Winston Churchill once said that history is always written by the victor – In India’s centuries-old history, right from the times of the Harrapan Civilization to the present, history has always been just a recollection of books, journals, works of bards, court writers and royal edicts but very rarely pure facts.
With the decline of one empire, another empire arose, which did its best to tarnish any traces of the existence of the previous empire and tried project itself as the greatest empire that ever lived. Examples of this pattern date back to the Khilji Dynasty when biographies and accounts were burnt, with the most recent instance of the victors trying to rewrite the history books being the education syllabus change to the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the body which controls the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).
The change to the CBSE and NCERT syllabus in 2022 and 2023, which were made in the pretext of “Syllabus Rationalisation”, is just the most recent example of a change to the educational syllabus. The syllabus has for a long time been a subject of politicisation: In the 1960s, the first NCERT history syllabus placed impetus on modern democratic ideals and the works of liberal academics like Bipin Chandra and Romila Thapar.
In the period between the 1970s to the 90s, The Janta Party, the precursor to the modern BJP (Bhartiya Janata Party), instituted reform in the syllabi to promote Hindutva ideology, and in 2002, the government again attempted to remove “Marxist Influences” from the syllabus. But, no revision to the syllabus has been as major as the one that took place in 2022.
The syllabus changes, which were put in place in 2022, appear to be a targeted attempt at putting forward a version of Indian History with less focus on the role of Islamic rulers such as the Mughals and the Delhi Sultanate. The deletion of chapters related to the “Kings and Chronicles of Mughal Courts” for class 12, ‘Central Islamic Empires” for class 11 and the shortening of chapters relating to the Five dynasties of the Delhi Sultanate point to this trend.
The new syllabus also features a deletion of certain chapters such as “India After Independence” and “Era of one-party dominance”, which talk about the role of the Congress throughout the history of India.
As per NCERT, the new syllabus is meant to bolster a feeling of nationalism in students. The deletion of chapters such as “Popular Struggles and Movements”, “Challenges of Democracy” and “American Hegemony in World Politics” follow this trend.
There are also examples such as the removal of inferences to the 2002 Gujrat Riots and Atal Bihari’s “Raj Dharma” remark from the Chapter “Recent Developments in Indian Politics” as also the deletion of chapters relating to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and the subsequent ban of the RSS which appear to be an attempt by the ruling party to cover their past.
The NCERT stated that the cause of removing the syllabus was to reduce the load on students and to prevent overlap, but the history and political science syllabus reduction may have a political motive. The notion of Mughal History being given too much importance, was an idea that had been floating among Hindutva groups for a long time.
Seeing that the present government is a supporter of Hindutva ideologies, it is very difficult to believe that the syllabus rationalisation was not influenced by the government’s agenda. Also, the removal of the inferences to the Gujrat riots, in which the prime minister was initially implicated, points to whitewashing history to suit the government’s political discourse.
This sort of distortion of history is comparable to history that is taught in schools in communist states such as China and North Korea, where education about the communist party is a mandatory subject. The history in Chinese schools is also highly selective and paints an alternative reality of China having defeated Japan in the second world war, which students believe in, when they walk out from school.
The Chinese textbooks also fail to mention the great famine caused as a result of Mao Zedong’s Policies and the invasion of Tibet in 1950. In North Korean Schools as well, the political ideology called Juche is inculcated in all the students from a very young age.
With the NCERT’s syllabus deletions, India is following on the lines of North Korea and China to become a country whose students are taught a version of history that is biased and instils in students a false notion of how history took place, therefore, it becomes essential for the government to rethink what kind of education students should be given to ensure the preservation of India’s democratic values