison that is being fed to our children. The emphasis in the extracts given below is by and large ours.

 

The Committee’s recommendation regarding the Saraswati Shishu Mandir Prakashan was:

 

“Some of the textbooks which are currently in use at primary level in Saraswati Shishu Mandirs present an extremely virulent communal view of Indian history… The intolerant and extremely crude style and language as well as the totally uninhibited way historical ‘facts’ have been fabricated are designed to promote not patriotism, as is claimed but totally blind bigotry and fanaticism… These textbooks should not be allowed to be used in schools.”

 

Similarly, regarding the Vidya Bharati Publications, the Committee recommended:

 

“The Committee shares the concern expressed in the report over the publication and use of blatantly communal writings in the series entitled, Sanskriti Jnan in the Vidya Bharati Schools which have been set up in different parts of the country. Their number is reported to be 6,000. The Committee agrees with the report that much of the material in the so–called Sanskrit Jnan series is ‘designed to promote bigotry and religious fanaticism in the name of inculcating knowledge of culture in the young generation’. The Committee is of the view that the Vidya Bharati schools are being clearly used for the dissemination of blatantly communal ideas… The Sanskriti Jnan series are known to be in use in Vidya Bharati schools in Madhya Pradesh and elsewhere. The Committee recommends that the educational authorities of Madhya Pradesh and other states should disallow the use of this series in the schools. The state governments may also consider appropriate steps to stop the publication of these materials which foment communal hatred and disallow the examinations which are held by the Vidya Bharati Sansthan on the basis of these materials.”

 

 

“Some of the textbooks which are currently in use at primary level in Saraswati Shishu Mandirs present an extremely virulent communal view of Indian history… The intolerant and extremely crude style and language as well as the totally uninhibited way historical ‘facts’ have been fabricated are designed to promote not patriotism, as is claimed but totally blind bigotry and fanaticism… These textbooks should not be allowed to be used in schools.” —National Steering Committee on Textbook Evaluation

 

 

 

 

 

Some extracts from the reports submitted to the Committee will explain the strong recommendations of the committee.

 

 

Extracts from Gaurav Gatha for Class IV, Saraswati Shishu Mandir Prakashan, Lucknow, 1992

 

It was said that under emperor Ashoka:

“Ahimsa began to be… advocated. Every kind of violence began to be considered a crime. Even hunting, sacrifices in yajnas and use of arms began to be considered bad. It had a bad effect on the army. Cowardice slowly spread throughout the kingdom. The state bore the burden of providing food to the Buddhist monks. Therefore people began to become monks. Victory through arms began to be viewed as bad. Soldiers guarding the borders were demoralized… The preaching of Ahimsa had weakened north India (pp. 30-31).”

(Note how apart from the denigration of Buddhism and one of its basic tenets, non-violence, this prepares yet another ground for promoting hatred against the greatest apostle of ahimsa in modern times, Mahatma Gandhi, by the  RSS. More on the latter aspect later.)

 

 

 

 

On the rise of Islam it was said:

“Wherever they went, they had a sword in their hand. Their army went like a storm in all the four directions. Any country that came their way was destroyed. Houses of prayers and universities were destroyed. Libraries were burnt. Religious books were destroyed. Mothers and sisters were humiliated. Mercy and justice were unknown to them (pp.51-52).”

“Delhi’s Qutb Minar is even today famous in his (Qutbuddin Aibak’s) name. This had not been built by him. He could not have been able to build it. It was actually built by emperor Samudragupta. Its real name was Vishnu Stambha… This Sultan actually got some parts of it demolished and its name was changed (p. 73).”

(It strangely does not occur to the Hindu communalist how apt this above description is of what they have been up to in Gujarat, Pune and  Ayodhya in recent years. In Pune, the library of the Bhandarkar Institute was vandalized, in Gujarat mothers and sisters were humiliated, and in Ayodhya the Babri Masjid was demolished.)

 

 

“Delhi’s Qutb Minar is even today famous in his (Qutbuddin Aibak’s) name. This had not been built by him. He could not have been able to build it. It was actually built by emperor Samudragupta. Its real name was Vishnu Stambha… This Sultan actually got some parts of it demolished and its name was changed (p. 73).” —Gaurav Gatha for Class IV, Saraswati Shishu Mandir Prakashan, Lucknow, 1992

 

 

Extracts from Itihas Gaa Rahaa Hai, for Class V, Saraswati Shishu Mandir Prakashan, Lucknow, 1991

 

“ …after that the invaders came with a sword in one hand and the Quran in the other. Innumerable Hindus were forcibly made Musalmans on the point of the sword. The struggle for freedom became a religious war. Innumerable sacrifices were made for religion. We went on and on winning one battle after another. We never allowed foreign rulers to settle down but we could not reconvert our separated brethren to Hinduism (p. 3).”

 

(Apart from the spewing of hate against Muslims it is notable how the struggle for freedom is here depicted as a religious war against Muslims and the apparent unfinished task was the reconversion to Hinduism of the Muslim converts!)

 

 

“ …after that the invaders came with a sword in one hand and the Quran in the other. Innumerable Hindus were forcibly made Musalmans on the point of the sword. The struggle for freedom became a religious war.” —Itihas Gaa Rahaa Hai, for Class V, Saraswati Shishu Mandir Prakashan, Lucknow, 1991

 

 

No wonder in the ‘freedom struggle’ so defined the RSS founder Hedgewar and successor Golwalkar get pride of place in this textbook and it is said:

 

“These Swayamsevaks removed the evils which hundreds of years of slavery had given…. This Sangathan became an object of pride for the country.”

 

The report of the NCERT quite appropriately summed up the impact of these books:

 

“The main purpose which these books would serve is to gradually transform the young children who came to these schools to study into bigoted morons in the garb of instilling in them patriotism.”

 

 

Extracts from the report on the Publications of Vidya Bharati

The Vidya Bharati Sansthan claims to be engaged in providing to the young generation education in religion, culture and nationalism. The catechistic series is part of the Sansthan’s effort in this direction.

 

Each booklet in the series comprises questions and answers on geography, politics, personalities, martyrs, morals, Hindu festivals, religious books, general knowledge, etc. Much of the material in these books is designed to promote blatantly communal and chauvinist ideas and popularize RSS and its policies and programmes.
 

Some examples of the kind of ‘knowledge’ of sanskriti these booklets are disseminating are given below:

 

India is presented in extreme chauvinist terms as the ‘original home of world civilisation’. One of the booklets (No. IX), for example, says,

 

“India is the most ancient country in the world. When civilisation had not developed in many countries of the world, when people in those countries lived in jungles naked or covering their bodies with the bark of trees or hides of animals, Bharat’s Rishis–Munis brought the light of culture and civilisation to all those countries.”

 

Some of the examples of the “spread of the light of Aryatva by Bharatiya Manishis” given are the following:

 

(i) “The credit for lighting the lamp of culture in China goes to the ancient Indians.”

 

(ii) “India is the mother country of ancient China. Their ancestors were Indian Kshatriyas… ”

 

(iii) The first people who began to inhabit China were Indians.”

 

(iv) “The first people to settle in Iran were Indians (Aryans).”

 

 

“India is the mother country of ancient China. Their ancestors were Indian Kshatriyas… ” —Booklet No. IX of the Vidya Bharati Sansthan

 

 

(v) “The popularity of the great work of the Aryans — Valmiki Ramayana — influenced Yunan (Greece) and there also the great poet Homer composed a version of the Ramayana.”

 

(vi) “The Languages of the indigenous people (Red Indians) of the northern part of America were derived from ancient Indian languages.”

 

Many of these booklets have a section each on ‘Sri Ramjanmabhumi’. They present RSS–VHP propaganda in the form of catechisms to be memorized by the faithful as absolute truths. Some of the questions–answers in these sections are as follows:

1.Who got the first temple built on the birth place of Shri Ram in Ayodhya?

A. Shri Ram’s son Maharaja Kush.

 

2.Who was the first foreign invader who destroyed Sri Ram temple? 

A. Menander of Greece (150 B.C.)

 

 3. Who got the present Rama Temple built?

A. Maharaja Chandragupta Vikramaditya (A.D. 380–413).

 

 4. Which Muslim plunderer invaded the temples in Ayodhya in A.D. 1033?

A. Mahmud Ghaznavi’s nephew Salar Masud.

 

 

 

 

 5. Which Mughal invader destroyed the Rama Temple in A.D. 1528?

A. Babur.

 

 6. Why is Babri Masjid not a mosque?

A. Because Muslims have never till today offered Namaz there.

 

7. How many devotees of Rama laid down their life to liberate Rama temple from A.D. 1528 to A.D. 1914? 

A. Three lakh fifty thousand.

 

“Q. Who was the first foreign invader who destroyed Sri Ram temple?

A. Menander of Greece (150 B.C.)” —Vidya Bharati Sansthan Booklet

 

8. How many times did the foreigners invade Shri Ramajanmabhumi? 

A. Seventy–seven times.

 

 9. “Which day was decided by Sri Ram Kar Sewa Samiti to start Kar Sewa?

A. 30 October, 1990.

 

 10. Why will 2 November 1990 be inscribed in black letters in the history of India?

A. Because on that day, the then Chief Minister by ordering the Police to shoot unarmed Kar Sewaks massacred hundreds of them.

 

 11. When was the Shilanyas of the temple laid in Sri Ram Janmbhumi?

A. 1 November 1989.

 

 12. What was the number of the struggle for the liberation of Ram Janmabhumi which was launched on 30 October1990?

A. 78th struggle.

 

Some other questions are as follows:

 

When did Ramabhakta Kar Sewaks unfurl the saffron flag on Shri Ramjanmabhumi?
 

Mention the names of the young boys who laid down their life while unfurling the saffron flag.

 

In one of the books in the series (No.12), there is a section on the saints of the world and the sects/faiths founded by them. The statements made in this section are designed to promote contempt and blind hatred against other religions. One statement on the followers of Christianity who are portrayed as anti-national and a threat to the integrity of India reads as follows:

 

“It is because of the conspiratorial policies of the followers of this religion that India was partitioned. Even today Christian missionaries are engaged in fostering anti–national tendencies in Nagaland, Meghalaya, Arunachal, Bihar, Kerala, and other regions of our country because of which there is a grave danger to the integrity of present day India”.

 

About Islam, one of the statements is as follows:

“Thousands of opponents of idol worship, the followers of Islam, go to the pilgrimage centre of Islamic community at Kaaba to worship ‘Shivalinga’. In Muslim society, the greatest wish is to have a darshan of that black stone (Shivalinga)”.

 

In another question, children are asked to fill in the blanks ‘rivers of blood’ as the means by which Prophet Mohammad spread Islam.

 

There are special sections in some of the booklets on RSS, its founder and its other leaders. In one booklet (No. 11), RSS, which is mentioned along with Arya Samaj and Ramakrishna Mission etc. as a social reform organisation, is given the status of divine power. It says:

 

“Some divine power, whether it was Bhagwan Ram or Bhagwan Krishna, has always emerged for the preservation of the greatness of Indian culture. The Hindu organization Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh has arisen to end the present miserable condition and for the defence of the greatness of Bharatiya Sanskriti.”

 

The NCERT report sums up its view on this kind of study material thus:

 

“Much of this material is designed to promote bigotry and religious fanaticism in the name of inculcating knowledge of culture in the young generation. That this material is being used as teaching and examination material in schools which, presumably, have been accorded recognition should be a matter of serious concern.”

 

 

“Much of this material is designed to promote bigotry and religious fanaticism in the name of inculcating knowledge of culture in the young generation. That this material is being used as teaching and examination material in schools which, presumably, have been accorded recognition should be a matter of serious concern.” —NCERT report

 

 

Indeed it is a matter of serious concern considering the rapidly growing influence of the RSS institutions spreading such hatred and poison. The first Saraswati Shishu Mandir was set up in 1952 in Gorakhpur (UP) in the presence of RSS chief Golwalkar. By the time the Vidya Bharati, an apex all India organization of the RSS providing an umbrella to its educational effort, was formed in 1977, there were already about 500 RSS schools and 20,000 students. In the early 1990s the BJP governments in states like UP, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh encouraged the growth of Vidya Bharati schools and even permitted them to set their own syllabus and conduct examinations for the lower classes and run teacher training programmes. By 1993-94 the total number of schools run by Vidya Bharati was claimed to be 6000 with 40,000 teachers and 1,200,000 students. With state power coming to the BJP at the centre in 1998, the RSS influence in schools took a quantum leap. In 1999 there were reportedly 14,000 Vidya Bharati schools with 80,000 teachers and 18,00,000 students! (Pralay Kanungo, RSS Tryst with Politics from Hedgewar to Sudarshan; Desh Raj Goyal, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.)

 

Moreover, state power was now being used to go beyond just the RSS schools. In September 1998, the Kalyan Singh government sought to link all state run schools to the RSS shakha. It was made compulsory for all primary schools in the state to involve RSS pracharaks for imparting naitik siksha or moral education.

 

 

The first Saraswati Shishu Mandir was set up in 1952 in Gorakhpur (UP) in the presence of RSS chief Golwalkar. By the time the Vidya Bharati, an apex all India organization of the RSS providing an umbrella to its educational effort, was formed in 1977, there were already about 500 RSS schools and 20,000 students. In the early 1990s the BJP governments in states like UP, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh encouraged the growth of Vidya Bharati schools and even permitted them to set their own syllabus and conduct examinations for the lower classes and run teacher training programmes. By 1993-94 the total number of schools run by Vidya Bharati was claimed to be 6000 with 40,000 teachers and 1,200,000 students. With state power coming to the BJP at the centre in 1998, the RSS influence in schools took a quantum leap. In 1999 there were reportedly 14,000 Vidya Bharati schools with 80,000 teachers and 18,00,000 students!… In September 1998, the Kalyan Singh government sought to link all state run schools to the RSS shakha. It was made compulsory for all primary schools in the state to involve RSS pracharaks for imparting naitik siksha or moral education.

 

 

The link between the recent, post Godhra human carnage in Gujarat under the BJP government in the State (and the centre) and the poison fed to young formative minds in schools has been repeatedly pointed out. Children reading the Gujarat State Social Studies text for class IX would learn:

 

“ …apart from the Muslims even the Christians, Parsees and other foreigners are also recognised as the minority communities. In most of the states the Hindus are in minority and Muslims, Christians and Sikhs are in majority in these respective states.”

 

In the Gujarat State Social Studies text for Class X, which virtually eulogises fascism and Nazism, the children would learn how to deal with these ‘foreigners’ who are making the Hindus a minority in their own country.

 

“Ideology of Nazism: Like Fascism, the principles or ideologies for governing a nation, propounded by Hitler, came to be known as the ideology of Nazism. On assuming power, the Nazi Party gave unlimited total and all embracing and supreme power to the dictator. The dictator was known as the ‘Fuhrer’. Hitler had strongly declared that ‘the Germans were the only pure Aryans in the entire world and they were born to rule the world’. In order to ensure that the German people strictly followed the principles of Nazism, it was included in the curriculum of the educational institutions. The textbooks said, ‘Hitler is our leader and we love him’.

 

Internal Achievements of Nazism: Hitler lent dignity and prestige to the German government within a short time by establishing a strong administrative set up. He created the vast state of Greater Germany. He adopted the policy of opposition towards the Jewish people and advocated the supremacy of the German race. He adopted a new economic policy and brought prosperity to Germany. He began efforts for the eradication of unemployment. He started constructing public buildings, providing irrigation facilities, building railways, roads and production of war materials. He made untiring efforts to make Germany self-reliant within one decade. Hitler discarded the Treaty of Versailles by calling it just ‘a piece of paper’ and stopped paying the war penalty. He instilled the spirit of adventure in the common people.” (‘Demonising Christianity and Islam’ and ‘On Fascism and Nazism’ in Communalism Combat, October 1999)

 

That in order to maintain the purity and supremacy of the ‘Aryan’ race millions of Jews were butchered is not even thought worthy of mention. ‘Nationalism’, efficient administration, economic prosperity, etc. are approvingly discussed. An uncanny similarity to a ‘shining India’ while Muslims and Christians in Gujarat burnt.

 

It is important to realise that the communalists have focused attention on history because it is on a particular distorted and often totally fabricated presentation of history that the communal ideology is hinged. If it is to be believed, for example, that the Muslims cannot be trusted, that they can never live peacefully with others, that they are barbaric, immoral and in the words of RSS founder, Hedgewar, like “hissing Yavana snakes”, then they have to be shown to have historically behaved like this. Similarly, in order to argue that Muslims and Christians are foreigners, it was necessary to argue that the ‘Aryans’, whom the RSS acknowledge as the true Indians, did not migrate from outside India but originated in India (and that they predated the Harappan civilization) even if it meant that another RSS guru, Golwalkar, had to argue, doing considerable violence to history and geography, that the Aryans may have come from the North Pole but the North Pole was originally in India, in the region of today’s Bihar and Orissa, and while the Aryans remained in India the North Pole later zigzagged its way up to its current location! To quote Golwalkar “…the Arctic Home in the Vedas was verily in Hindusthan itself and that it was not the Hindus who migrated to that land but the arctic which emigrated and left the Hindus in Hindusthan. (M.S. Golwalkar, We or Our Nationhood Defined, Bharat Publications, Nagpur, fourth edition, 1947, pp. 11-13. First published in 1939).”

 

 

It is important to realise that the communalists have focused attention on history because it is on a particular distorted and often totally fabricated presentation of history that the communal ideology is hinged.

 

 

While the RSS/Hindu communal effort to spread a communal interpretation of history has been around for many years, the new and more dangerous trend, after the BJP came to power at the Centre, was the attempt to use government institutions and state power to attack scientific and secular history and historians and promote an obscurantist, backward looking, communal historiography through state sponsored institutions at the national level. The last time the RSS came close to power at the centre was when the Jan Sangh had merged with the Janata Party and the Janata Party came to power in 1977. At that time an effort was made to ban school textbooks which were published by NCERT who had persuaded some of the tallest historians of India, like Romila Thapar, R.S. Sharma, Satish Chandra and Bipan Chandra to write. A country wide protest including from within the NCERT and other autonomous institutions put paid to this attempt and it had to be abandoned. The next time the Sangh combine came to power at the centre was in the late 1990s and the lessons of the previous experience were well learnt by the BJP. Anticipating resistance from autonomous institutions like the NCERT, UGC, ICSSR and the ICHR, the government first took great care to appoint those who were willing to serve as its instruments as Directors, Chairpersons and Council members in these bodies.

 

 

 

 

Having achieved that, the BJP government gave the education minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, full backing in implementing the RSS ideological agenda in education. For the RSS combine, there was no pulling back in the ideological sphere unlike what was done in the economic, political and even foreign policy spheres. The demands of the trade union or peasant fronts of the Sangh were often set aside, the Swadeshi Jagran Manch’s objections to economic reforms could be essentially ignored but not the RSS agenda in spreading communal ideology.

 

The demands of the trade union or peasant fronts of the Sangh were often set aside, the Swadeshi Jagran Manch’s objections to economic reforms could be essentially ignored but not the RSS agenda in spreading communal ideology.

 

M.M. Joshi now presided over the systematic destruction of the academic edifice built up painstakingly over decades. The NCERT director introduced a new National Curriculum Framework (NCF) in 2000, without attempting any wide consultation, leave alone seeking to arrive at a consensus. This, when education is a concurrent subject (involving partnership between the centre and the states) and virtually since Independence the tradition had been to put any major initiative in education through discussion in Parliament and the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE), a body which includes among its members the education ministers of all states and Union Territories. The NCERT arrived at the New Curriculum, which was widely seen by professional academics as introducing the Hindu communal agenda, without any reference to the CABE, thus violating both tradition and procedural requirements.

 

This was followed by deletions of passages from the existing NCERT history books written by eminent secular historians of the country such as Romila Thapar, R.S. Sharma and Satish Chandra, without any reference to the authors, violating all copyright norms. As mentioned above, these globally renowned authors had been persuaded by the NCERT on the recommendation of the National Integration Council to write textbooks for children which would correct the existing colonial and communal bias in history books. Shockingly, what deletions were to be made was decided not by any recognized committee of professional historians but by the RSS with the RSS view put on record in a published volume a few months before the NCERT was ordered to carry them out! In fact Dina Nath Batra, the General Secretary of Vidya Bharati, which runs a network of schools for the RSS, complained that Murli Manohar Joshi was moving too slowly. Vidya Bharati had suggested 42 deletions but the NCERT carried out only four so far (actually there were ten deletions from four books— Outlook, 17 December, 2001). A book edited by Dina Nath Batra of the RSS, called “The Enemies of Indianisation: The Children of Marx, Macaulay and Madarsa”, was published on 15 August 2001. The book which was an attack on scientific secular history and historians, contained an article listing 41 distortions in the existing NCERT books. The NCERT director J.S. Rajput himself had contributed an article in the volume listing a few more distortions. Significantly, on the basis of an NCERT notification the deletions of certain passages from the NCERT books was ordered by the CBSE (after of course the eminent historian Prof. D. N. Jha was unceremoniously sacked as the chairperson of the history syllabus committee) on 23 October 2001.

 

It was repeatedly claimed that the deletions were in deference to the religious sentiments, especially of minorities. However, the larger purpose was clearly to create doubts about the books in people’s minds by making allegations that they violate religious sentiments of different communities, and thus divert attention from the real motive: to replace secular history with communal history. If those who were master-minding the whole show had any concern for minority sentiments, would Dina Nath Batra, the head of the Education section of the RSS, say in justification of the deletions: “Jesus Christ was a najayaz (illegitimate) child of Mary but in Europe they don’t teach that. Instead, they call her Mother Mary and say she is a virgin (Outlook, 17 December, 2001).”

 

Apart from handing over the textbooks to RSS activists and supporters for their approval an equally dangerous trend was started with the NCERT director asserting that he “would consult religious experts before including references to any religion in the textbooks, to avoid hurting the sentiments of the community concerned” (The Times of India, 5 October 2001). This extremely pernicious move was reiterated by the education minister Murli Manohar Joshi, who stated that “all material in textbooks connected with religions should be cleared by the heads of the religions concerned before their incorporation in the books” (Hindustan Times, 4 December, 2001). Once such a veto over what goes into textbooks is given to religious leaders or community leaders, as the government had started doing, it would become impossible to scientifically research and teach not only history but other disciplines, including the natural sciences. Deletions had already been made from textbooks for pointing out the oppressive nature of the caste system in India, presumably because some ‘sentiments’ were hurt. ‘Sentiments’ have been hurt in India among some when the practice of Sati was criticized. Would this mean deletions of references from textbooks regarding this evil practice? Sentiments could be hurt if science lessons questioned the ‘immaculate conception’ or if they proposed theories of origin of man which were not in consonance with the beliefs associated with most religions. Should such lessons be altered or ‘talibanised’ according to the dictats of various religious leaders? If the teaching of modern scientific advances ‘hurts’ the religious sentiments of one or the other group, should it be banned altogether?

 

 

Apart from handing over the textbooks to RSS activists and supporters for their approval an equally dangerous trend was started with the NCERT director asserting that he “would consult religious experts before including references to any religion in the textbooks, to avoid hurting the sentiments of the community concerned”.

 

 

There were a lot of protests from the secular forces at this attempt at communalizing the education system. Historians, the secular media and a very wide section of the Indian intelligentsia voiced their protests unambiguously. The Delhi Historians’ Group (a group of Historians from several universities in and around Delhi who had got together to fight the government’s effort to communalize education) brought out a book putting together the views of eminent historians, journalists and eminent citizens like Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen and K. R. Narayanan, the President of India on the attempt at communalizing education. The book (Communalisation of Education: The History Textbooks Controversy, 2002, compiled by Mridula Mukherjee and Aditya Mukherjee, with an introduction, for Delhi Historians’ Group) also listed the deletions made from the history textbooks.

 

 

 

 

However, at this point an alarming trend began of attacking those who did not agree with the kind of interpretations or fabrications promoted by the Hindu Communal forces. They were branded as anti-national. The RSS Sarasanghachalak, K.S. Sudershan called those who were resisting the revisions of the NCERT textbooks “anti-Hindu Euro-Indians”. Sudershan laments that these anti-Hindu Euro–Indians hate ‘Vedic maths’ and do astonishing things like not believing that in ancient India we knew about nuclear energy and that Sage Bharadwaja and Raja Bhoj not only “described the construction of Aeroplanes” but discussed “details like what types of aeroplanes would fly at what height, what kind of problems they might encounter, how to overcome those problems, etc (Organiser, 4 November, 2001).”

 

Calling them anti-Hindu and anti-national was not enough, a group of self-appointed protectors of Indian nationalism demanded that the historians Romila Thapar, R.S. Sharma and Arjun Dev should be arrested. The HRD minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, at whose residence this group had collected, defended the deletions from their books and called for a “war for the country’s cultural freedom” (Hindustan Times, 8 December, 2001). The Minister went one step further and added fuel to this fascist tendency of trying to browbeat or terrorize the intelligentsia which stood up in opposition by branding the history written by these scholars as “intellectual terrorism unleashed by the left” which was “more dangerous than cross border terrorism” (Indian Express, 20 December, 2001). He exhorted the BJP storm troopers to counter both types of terrorism effectively. The dangerous implications of Joshi making this charge against these eminent historians at a time when the whole country was agitated by the attack on parliament by cross border terrorists must be noted.

 

Civilised societies cannot ban the teaching of unsavoury aspects of their past on the grounds that it would hurt sentiments or confuse children or it would diminish patriotic feelings among its children, as the government was trying to do. Nor can we fabricate fantasies to show our past greatness and become a laughing stock of the world. Should America remove slavery from its textbooks or Europe the saga of witch hunting and Hitler’s genocide of the Jews? Let us stand tall among civilised nations and not join the Taliban in suppressing history as well as the historians.

 

 

The communal attempts to distort Indian history and to give it a narrow sectarian colour in the name of instilling patriotism and demonstrating the greatness of India actually end up doing exactly the opposite. It in fact obfuscates the truly remarkable aspects of India’s past of which any society in the world could be justifiably proud.

 

 

The communal attempts to distort Indian history and to give it a narrow sectarian colour in the name of instilling patriotism and demonstrating the greatness of India actually end up doing exactly the opposite. It in fact obfuscates the truly remarkable aspects of India’s past of which any society in the world could be justifiably proud. The Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, for example, argues that the “India’s persistent heterodoxy” and its “tendency towards multi-religious and multi-cultural coexistence” (aspects vehemently denied by the Communalists) had important implications for the development of science and mathematics in India. Arguing that the history of science is integrally linked with heterodoxy, Sen goes on to say that:

 

“ …the roots of the flowering of Indian science and mathematics that occurred in and around the Gupta period (beginning particularly with Aryabhatta and Varahamihira) can be intellectually associated with persistent expressions of heterodoxies which pre-existed these contributions. In fact Sanskrit and Pali have a larger literature in defence of atheism, agnosticism and theological scepticism than exists in any other classical language.”

 

He goes on to say that rather than the championing of “Vedic Mathematics” and “Vedic sciences” on the basis “of very little evidence”….

 

“ …what has …more claim to attention as a precursor of scientific advances in the Gupta period is the tradition of scepticism that can be found in pre-Gupta India—going back to at least the sixth century B.C.—particularly in matters of religion and epistemic orthodoxy (‘History and the Enterprise of Knowledge’, address delivered by Amartya Sen to the Indian History Congress in January, 2001, Calcutta).”

 

The tradition of scepticism in matters of religion and epistemic orthodoxy was continued by Mahatma Gandhi, for example when he argued “It is no good quoting verses from Manusmriti and other scriptures in defense of… orthodoxy. A number of verses in these scriptures are apocryphal, a number of them are meaningless” (Rajmohan Gandhi, The Good Boatman: A Portrait of Gandhi). Again he said “I exercise my judgment about every scripture, including the Gita. I cannot let a scriptural text supercede my reason. (Harijan, 1936)”

 

(Let us hope no group with hurt sentiments now demands the arrest of Amartya Sen as yet another son of ‘Macaulay, Marx and Madarsa’. Let us hope Murli Manohar Joshi in true Taliban fashion does not ask his storm troopers to extinguish the “intellectual terrorism” unleashed by Sen, in the same manner as it was felt necessary to silence Gandhi, ‘the greatest living Hindu’.)

 

 

“ …the roots of the flowering of Indian science and mathematics that occurred in and around the Gupta period (beginning particularly with Aryabhatta and Varahamihira) can be intellectually associated with persistent expressions of heterodoxies which pre-existed these contributions. In fact Sanskrit and Pali have a larger literature in defence of atheism, agnosticism and theological scepticism than exists in any other classical language.” —‘History and the Enterprise of Knowledge’, address delivered by Amartya Sen to the Indian History Congress in January, 2001, Calcutta.

 

 

Despite nationwide protests, particularly from the academia (including the widely respected, more than 60 year old, Indian History Congress, the national organization of professional historians) and the media, this process of what the Hindustan Times editor, Vir Sanghvi, called the ‘Talibanisation’ of education was continued. A new syllabus based on the NCF 2000 was adopted, again without following the proper procedures. There was widespread criticism of the new syllabus. The Delhi Historians Group held a workshop of eminent social scientists in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi on 3 March 2002 and brought out a critique of the NCERT Syllabus based on the new curriculum framework.

 

The process culminated in the existing NCERT history books written by eminent scholars (from which deletions were made) being withdrawn altogether and being replaced by books written by people whose chief qualification was their closeness to the Sangh ideology and not recognized expertise in their field of study. The Indian History Congress, alarmed at what poison was being dished out to our children, published in 2003 a volume called History in the New NCERT Text Books: A Report and an Index of Errors (authored by Irfan Habib, Suvira Jaiswal and Aditya Mukherjee). The volume ran into 130 pages just listing the major mistakes and distortions introduced in these books.

 

While it would not be possible here, for reasons of space, to list the specific distortions that are present in the new books it may be useful to reproduce below an extract from the History Congress publication, which sums up what is wrong with the four new books which were scrutinized, i.e., Makkhan Lal, et. al., India and the World, for class VI; Makkhan Lal, Ancient India, for Class XI; Meenakshi Jain, Medieval India, for Class XI and Hari Om, et.al., Contemporary India for Class IX.

 

“Often the errors are apparently mere products of ignorance; but as often they stem from an anxiety to present History with a very strong chauvinistic and communal bias. The textbooks draw heavily on the kind of propaganda that the so called Sangh Parivar Publications have been projecting for quite some time. The major features of the presentation of Indian history in the new NCERT books may be summed up as follows:-

 

1. India is held to be the original home of the Aryans. No concern at all is shown with the origins of peoples speaking Dravidian and Austro-Asiatic languages.

 

2. The Indian civilization is supposed to have its sole fountainhead in the “Vedic Civilization” which is given much greater antiquity than historians have been willing to assign it so far. The latter is claimed to have embraced the Indus Civilization, now to be called “Indus Saraswati” civilization, which is thus entirely credited to the Aryans.

 

3. All substantive, scientific discoveries (from zero to decimal placement of numerals to heliocentric astronomy) are supposed to have been made in the “Vedic Civilization.”

 

4. The Hindu religion is held superior to other religions. The Upanishads are proclaimed as “the most profound works of philosophy in any religion”. Both Buddhism and Jainism are held to have emerged out of them. Hindus had no sense of constraints about chronology, unlike the Christians. Hindus, moreover, had been by their faith true patriots. In the modern freedom struggle too, they alone are held to have been sincere, while the Muslims only dreamt of a Muslim empire or a separate nation. Medieval Muslims and modern Christians are also held to have been deeply influenced by racism.

 

5. The caste system was all right in the beginning; only “rigidities” (not inequities or oppression of Dalits) are seen in its later stages and very lightly touched upon. The Dalits in effect are excluded from history.

 

6. A neutral or even admiring stance is maintained about practices such as sati or jauhar in ancient and medieval India. Abductions of women are described as a legitimate form of marriage, not apparently inconsistent with women being held in honour.

 

7. Foreigners have taught little or nothing to Indians, while India has given so much to the world in all realms of culture.

 

8. Muslims brought little new to India, except oppression and temple-destruction. All the dark corners are thoroughly presented in the narrative of medieval India, as regards Muslims, while they are coolly overlooked in that of ancient India.

 

 

 

 

9. The rise of a composite culture is ignored or downplayed. Kabir gets with difficulty a sentence in the medieval India textbook (where, on the other hand, Guru Gobind Singh appears as a “devotee of Goddess Chandi”).

 

10. In modern India, “Muslim separatism” is the great bugbear, while Hindu communalism is not even mentioned, and the Hindu Mahasabha leaders appear uniformly as great patriots.

 

11. The growth of the great modern values of democracy, gender equality, secularism, welfare state, etc., is neglected, or passed over in silence.

 

12. There is little or nothing on Indian social reformers like Ram Mohan Roy, Keshav Chandra Sen, Jotiba Phule, and even B.R. Ambedkar – since apparently traditional Hindu society is not thought to have been in need of reform.

 

13. The mainstream secular and democratic elements in the National Movement are presented as unimportant or mere obstacles to the growth of (Hindu) “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.

 

 

 

 

With such parochialism and prejudice as the driving force behind these textbooks, it is clear that these cannot be converted into acceptable textbooks by a mere removal of the linguistic and the factual errors pointed out in our Index. In many cases the basic arguments in the textbooks are built on these very errors of fact, and so the errors cannot be removed without changing the main ideas behind the textbooks.
These textbooks are therefore beyond the realm of salvage, and they need to be withdrawn altogether.
Until such a withdrawal takes place, we hope our Index will help both teachers and students to rectify the more serious errors in the books and so attain a more balanced view of our past”.

 

Irfan Habib, Suvira Jaiswal, Aditya Mukherjee

 

(It may be pointed out that this Report and Index of Errors had the unanimous approval of the entire executive committee of the Indian History Congress)

 

 

“The caste system was all right in the beginning; only ‘rigidities’ (not inequities or oppression of Dalits) are seen in its later stages and very lightly touched upon. The Dalits in effect are excluded from history… Abductions of women are described as a legitimate form of marriage, not apparently inconsistent with women being held in honour… Muslims brought little new to India, except oppression and temple-destruction. All the dark corners are thoroughly presented in the narrative of medieval India, as regards Muslims, while they are coolly overlooked in that of ancient India.” —Irfan Habib, Suvira Jaiswal, Aditya Mukherjee on the presentation of Indian history in the new NCERT books.

 

 

There is an uncanny similarity between the distortions in these NCERT books and those produced by the RSS Shishu Mandirs and Vidya Bharati and the ideas of the RSS/Hindu communal ideologues Golwalkar, Hedgewar and Savarkar. The distrust of minorities, particularly Muslims, the insistence that the Aryans originated in India and that the Vedic civilization predated any other in India and was superior to other civilizations and sometimes their creator, etc., are constant motifs throughout.

 

In today’s context it is of particular interest to see how the RSS/Hindu communal effort to appear as nationalist, when their actual role in the Indian national movement was not only nil but negative, has led to the distortion of the history of the national movement itself. Since the Hindu communalists fought against Muslims and not against British colonialism, there is an attempt to define Indian nationalism itself as a “religious war” against Muslims. The actual Indian national movement, which was a secular struggle against the political economy of colonialism and not a religious or racial war against the British, is termed “cultural nationalism”, by which the Hindu communalists mean Hindu nationalism.

 

The foremost leader of the Indian national movement, Mahatma Gandhi, who fought for a common struggle of Hindus and Muslims against British colonial domination and not a religious war against anybody, is uniformly demonized by the RSS/Hindu communalists as has been shown later in the book. In the NCERT textbooks it takes the form of grossly underplaying the role of the Mahatma and completely ignoring the role of the Hindu communal forces in the elimination of perhaps the greatest person to walk the earth in the 20^th century. In the first edition of Hari Om’s ‘Contemporary India’ for Class X, a book dealing with the 20^th century, Gandhiji’s assassination was not even mentioned! When there was a national furore on this question a reprint edition was brought out which had this bare sentence:

 

“Gandhiji’s efforts to bring peace and harmony in society came to a sudden and tragic end due to his assassination by Nathuram Godse on January 30 1948, in Delhi while Gandhiji was on his way to attend a prayer meeting.” (p. 57)

 

No mention was still made of who Godse was, and of his strong links with the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, particularly its leader Savarkar. This, as we have pointed out in the next section, despite Sardar Patel, the then home minister’s clear conclusion that:

 

“It was a fanatical wing of the Hindu Mahasabha directly under Savarkar that (hatched) the conspiracy and saw it through”

 

Clearly, the RSS and the Hindu communalists had much to hide which they did and still try to do in a cowardly manner; a manner which they have tried to justify as clever strategy. The next part will discuss the whole issue of Gandhiji’s assassination and the role of the Sangh and associated bodies in making that happen.

 

 

This chapter has been carried courtesy the permission of the authors Aditya Mukherjee, Mridula Mukherjee and Sucheta Mahajan. You can buy RSS, School Texts and the Murder of Mahatma Gandhi: The Hindu Communal Project here.