- As witnessed over the decades, the Indian education system has incorporated history as a subject has always succeeded in evoking controversies, some valid and many unwarranted, on one or the other pretext. As is known, the wide swathe of the country’s landscape is overwhelmingly premised on religion, caste, creed, and race representing diverse cultures, traditions, languages, and opposing narratives as well. Since each region is equally endowed with stories of valor, sacrifice, inspiration, sacrilege, cruelty, treachery, cowardice, and reverence for whatever accomplishments, there is no dearth of historical figures who are bound to find a place in the curriculum with recognition and eulogistic narratives or simply depicted as a villain not worthy of recognition.
PC:
- As the society in the present times largely stands divided into communal lines leading to increasingly polarized existence, frictions upholding or deriding historical figures has become a norm. Depending on their political identity vis-à-vis left, right, central, and any other permutations and combinations, many divisive claimants are wishing to urusp the very historical narrative itself for parochial considerations. The easy target is the textbooks. No wonder, coarse crying denigrating some of the well-known figures by the fundamentalists claiming allegiance to a particular organization or affiliation to a political party is increasingly being played out.
- There is any number of past instances where a particular party or a group has raised opposing voices against completely obliterating certain historical figures objecting to the very inclusion in textbooks. One such recent protest by student unions and others was witnessed in the Kannur University of Kerala urging authorities to delete readings from RSS and Hindu Mahasabha leaders MS Golwalkar and VD Savarkar. The University had recently included the same in its postgraduate syllabus on politics. People in the know would also recollect how right-wing groups in Karnataka were opposing the continued inclusion of Tipu Sultan in textbooks.
PC: Onmanorama Staff
- It is another matter altogether that the status quo is maintained in Karnataka despite stiff opposition as historians, experts, and supporting political party’s mounted spirited challenges against the exclusion. Every historical figure having left behind an indelible imprint deserves to be understood whether one likes or dislikes his/her ideas, ideologies, and philosophies. There is no harm whatsoever in understanding the thought-processes of those tall figures, especially for a University curriculum meant for adult postgraduate scholars, not impressionable schoolchildren. Unfortunately, we in India tend to make historical figures personalized, glorified, idealized or shunned altogether rather than contextualizing and engaging with their ideas which could be useful for even those opposing them.
- Just imagine, it is no less fascinating to grapple with their thoughts, response to situations, the historical currents that produced them, human compromises, and subterfuges. All the more welcome to read texts of all shades allowing the young learner to see the many-sidedness of an individual positioned as a Great Man/Woman. Including diverse historical personalities into the curriculum also allows the nearest representation to reality showing us the frailties, weaknesses, idiosyncrasies, and hitherto unknown characteristic traits too. Let us be an inclusive society rather than extremely fundamentalist opposing everything.
