Chapter 6
Education in India
Education in India
before Independence
The British colonial
power started Indian universities in 1858 as institutional plants imported from
Great Britain
with the objective of starting with a clean slate and neutralizing the educational
heritage of India.
The main objective behind the move was to connect Indian education to European
knowledge. There was an additional bonus in that these Indian Universities
provided an outlet for the unemployed graduates of British Universities.
Lord Macaulay was of
the view that "A single shelf of a
good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia." (
Page 3- Education and Politics in India
by Rudolph and Rudolph). There were two types of education in India
during that time. There was Indian education, which ensured that there was
emphasis on Indian literature and heritage. The other education was in English the
intent of which was to transform the consciousness of the elite in India
to mirror the British and look down upon the rest of the Indians. The
deracinated Indians became the ruling political class of India
and influenced the independence movement.
Tapan Raychaudhuri in
his study of Bengali intelligentsia points out that, ‘Implicitly the Bengali
intellectuals examined afresh the two components of their own culture - the
indigenous and the acquired.”. Pannikar points out that 19th century
Indian intellectuals were firm believers in the efficacy of Enlightenment as a
panacea. Like Chinese intellectuals, they traced the sources of all ills in
Indian society to the ignorance of the masses and the weight of traditional
thought and learning.
In India,
we see Liberalism replacing pre-colonial sensibilites and ideas; Mill, Spencer,
Rousseau and Paine were popular amongst Indian intellectuals. The idea of
liberty was first absorbed in Bengal through the work of
Derozio. The journals published at this time by the students of Hindu
College in Calcutta
during the period 1826-43 were influenced by the ideals of the French
Revolution. More importantly, as Pannikar points out, Britain
was viewed as the champion of these principles. As Ram Mohun Roy (1772-1663)
one of the most famous of the early Indian reformers put it thus: “A nation of people
not only blessed with the enjoyment of civil and political liberty but also
interested in promoting liberty and social happiness, as well as free inquiry
into literary and religious subjects among those nations to which their
influence extends.”
The age of Ram Mohun
Roy is sometimes described as the ‘Indian Renaissance”, and later Indian Marxist
intellectuals, like M.N.Roy
(1667.1954), admired the courage of the “fathers of Indian Renaissance” to
attack the time-honored but enslaving social customs and prejudices”
perpetuated in India.
M.N.Roy argued, further that India
might have a great civilization but it would be ridiculous to think that the
Theory of Relativity was already announced in the Vedas, and that the world
should learn its science from ancient India.”
Ancient Indian cultural achievement should not blind modern Indians from the
reality that “the world has gone ahead.” Meanwhile, “Indian history was
stagnant” hence her “cultural superstructure” failed to develop. Here again,
one notices the enchantment with the self-defined project of Enlightenment,
which is felt by Indian intellectuals. They see Britain as the savior of their
country and hope that the popularization in western thought in India wilt free
the country from its superstitious and irrational past, Above all, modern
British institutions such as the Parliament and the legal system were praised
by most Indians of this period. This admiration is what led them to accept
British rule. Nehru’s discourse on tradition versus modernity quickly travels
from the stage of enchantment to that of disenchantment He wrote in The
Discovery of India: “Today, in the world
of politics and economics there is a search for power and yet when power is
attained much else of value has gone. Political trickery and intrigue take the
place of idealism, and cowardice and selfishness the place of disinterested
courage. Form prevails over substance, and power, so eagerly sought after, some
how fails to achieve what it aimed at.” (p. 595)
Tagore’s “last birthday address” was on “crisis of civilization”. In
this address, Tagore almost summarized the entire process of metamorphosis of
an Indian intellectual mind from enchantment to disenchantment journeying
through western civilization. He thought so “firmly rooted in the sentiments”
of Indian leaders fighting for Independence was the Indian “faith in the generosity of the English race”. Tagore
admitted: “I was impressed by this evidence of liberal humanity in the
character of the English and thus I was led to set them on the pedestal of my
highest respect.” He, then, narrated what he saw in Japan and USSR their rapid industrialization which, then
led him to resent British imperialists’ sacrificing “the welfare of the subject
races to their own national greed”. He lamented that while many other countries
were “marching ahead”, India alone “smothered under the dead weight of British administration, lay
static in her utter helplessness.” This was “the tragic tale of the gradual
loss of my faith in the claims of the European nations to civilization.“(Ghose, p. 186)
To achieve the aim of
stamping out the Indian mind during the colonial rule, the British rulers
followed two approaches on the one hand, they encouraged an English and
Christianized education in accordance with the well-known Macaulay doctrine,
which projected Europe as an enlightened, democratic, progressive heaven, and
on the other hand, they pursued a systematic denigration of Indian culture,
scriptures, customs, traditions, crafts, cottage industries, social
institutions, educational system, taking full advantage of the stagnant and
often degenerate character of the Hindu society of the time. There were, of
course, notable exceptions among British individuals, from William Jones to
Sister Nivedita and Annie Besant—but almost none to be found among the ruling
class. Let us recall how, in his famous 1835-Minute, Thomas B. Macaulay asserted
that Indian culture was based on “a
literature ... that inculcates the most serious errors on the most important
subjects ... hardly reconcilable with reason, with morality ... fruitful of
monstrous superstitions.” Hindus, he confidently declared, had nothing to show
except a “false history, false astronomy, false medicine ... in company with a
false religion.”
As it happened,
Indians were—and still largely are—naive people who could simply not suspect
the degree of premeditation with which their colonial masters set about their
task.
In the middle of the
1857 uprising, the Governor-General Lord Canning wrote to a British official:
As we must rule 150 millions of people by a handful (more or less
small) of Englishmen, let us do it in the manner best calculated to leave them
divided (as in religion and national feeling they already are) and to inspire
them with the greatest possible awe of our power and with the least possible
suspicion of our motives.
Even a “liberal”
governor such as Elphinstone wrote in 1859, “Divide
et impera [‘divide and rule’ in Latin] was the old
Roman motto and it should be ours.” In this clash of two civilizations,
the European, younger, dynamic, hungry for space and riches, appeared far
better fitted than the Indian, half decrepit, almost completely dormant after
long centuries of internal strife and repeated onslaught. The contrast was so
huge that no one doubted the outcome—the rapid conquest of the Indian mind and
life.
That was what
Macaulay, again, summarized best when he proudly wrote his father in 1836: Our English schools are flourishing
wonderfully.... It is my belief that if our plans of education are followed up,
there will not be a single idolater among the respectable classes in Bengal thirty years hence. Macaulay wanted to create a generation of
Indians who in their thought and words would be British. Macaulay had not
planned prophetically for one or two generations but for generations that now
thrive in independent India.
Very faithfully, certain groups of individuals who monopolized the control of
institutions and had the blessings of their political masters and had
cultivated bureaucracy have relentlessly striven for the success of the
perceptions of Macaulay. Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, the famous art critic who
happened to be born a Sri Lankan Tamil, gave the following warning during the early
years of the 20th century; It is hard to realize how completely the
continuity of Indian life has been severed. A single generation of English
education suffices to break the threads of tradition and to create a
nondescript and superficial being deprived of all roots—a sort of intellectual
pariah who does not belong to the East or the West, the past or the future. The
greatest danger for India is the loss of her spiritual integrity. Of all Indian problems the
educational is the most difficult and most tragic.
That Macaulay
exhibited such chutzpah about the benefits of the English language, indicates a
confidence (what I don’t know cannot hurt me) and bravado that is an exemplar
of how dominant the Europeans had become vis-a-vis the colonies. But subjection
to Western influence did more than simply impoverish the Indian mind or wean it
away from Indian culture. It also introduced serious distortions into its
thinking processes. With their clear and bold thought, Western thinkers since
the eighteenth century no doubt did much to pull Europe
out of the dark ages brought about by Christianity. But they had to take
shortcuts in the process; they needed sharp intellectual weapons and had no
time to develop the qualities of pluralism, universality, integrality native to
the Indian mind and nurtured over thousands of years. Their thought was
essentially divisive and exclusive.
Such an attitude on
the part of Macaulay is not due to malice towards the Indian populace but
indicates a serious flaw in the educational maturity of the colonial power. Of
course one might rationalize away the actions of a colonial power with the
remark that they were not accountable to anybody in India
and in many instances were accountable to no one at all. The real question is
what excuse does independent India
have to continue this policy.
The result of this Western obsession with divisiveness has been
disastrous in India’s context. Her inhabitants had never called themselves “Aryans” or
“Dravidians” in the racial sense, yet they became thus segregated; they had
never known they were “Hindus,” yet they had to be happy with this new designation;
they had never called their view of the world a “religion” (a word with no
equivalent in Sanskrit), but it had to become one, promptly labeled “Hinduism.”
Nor was one label sufficient: India always recognized and respected the
infinite multiplicity of approaches to the Truth (what is commonly, but
incorrectly, called “tolerance”), but under the Western spotlight those
approaches became so many “sects” almost rivaling each other (perhaps like
Catholics and Protestants !). Hinduism was thus cut up into convenient
bits—Vedism, Brahmanism, Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Shaktism, Tantrism, etc.—of
which Indians themselves had been largely unaware, or at any rate not in this
rigid, cut-and-dried fashion. As for Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, which had
been regarded in India as simply new paths, they were arbitrarily stuck with a label of
“separate religions.”
Similarly, thousands of fluid communities were duly catalogued and
crystallized by the British rulers as so many permanent and rigid castes.
In 1879 the Collector
of Tanjore in a communication to Sir James Caird, member of the Famine
Commission, stated that “there was no class (except Brahmanas) which was so
hostile to the English.” The
predominance of the Brahmanas in the freedom movement confirmed the worst
British suspicions of the community. Innumerable CID reports of the period
commented on Brahmana participation at all levels of the nationalist movement.
In the words of an observer, “If any community could claim credit for driving
the British out of the country, it was the Brahmana community. Seventy per cent
of those who were felled by British bullets were Brahmanas”. The Mandal
Commission report marks the culmination of the attempt at social engineering
that began with the Christian missionary (followed by British governmental)
campaigns against the Brahmana community in the early part of the 19th century.
It was not accidental that Brahmanas emerged as the principal target of British
attacks. Britishers of all pursuits, missionaries, administrators and
orientalists, were quick to grasp; their pivotal role in the Indian social
arrangement. They were all agreed that religious ideas and practices underlay
the entire social structure and that, as custodians of the sacred tradition,
Brahmanas were the principal integrating force. This made them the natural
target of those seeking to fragment, indeed atomize, Indian society. This was
as true of the British conquerors as it was of Muslim rulers in the preceding
centuries. Mandal takes off from where the British left.
The British census
operations that began in the latter part of the 19th century produced further
distortions in the Indian system. The British sought to interpret the caste
system in the light of their own pet theories. H. H. Risley who directed the
1901 census operations was, for example, determined to demonstrate that “race
sentiment” formed the basis of the caste system and that social precedence was
based on the scale of racial purity. The same race theory played havoc in Europe
in the form of Nazism and has now been fully repudiated. The British, unmindful
of the complexities and intricacies of the social arrangement, sought to
achieve standardization by placing all jatis in the four varnas or in the
categories of outcastes and aborigines. As a result they destroyed the
flexibility that was so vital for the proper functioning of the system. The
census operations raised caste consciousness to a fever. Unfortunately, this
itemizing and labeling of their heritage became a undisputed truth in
the subconscious mind of Indians; they passively accepted being dissected
and defined by their colonial masters, and they learned to look at themselves
through Western eyes. The Indian mind had become too feeble to take the trouble
of assimilating the few positive elements of Western thought and rejecting the
many negative ones: it swallowed but could not digest.
Center-State relations
in education over the last 170 years have presented an extremely variegated
picture in the country. Prior to 1833, India
had a period of total decentralization when all the three Presidencies of the British
Empire followed their own educational policy, subject only to the
distant and sporadic supervision of the Court of Directors in London.
This was the Macaulay period. The Charter Act of 1833 went to the other extreme
and created a highly centralized form of administration in the country under
which education, like any other subject, became a responsibility of the
Government of India. During this period, for instance, the Directors of Public
Instruction in the Provinces used to complain that they could, not incur an
expenditure of even one rupee without the sanction of the Imperial Government
at Calcutta. This was thus a period
of extreme centralization. In 1870, a period of decentralization of authority
was initiated by Lord Mayo. This decentralization was gradually increased till
1918, by which time the Provincial Governments came to possess large authority
over education, although the Government of India did continue to exercise
considerable supervisory powers in essential matters. This period can be
considered the period of British plan for the Great Game of dividing the
country on ethnic lines. In addition,
there was the Indian Education Service which was created, in 1897 and whose
officers filled the important posts in all the Provincial Education Departments
This period may, therefore, be regarded as a period of large decentralization
combined with limited but essential, Central control to create different world
view of different parts of the country for eventual separation.. The Government
of India Act of 1919 made a still more radical change. It introduced diarchy in
the provinces under the control of Indian Ministers responsible to a
legislature with a large elected majority. As a corollary to this, therefore,
the Central controls over education had to be reduced to the minimum if not
eliminated altogether. Consequently, there came about what the Hartog Committee calls a `divorce' between education and
the Government of India. This situation continued right till 1950 although, in
view of its disastrous results, some attempts were made, from 1935 onwards, to
bring the Government of India back into the picture through such measures as
the revival of the Central Advisory Board of Education.
The Central Advisory
Board of Education, the oldest and the most important advisory body of the
Government of India in education was first established in 1920 and dissolved in
1923 as a measure of economy. The real reason being that they could not control
the education policy according to their larger design. It was revived in 1935
and has been in existence ever since even after independence. The idea that
there should be a central Advisory Board of Education was first put forward by
the Calcutta University Commission (1917-19) which felt "that the
Government of India could perform an invaluable function by defining the
general aims of educational policy, by giving advice and assistance to local
governments and to the development of educational ideas in the various
provinces, and also elsewhere than in India." This is the start of the control of education
in India by
foreign policy makers, which continues even after the independence. Almost
simultaneously the Government of India Act, 1919 decided to make education
mainly a provincial and a transferred subject and to limit the `control' of the
Central Government over it to the minimum. This fundamental decision changed
the character of the Government of India from that of an executive to an
advisory authority; and consequently, the Secretariat Procedure Committee set
up to implement the Government of India Act, 1919, observed that, in future,
the executive authority of the Government of India should be mainly exercised through
moral persuasion and recommended that, "in place of giving executive
orders it should tend more and more to become a center of the best information,
research and advice." This recommendation made the adoption of the
recommendation of the Calcutta University Commission all the more imperative
and accordingly, a Central Advisory Board of Education was set up in 1920 under
the chairmanship of Education Commissioner to the Government of India. It is a
good deal of useful work but, owing to a financial crisis calling for drastic
retrenchments, was abolished in 1923.
For the next twelve
years, there was no Central body to advise the Government of India in
educational matters. This period was the critical period of British trying to
find a path for the Muslim nationalism in India
for a separate homeland. However, a feeling of regret at the discontinuance of
the Board began to grow, especially after the Report of Hartog
Committee (1928) which observed that the divorce between the Government of
India and education had been unfortunate. Consequently, the present Central
Advisory Board of Education was revived in 1935. The first constitution of the
Board was given in the Government of India
(Education, Health and Lands Department) Resolution No.F.122-3/35-E dated 8th
of August, 1935. This period saw the revival of the Muslim leagues demand and
eventual creation of Pakistan
in the eastern wing and the western wing. The Board has been reconstituted vide
Government of India Resolution No.1-2/90- PN(D.II) dated 19th October, 1990, as per. The practice adopted
by the Board has been to hold one meeting every year, although the record of
the last fifty- five years shows that there were no meetings in 1937, 1939,
1966, 1969, 1973, 1976(emergency), 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1984,
1985 and 1990, and two meetings were held each in 1938, 1943, 1950 and 1986.
Prof. S. Nurul Hasan was the chair for the years 1972, 1974, 1975 which were
the crucial years after the breakup of Bangladesh,
the unrest among Indian intellectual and academic bodies and Pokhran test in
1974.
The National Policy of 1968 marked a significant
step forward in the history of education in post-independence India. It dealt with several important aspects of
education which had been examined in depth by Commissions and Committees over a
long period both before and after independence,
culminating in the Education Commission
(1964-66). The Policy of 1968 aimed at promoting national progress, creating a
sense of common citizenship and culture and strengthening national integration.
It laid stress on the need for a radical reconstruction of education to improve
its quality at all stages, much greater attention to science and technology,
cultivation of moral values and a closer relation between education and the
life of the people. But the policy left others to take control of history and
narration in the process making changes which suited the vested interest such
as the Marxists. Romila Thapar first edition of Early India was introduced in
1968 which later for 30 years became a standard reading material for many institutions
( 2nd edition was in 2003).
The years since the
adoption of the 1968 Policy have been considerable expansion in education all
over the country, at all levels. More than 90% of the rural habitations now
have schooling facilities within a radius of one kilometer. At the upper end of
the pyramid also, there has been a sizeable augmentation of education
facilities. The most notable development following the policy of 1968 has been
the acceptance of a common structure of education throughout the country and
the introduction of the 10+2+3 system by most of the States. In relation to
school curricula, in addition to laying down a common system of studies for
boys and girls, science and mathematics were incorporated as compulsory
subjects and- work experience was assigned a place of importance.
The problem of school textbooks came up for
discussion at the meeting of the National Integration Council held at Srinagar in June 1968. The Council attached great
significance to the proper use of textbooks for purposes of national
integration. It was of the view that education from the primary to the
post-graduate stage should be re-oriented (a) to serve the purpose of creating
a sense of Indianness, unity and solidarity; (b) to inculcate faith in the
basic postulates of Indian democracy; and (c) to help the nation to create a
modern society out of the present traditional one, and that the textbooks used
in the schools should be specially designed to serve these purposes. It also
recommended that the State Governments should create an appropriate machinery
at the State level for the improvement of school text-books in general and for
using them effectively for purposes of national integration in particular and
that, in consultation with them a National Board of School Textbooks which will
co-ordinate the efforts of the State Governments should be set up by the
Government of India. But this recommendation was not adopted as policy when the
next change in textbooks was done in 1978. The year 1978 can be considered as a
crucial year in the history of education in India since the Marxists were in full control of the
educational institutions and other intellectual institutions such as media.
Most of the changes in history to suit the Marxists were done in this year and
these reflected even up to the year 2002.
Government of India
announced in January, 1985, that a new Education Policy would be formulated for
the country. A full appraisal of the existing educational scene was undertaken
and a document, entitled, "Challenge of Education" was brought out in
August 1985. There has been a countrywide debate on the document, marked by
keen interest, and enthusiasm. The views and suggestions received from different
quarters were carefully studied and are reflected in this Presentation. The new
Policy takes off from the National Education Policy adopted by the Government
of India and approved by Parliament in 1968 and seeks to build on it, to
respond to the changes, which have taken place since.
Distortions in Indian History after independence
The
reality is that even after pursuing Macaulay’s, legacy for over half a century
after political independence, India
has not yet overcome the social, economic, political and environmental crisis
prevailing in the country. All the
political parties talk about value based politics, but they rarely speak about
the means of achieving it. It is
possible only if the direction of education is focused towards building a
social order inspired through scientific and spiritual vision. Instead of preserving our ancient scriptures,
which are the treasure house of spiritual wisdom the move to negate the
introduction of time-tested cultural heritage in school and university
curriculum is seemingly an intriguing reflection of the colonial mindset of
self-seeking politicians. Since the
majority of the educated Indian elite were made to think and behave like their
colonial masters, it has now become their habit to oppose any attempt to
indianize the country’s educational curriculum.
If India
did achieve political independence albeit at a terrible cost, she hardly
achieved independence in the field of thought. Nor did she try: the country’s
so-called elite, whose mind had been shaped and hypnotized by their colonial
masters, always assumed that anything Western was so superior that in order to
reach all-round fulfillment, India
merely had to follow European thought, science, and political institutions. Indian historiography in the post-independence phase
has been characterized by the remarkable similarity between western scholarship
on India and
the works of Indian historians, whether Marxist, secular or liberal. Writings
of this genre present Hindustan as the aggregationist
story par excellence: A patchwork of communities, dialects and religion from
time immemorial. This view of history, largely uncontested so far, is now
facing its first serious challenge.
In book after book, we
hear the same refrain. Another work, for instance, argues that "there is
hardly a single teaching in Hindustan which can be shown
to be valid for all Hindus, much less a comprehensive set of teachings."
These motivated and highly disruptive theories from western sources are
faithfully reproduced in any number of Indian works. These too, decry attempts
to reduce 'the multiplicity of classical traditions' in the subcontinent to one
unitary tradition that is Aryan-Hindu and high caste.
Indian scholarship of
the Left variety also comments adversely on the 'modern
search for an imagined Hindu identity from the past.' The main goal of
the historians is to remove any national identity and nationalism in India
with a unifying thought. Indian languages are subtly or not so subtly given a
lower status than English, with the result that many deep scholars or writers
who chose to express themselves in their native languages remain totally
unknown beyond their States, while textbooks are crowded with second-rate
thinkers who happened to write in English. If you take a look at the teaching of
history, the situation is even worse. Almost all Indian history taught today in
our schools and universities has been written by Western scholars, or by
“native historians who [have] taken over the views of the colonial masters,” in
the words of Prof. Klostermaier of Canada’s
University of Manitoba.
All of India’s historical tradition, all ancient records are simply brushed
aside as so much fancy so as to satisfy the Western dictum that “Indians have
no sense of history.”
It is claimed that
'the need for postulating a Hindu community became a requirement for political
mobilization in the nineteenth century when representation by religious
community became a key to power and where such representation gave access to
economic resources.' The leftists can get away with it because they control the
media for most part of the modern history and have made sure that there is no
sense of unified India.
The persistent denial of the integrity of Indian civilization is accompanied by
denigration of agencies perceived as unifying, Vedic traditions and Brahmanism
being singled out for attack. The Left's insistence on an atomized, splintered
heritage has had interesting but possibly unintended consequences. India
is presented as the quintessential no-man's land. Aryans (though it is now
accepted by all scholars that there was no 'Aryan Invasion' after all and even
more pertinently there is no such race as a Aryan race), Indo-Greeks, Shakas,
Indo-Parthians, Kushans... the list of putative foreign invaders, settlers and
rulers has been formidable from very early on. So, they argue, no group or
community can legitimately claim 'national' right to the land.
It is to justify these
theories that the ancient history of India
has been written in recent decades. The reality, they say, is of 'a fragmented,
largely oral set of traditions' and a disparate population. Hinduism
is sought to be minimized, as one of many 'religions' existing in the
subcontinent, in no way entitled to special status - a position no longer
acceptable to a growing body of Independent historians. So, politics is mixed
with history and history with politics. Educated Indians virtually admitted
they were “hopeless, dumb, reactionary,” and could only stop being so by
receiving salvation from Europe: they pinned their hopes
on its democracy and secularism, ignoring all warnings that those European
concepts would wreak havoc once mechanically transposed to India.
Worse, they rivaled one another in denigrating their heritage. If even today a
Western journalist or professor utters the words of “caste” or “sati” or “Hindu
fundamentalism” (and I would like to ask him what the “fundamentals” of
Hinduism are), you will hear a number of Indian intellectuals beating their
chests in unison—even as they keep their eyes tightly shut to the most fatal
aberrations of Western society.
Ram Swarup, a profound
Indian thinker who passed away recently, was not afraid of swimming against
this self-deprecating tide nurtured by our intelligentsia and media remarks: A permanent stigma
seems to have stuck to the terms Hindu and Hinduism. These have now become
terms of abuse in the mouth of the very elite which the Hindu millions have
raised to the pinnacle of power and prestige with their blood, sweat and tears.
The current fashion is
to maintain that the Hindu ethos or
Hindutva which permeates the subcontinent (including the other nations of the
subcontinent) is not to be confused with mainstream Hinduism. This overlooks
the glaring reality that the Sanatana Dharma is a Catholic Darshana, that it
encompasses many streams of thought, and that while there may not be one
mainstream Hindu philosophy; there are common elements which can be subsumed
under the rubric of Hindutva
Quoted from N S Rajaram:
India gained
independence from the British in 1947, or more than fifty years ago. But intellectually and educationally India continues to be a European colony. This is because,
during the first forty years of her existence as a free nation, the Congress
Party and the intellectual establishment continued to encourage colonial
institutions and thinking. The result today is that there is an English
educated elite that identifies itself more with the West than with India
and her ancient civilization. And the Congress Party, especially after the
death of Sardar Patel, has identified itself more with foreign values rather
than Indian values. The Communists, who have always been hostile to Indian
nationalism, have now joined hands with anti-national forces, which are
fiercely anti-Hindu. This is reflected in the attitude and behavior of the
English educated intellectuals, including the media.
This colonial holdover
consisting of the Congress, the Communists and the Leftist intellectual class
(including the media) have come together to perpetuate anti-national values and
interests. This naturally makes them intensely anti-Hindu. It views with fear
anything that has even a suggestion of nationalism rooted in Indian history and
tradition. Anglocentric writings, which were tied to British foreign policy
and strategic objectives and continued to exercise influence in the South Asian
former colonies, suffered from a dichotomy with respect to Indian
nationalism. They critiqued Indian nationalism or the cultural nationalism. But
they did not adequately critique the Muslim separatism, which evolved into
Pakistani nationalism. The result was that most dissidents or opponents of
Indian nationalism were glorified, while the Muslim opponents of Muslim
separatism and of Pakistani nationalism were barely mentioned. This is another
form of indoctrination, which left divisions within India.
Since Indian
nationalism can only exist as a product of the Hindu Civilization, these forces
hostile to Hinduism have combined to oppose the rise of national awareness
that is now sweeping the country. The result is that they will go to any
length to give a negative picture of India
and her past. The first step in this is to distort Indian history. Fortunately
for them, most of the distortion had already been done for them by the British,
and their successors during the Congress rule. So all they had to do was to
continue with the colonial version of Indian history.
A single example
should help give an idea of the dangers of this centralized feudal educational
policy. For over 20 years, H.S. Khan headed the history and sociology division
of the NCERT. He is known to hold the view that India
became civilized only through the introduction of Islam. This incidentally is
also the official Pakistani line. This was also the view of Nurul Hassan who
was of course the patron of H.S. Khan. This is taking the Aryan invasion idea a
giant step forward (or backward).
Dr. Nurul Hasan was a
politician, the Education Minister appointed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Concerning him and his protégés, archaeologist Dilip Chakrabarti remarks (on
page 13 of Colonial Indology.
Munshiram Manoharlal: New Delhi, 1997) – “To thwart the strength of the old Congress party stalwarts,
the then Prime Minister of the country, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, came to depend
significantly on the support of the ‘left’ political parties, and recruited in
the process to her cabinet a History professor, putting him in charge of
education. This professor, an Oxford D.Phil with a firm belief in the ‘progressive’, i.e.,
‘left’ ideas, was also the son of an important government functionary of British India and related by
marriage to one of the powerful ‘native’ princely houses of the north. Till his
date in harness as the governor of a left-controlled Indian state, he acted as
the patron saint of a wide variety of historians claiming ‘progressive’
political beliefs and hoping for a slice of the establishment cake.”
When Indira Gandhi's Congress faction came together with the CPI after 1969 the
Union Education Ministry presently went to Nurul Hasan. Historiography was
placed largely in the hands of well-intentioned but uni-dimensional
historians analytically oriented towards the pre-independence CPI. The
Congress-CPI alliance was probably necessary. But its impact on the
intellectual front was not well worked out by the two sides and was skewed.
These historians wrote in an age when they were tempted to assume that the
Congress dominance would be there forever or, if replaced, would be replaced
only by a formation in which the Left would play a major role. They, therefore,
concerned themselves primarily with the vindication of the pre-Independence
CPI, or variations upon this theme. Congress, including socialist, history —
for example, the Congress and Congress Socialist role in creating and advancing
the all-India peasant movements — went by default. Political training for
Indian nationalism was neglected.
From the Seventies onwards, as the last of the
old congress generation passed away, the Congress took the easy way out and
began to promote the mullah as the interface between the party and the Muslim
community. This may have been to consolidate the political base which was
withering away due to attack by the subaltern nationalities supported by the
foreign agencies and countries. It was
with Indira Gandhi's benign, if indirect, encouragement that the All India
Muslim Personal Law Board was set up in 1972. The landmark moment was 1980 when
Mrs Gandhi, with the help of Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna,
signed a "pact" with an Imam of Delhi's principal mosque, the self-styled
Shahi Imam. It was the symbolic and real surrender of the whole community's
vote to the mullah element. The process only intensified under Rajiv Gandhi,
although, to be honest, he was privately deeply troubled by what he was doing.
Perhaps after the surrender over Shah Bano in 1986 there could be no turning
back. And yet, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi do not deserve all the blame for
this. Those who came after them could have used their massive popularity to
reverse the trend; instead they courted the mullah even more assiduously.
Vishwanath Pratap Singh sank even deeper into this trough.
In 1982, the National
Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) issued a directive for the
rewriting of school texts. Among other things, it stipulated:
"Characterization of the medieval period as a time of conflict between
Hindus and Muslims is forbidden." Thus, denial of history, or Negationism,
has become India's
official "educational" policy. To the new historians the Aryan
invasion theory was the lifeline which connected them to their masters in the West. This
subservience provided them lecture tours, fellowships and presence in
international conferences. To them India
had nothing worthwhile to boast of except the unsociable practices perpetuated by
the caste system and sati and the exploitation of the majority of the
population by the Brahmins. To them India
was never a nation, it became so only through the grace of the British. But for
them, there would have been no India.
The only worthwhile history was one in which India
was modernized by the British and earlier invaders. After all, can anybody
match the gift given to India
in terms of say, railways and the English language! The great Indian Marxist
academics who have followed the 1853 dictum of their Master. "India, then, could
not escape being conquered, and the whole of her past history, if it be
anything, is the history of the successive conquests she has undergone. Indian
society has no history at all... What we call its history is but the history of
the successive intruders who founded their empires on the passive basis of that
unresisting and unchanging society." To some this was the
essence of the Vedas, the Puranas and the Smritis. Total commitment and
unadulterated subservience.
Shaping the minds of the future
generation is the third center of gravity which the major powers want to target
in any nation. The eminent authors of history books amongst them, in the true
tradition of Macaulay, wanted to create a generation totally delinked from
its past. They knew that the most successful approach to demoralize a
nation would be to demoralize the young generation. That could bring about a red revolution. The best strategy would be
to make them ashamed of their past. After all, they belonged to the generations
of weak, "unresistant and unchanging people." The negationist kind of
history was thrust down the throats of young Indian children for decades
together. A select group of leftists came to control academic institutions of
national importance and invented a course of Indian history of their choice.
Those who opposed them were just ignored and relegated to oblivion. They were
not found suitable for any of the fellowships or recruitment in the
institutions and universities. In the process many careers were destroyed.
Eminent historians were thrown to the periphery and never even referred to in
the intellectual outputs. The one perverse objective
of this group of intellectuals in authority was to destroy Indian institutions
and whatever was sacred to multitudes of Indians. This is one of the centers of
gravity to be destroyed in India, which the great powers had in mind. It was
considered vital to destroy all edifices of which India
could be proud of. They ridiculed Indian samskaras, spirituality, the culture
of inclusiveness and acceptance and the unique balance in Indian society.
Neo-colonialism
This section borrows
heavily from Rajiv Malhotra’s article in Sulekha
titled ‘The Axis of neocolonialism’.
Elite colleges in the
West teach great respect for Greek and other Western Classics as being the
bedrock of their civilization; it has become fashionable for the elite (i.e.
Westernized) in India
to denigrate their own Indian Classics. Compare this to the tragic state of
Indian Classics in India’s
own higher education. The equivalent to the Greek Classics would be India’s
Vedas, Puranas and other Sanskrit, Pali and Tamil
texts. In a comparable education system, students would learn about Panini,
Patanjali, Buddha, Nagarjuna, Dharmakirti, Bharthrhari, Sankara, Abhinavgupta,
Bharata Muni, Gangesh, Kalidasa, Aryabhata and dozens of other great classical
thinkers produced by India.
Unfortunately, in the
name of progress, modernity, and political correctness, Indian Classics have
been virtually banished from India’s
higher education – a continuation of the policy on Indian education started by
the famous Lord Macaulay over 150 years ago.. While India supplies information technology, biotechnology, corporate management,
medical and other professionals to the most prestigious organizations of the
world, it is unable to supply world-class
scholars in the disciplines of its own traditions.
The reason is that the
nexus of Indology studies remains in Western universities, almost as though
decolonization had never happened. The top rated academic journals and
conferences on Indology and India
related fields are in the West, run largely by Western scholars, and funded by
Western private, church and governmental interests. The best research libraries
in the Indian Classics are in the West. Religious Studies is the hottest
academic field in the humanities in the US,
and is growing at a very fast rate, but is non-existent as a discipline in
Indian universities.
Therefore, to get an
internationally competitive PhD in Sanskrit, Indian Classics, Hinduism,
Buddhism, or Jainism Studies, with the highest rigor in methods and theory,
such that one may get an academic job in this specialty in a leading
international university, a student is forced to go to a US, UK or German university.
Hence, one cannot find qualified experts of Indian religions in India,
in order to debate Western scholars. The few Indian scholars within the Western
academy who are educated in the Indian Classics, are either below the glass
ceiling, or else are politically cautious given the risks to their career
ambitions.
Furthermore, the
marginalization of India’s
heritage in its education system, particularly in the English medium system
that produces most of the leaders of modern Indian society, has resulted in the
leaders of industry, civil service, media and education becoming a culturally
lost generation. The result is today’s self-alienated, cynical youth prevalent
in many places, especially in elite positions. This is the ultimate goal of the
western neo-colonialists.
Interestingly, Western
academia hires many Indian scholars in the departments of English Literature,
History, Philosophy, Sociology, and Political Science, amongst other
humanities. However, while the Western audiences think of them as spokespersons
for Indic Traditions, the vast majority of them are unwilling and unqualified
to explain Indian Classics seriously. But their Western hosts and colleagues
are usually unaware of this shortcoming in most Indian scholars. For this
deficiency to become public about an Indian scholar is tantamount to a minor
scandal, because they derive much of their clout based on the false perception
that they are representatives of Indic thought.
To cover up their
ignorance, many elitist Indians resort to a combination of Eurocentric and
Marxist rhetoric about Indian civilization – the caste, cows and curry theory
of India. They
quote Orientalist accounts of India
and even base their own scholarship as extensions and derivatives of colonial
writings superimposed with Marxism. On the one hand, postcolonial studies are
at the very heart of their specialization and career paths. But on the other
hand, they are only trained in using Eurocentric hermeneutics and methods.
Hence, they can deconstruct Eurocentrism with Western
methods, but are completely inept at applying Indic categories and
perspectives. They cannot replace the Eurocentric representation model with
anything indigenous from India.
Postcolonial studies often end up as Orientalism by the neocolonized.
To get certified that
they are secular, many Indians line up to prove how they hate Hinduism, or at
least how distant they are from what they perceive as a denigrated identity.
The historian, Ronald Indenexplains
the root cause of this disease: “Nehru's India was supposed to be
committed to 'secularism'. The idea here in its weaker publicly reiterated form
was that the government would not interfere in 'personal' religious matters and
would create circumstances in which people of all religions could live in harmony.
The idea in its stronger, unofficially stated form was that in order to
modernize, India would have to set
aside centuries of traditional religious ignorance and superstition and
eventually eliminate Hinduism and Islam from people's lives altogether. After
Independence, governments implemented secularism mostly by refusing to
recognize the religious pasts of Indian nationalism, whether Hindu or Muslim,
and at the same time (inconsistently) by retaining Muslim 'personal law'.”
This agenda, built on
a false definition of secularism, has been taken to such extremes that Sanskrit
has been demonized, because it is seen as part of the Evil Brahmin Conspiracy
to oppress all the victims of contemporary Indian society. Jawaharlal Nehru
University, one of India’s elite institutions in the liberal arts, and the
seminary that produces many of these maladjusted intellectuals, has fought hard
to resist the establishment of a Sanskrit and Indian Classics department,
whereas it is proud of its faculty and curriculum in a wide variety of European
languages and civilizations including Persian.
This is the result of
sheer ignorance about the scope and value of Sanskrit literature. Indologists
believe that there are over 30 million distinct manuscripts in Sanskrit, mostly
not cataloged, with less than one percent ever translated into a non Indian
language. The vast majority of Sanskrit texts is not about “religion,” and
covers a diverse territory of subjects – medicine, botany, aesthetics, fiction,
jokes, sex, political thought, logic, mathematics, and so forth.
Sanskrit was the
language of scholarship for a period of several millennia, in the same manner
as English has become over the past century. To demonize and suppress this
language and its vast literature, in the name of political correctness, is a
tragedy against all humanity. Yet this is precisely what has been done for 50
years after India’s
independence. One result of all this has been that
the colonial mistranslation of Sanskrit words have now become accepted by the
majority of Indians educated in the English language, not only the scholars but
also the leaders of India’s media, higher education, industry and
administrative services. By keeping Sanskrit teaching outside the state support
system the force of history is working against the development of Sanskrit
language in India and Civilizational motif. The goal is that as decades pass
by the number of people knowledgeable about Sanskrit and scriptures would die
down and will lead to total elimination of regeneration of Sanskrit, the
scriptures and Civilizational identity in India. That would also be the death of the Civilizational unity
of India and the idea of India.
In 1986 [Why that year
and why not earlier years?] probably to
coincide with changes in Pakistan; where a Muslim political history became
rooted to stabilize the polity; and second spurt in population in the 80s in
India and creation of SAARC], on Khan's initiative, textbook writers in all the
states were directed to change the version of history to accord with the
anti-Hindu model. Specific guidelines were issued to all the states instructing
them not to glorify any period of history — meaning any Hindu period — as a
Golden Age; the Gupta period therefore was not to be glorified despite its great
achievements. As a further step in de-Hinduization and rehabilitation of
tyrannical Muslim rulers, Hindu leaders like Shivaji, Chandrashekara Azad and
Rana Pratap were not to be described as freedom fighters against alien rule,
but treated as terrorists who opposed 'civilized and civilizing' rulers like
Aurangazeb. As a result, the anti-Hindu agenda, which had been gaining strength
since the early 1950s, accelerated dramatically under the feudal regime of
Nurul Hassan. Only now, following the rout of the Congress party in the 1999
elections, their monopoly has come under threat.
This has made these
men and women resort to desperate measures like what is coming out in the ICHR
scandals. Using the choicest of the
expressions in the language they love most, they have gone hammer and tongs in
their attempts to decimate, and, if possible, destroy NCERT. They are the
flag-bearers of secularism and national cohesion. None else is eligible to talk
about it. Even the file pushers joined this bandwagon, smelling a rare chance
to deliver sermons to academics and academic institutions. To them, because of
NCERT, the future of the country is bleak. They find the process of curriculum
renewal in the NCERT as disastrous to the future generations and obviously to
the "nation," built up by the "British and those who invaded India
earlier." They love being categorized "eminent," the select band
of historians, bureaucrats and fellow travelers. They were never worried about
education, books, textbooks and their quality when they were at the helm of
affairs for decades together. Every book prepared then never contained any
error or mistake. They are sure about it. However, these self-appointed saviors
of quality and values in education just winked away when Prof. Makkhan Lal analyzed the Class VI history textbook prepared
by the government of West Bengal. It is not difficult to identify the pall bearers of the
traditions in education perpetuated by Macaulay. They ensured that Indian
education remains oriented to the elite, and the constitutional mandate of
equality of opportunity, equity and social justice remain mere statements on
paper.
Indian scholarship,
however, largely failed to challenge the Anglocentric dichotomy. This was
partly because the dominant scholarship in India
since the 1970s, being overly self-conscious about the specific line which the
CPI took on Pakistan
in the 1940s, could not decide whether to challenge or to reinforce the
Anglocentric dichotomy. Even when it discussed these voices it could portray
them only as victims of Indian nationalism.
The creeping myth was
fostered so successfully in India
for many decades by the JNU-type leftist academics: that
"intellectualism" necessarily involves the debunking of all
traditional values, including patriotism, as pithy symptoms of bourgeois
small-mindedness. This attitude of leftist propriety over intellectual activity
was something that cast a shadow over many young minds in their University
days. The leftist/communist cabal at every campus in India
had a stranglehold on dictating what views were, and were not intellectually
"fashionable". If you didn't bash your country and deride its history
and cry tears of guilt and shame for the circumstances of your birth, so the
argument went, you couldn't possibly be bright enough to be considered an
"intellectual". Being an intellectual and recognized as an
intellectual is controlled by a closed
group and regulated by the thought police establishment. Arundhati Roy,
Rohinton Mistry (of Oprah fame), Bharati Mukerji, and others of this new genre
of English language Indian writers, are my second generation of neocolonial
brown (mem)sahibs.
They rake in their
money and awards spinning a reinforcement of the caste, cows and curry
meta-narratives of India.
This is to be contrasted with recent Bollywood blockbusters, such as Lagaan,
that have depicted the cross-cultural relationship from the Indian perspective,
and hence, catered to popular Indian audiences. These writers, on the other
hand, are not read by India’s
masses, whom they pretend to represent. It is the
Western reader, seeking to fortify his/her Eurocentric myth of superiority, who
endorses such work. These authors serve as brown-skinned suppliers for
the kind of Orientalism previously done by whites such as Kipling. Their work
is widely prescribed in American colleges, as insightful approaches into the
complexity of exotic India,
in a friendly fictionalized manner. It is taken more seriously than it deserves
to be, because the publishers are falsely marketing these authors as the real
voices of India.
Changes in History teaching in Pakistan
There is increasing
evidence that changes in history teaching in Pakistan
were being matched with changes inside India
after 1979. Western institutions and think tanks are involved in this change in
both countries. One objective is to create a benign Islamic political history
of the Mughal period in the sub-continent so that there is no antipathy towards
the Muslim culture and Muslim people by the non-Muslims in the sub-continent. For
the Muslims when a Islamic political history is glorified and is a continuum of
the larger pan Islamic history; it energizes the Muslim community and unifies
them over any political/ethnic differences. This process was one
way for creation of a sub-continental Muslim ruling class accepted by
all the people in the sub-continent in the long run. The assumption here is
that non-Muslim population will lose their Hindu attributes and blend with the
Muslims in the long run and accept their hegemony.
General Ayub Khan
abolished history from the school system, and had official textbooks prepared
for history students at the university level. Between 1960 and 1980 the
students read no history at all for the first 12 years of their studies.[
in addition from 1960 onwards Indian
movies were banned in Pakistan ] Instead, they were taught a newly invented
subject called "Social Studies", which was an uneven and coarse
amalgam of bits of civics, geography, religion, economics and history. During
the 13th and 14th years (undergraduate period) they read a history book
prepared by the government. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's regime did not make any
change in this scheme.
General Zia ul Haq
promoted the destruction of history with unswerving determination. In the name
of a debatable patriotism and a supposititious ideology he made his control
over history writing and teaching complete, arbitrary, coercive and
totalitarian. He (1) subjected all textbooks of Social Studies to the scrutiny
and approval of the Federal Ministry of Education, i.e., a group of civil
servants, (2) created a new subject of "Pakistan Studies"; made it
compulsory for all undergraduates in arts, sciences, medicine and engineering,
and all graduates in law; and got a special textbook prepared for it by several
committees and panels of experts working in close collaboration (the result was
not even bad history), and (3) dictated that all these books must meet the
requirements of an ideology (he did not call it Islam), of which he was the
sole definer, judge and perpetrator.
Ahmed Salim and A.H.
Nayyar have compiled a 140-page report on ‘The State of Curriculum and
Textbooks in Pakistan’.
The Report is nothing short of a sneak preview of how the Pakistani Ministry of
Education is preparing five and seventeen year old Pakistanis for ‘jihad’. To
be certain, the ‘themes of ‘jihad’ and ‘shahadat’ clearly distinguish the pre-
and post-1979 educational contents. There was no mention of these in the
pre-Islamization period curricula and textbooks, while the post-1979 curricula and textbooks openly eulogize ‘jihad’ and
‘shahadat’ and urge students to become ‘mujahids’ and martyrs.
The official Curriculum Document, Primary Education, Class K-V specifically prescribes ‘simple stories to urge ‘jihad’.’
Under ‘Activity 4’, the prescription for three and eight-year old Pakistanis
is: ‘To make speeches on ‘jihad’ and ‘shahadat’.’
Urdu Curriculum (First
Language) for Classes IV and V, National Bureau of Curriculum and Textbooks,
Ministry of Education, Government of Pakistan sets the following objective:
‘Stories: eight lessons; folk tales, mythical, moral, Islamic, travel,
adventure and ‘jihad’.’ Textbook writers are officially directed that ‘a
feeling be created among students that they are the members of a Muslim nation.
Therefore, in accordance with the Islamic tradition, they have to be truthful,
honest, patriotic and life-sacrificing ‘mujahids’.’ A specific ‘suggestion on
preparing textbooks’ for Class V is: ‘Simple stories to incite for ‘jihad’.’
Urdu Curriculum (first and second language) for Classes VI-VIII, National
Bureau of Curriculum and Textbooks, Ministry
of Education, instructs teachers that students ‘must be [made] aware of the
blessings of ‘jihad’...’ and that teachers must ‘create yearning for ‘jihad’ in
[their] hearts.’
The authors say : Our curriculum still equates Islam,
Pakistan and ‘jihad’. We
are still ‘inspiring’ our children to become guerrilla fighters. The Islamic
Republic of Pakistan still insists on making her children ‘aware of the
blessings of ‘jihad’, to ‘make speeches on ‘jihad’ ‘, to ‘create a yearning for
‘jihad’ ‘, to ‘love and aspire for ‘jihad’ ‘.
Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution has this to say
“By 2001 The Pakistan history and identity was being contested once again.
Although Army had been able to impose its vision of the state other ideas exist
for what Pakistan
should be. The important clash inside Pakistan
is not a civilization clash between Muslims and non-Muslims but a clash
between different concepts of Islam, particularly how Pakistan
should implement its Islamic identity.”
Currently there is a
movement to eulogize Allama Iqbal the poet during the pre-independence movement
as the ideologue of Pakistan
to replace Jinnah the Father of the nation. This clearly shows a deep search once
again for a reason for the creation of Pakistan
by the elite and they have been able to change the debate inside the country to
suit their objective. There is a great debate on nationalism and Islamic Ummah
concept and what does Pakistan
stands for.
Long Term Impact of
History Bias Taught in India
History writing has
been used both to build nations and to dismantle them. China’s
government has championed and funded major programs worldwide to promote a
history of China
that is constructed as being self-contained and insular, with minimum outside
influences discussed. This account starts with Confucianism and Taoism as original pillars of Chinese thought.
Even contemporary communist ideology is depicted as a continuation of
Confucianism and not entirely as a recent foreign transplant into China.
Modern Germany
and Japan are
also prominent examples of nation building based on constructing an integrated
account of their own civilization, history and identity. The European Union is
a major new project in the same direction. All these are examples of backward
projection by a contemporary sense of positive cohesiveness. The Saudis invest
petrodollars heavily to promote a grand positive narrative of the Arab people
and their central place in the destiny of humanity. In fact, the export of
Wahhabi Islam is largely a cultural export of Arabism, using religion as a
means.
History has never been
an objective reporting of a set of empirical facts. It’s a present day (re)
conception and filtering of data pertaining to the past, to build a narrative
that is consistent with the myths of the dominant culture. In India
the dominant culture during the later part of the British rule was not based on
Indian heritage and Hindu civilization was shown and projected as primitive
right form early 1800. Entire generations of western historians and
intellectuals started looking at Hindu civilization and Indians as backward and
this teaching perpetuated over two centuries and is still continuing. This view
was passed on to the elite Indians on the last 100 years resulting in a class
of Indians who resent anything about Hindu civilization and Indian culture.
The colonial
interpretation of Indian history was carefully developed through the nineteenth
century. By 1823, the History of British
India written by James Mill was available and widely read. This was the
hegemonic text in which Mill periodized Indian history into three periods -
Hindu civilization, Muslim civilization and the British period. These were
accepted largely without question and we have lived with this periodization for
almost two hundred years. Although it was challenged in the last fifty years by
various historians writing on India,
it is now being reinforced again. Mill argued that the Hindu civilization was
stagnant and backward, the Muslim only marginally better and the British
colonial power was an agency of progress because it could legislate change for
improvement in India.
History teaching inside India
reinforces the Mughal rule and this has the particular agenda of ignoring the
rule of the Marathas and other Hindu rulers of the past. The teaching of
History has an inordinate influence on the political future of any country and
how the elite in the country views the political setup in the country. This
history reinforces a political rule, which does not have indigenous roots, and
an entire generation will look at Mughal rule as the only rule prior to the
British rule. The idea is to deny and negate any previous non-Muslim( Hindu)
political center in the whole of India
and to refuse to recognize any golden period during the pre-Islamic era. This needs to be
understood by the political elite in India
and the larger middle class. Some of the
books have titles, which suggest the nature of the Indic rule inside India.
Example The
Decline and Fall of the Indus Civilization
by Nayanjot
Lahiri and Ashoka
& the Decline of the Mauryas by Romila
Thapar. They project the decline and fall of pre-Islamic rule and
civilization without really talking about the evolution of the civilization.
But titles of Islamic history are put in a different tone. Such as History
of the Rise of the Mohammedan Power in India - 2 Volume Set by Mohammed
Kasim Ferishta
Example of history
teaching in India
for the last 30 years:
In a review of an
NCERT textbook the following comments were made by the reviewer
“A number of discerning scholars abroad
have questioned the application of the western concept of feudalism to the
Indian society of this period. In particular, they have refuted the Marxist
contention that there was a paucity of money and coins in the post-Gupta period
and that this triggered off feudal conditions in India. On the contrary, they say, India had a thriving money economy and the
evidence in the shape of the abundant coinage found has been deliberately
overlooked by Indian Marxists in order to fit Indian history in the Leftist
mould.
Since all the processes that India was undergoing in this period in the
realms specially of religion, language and literature were internally generated
and internally rooted, it is difficult to comprehend the connection between
this period (8th to 12th centuries) and the ensuing one
(13th to 18th centuries), which clearly marked the
ascendancy of external forces and culture. Clearly the forced clubbing together
of highly disparate eras has been motivated solely by the desire to downplay
the cataclysmic nature of the Muslim advent in India. In
the circumstances, the second era in Indian history should properly begin with
the establishment of the Delhi
Sultanate in 1206 AD.
There is also a deliberate attempt to interpolate caste tensions into
Hindu society as is evident in the off-hand reference to Shudras. In reality,
the so-called Shudras were dominant castes in many areas, they controlled large
amounts of land and were a force to reckon with. Many of India's greatest ruling dynasties sprang from
lower castes or socially "inferior" mixed castes. The Nandas were
shudras, the Mauryas hailed from a mixed caste, the Reddies and Kammas of
Andhra were Shudras, and Harsha was a Vaishya. The Rajputs were of Central
Asian stock and became accepted as Kshatriya after they had established their
power. And just like the Muslims, the Kalingas of Orissa allowed anyone to join
their armies and rise to the top by demonstrating their skills in battle.
Moreover the Vaishnava and Bhakti movements had already been popularizing the
notion that spiritual devotion superceded caste in terms of gaining salvation.
Ethnographic studies have also recorded the pride they took in their Shudra
status till as late as the 19th century when caste underwent a
series of changes as a result of colonial intervention. The noted historian, Burton Stein has alluded to the close
Brahmin-peasant partnership in the extension of cultivation in the south.
In the discussion on religion, there is little attempt to highlight the
fact that the reformist impulse came from within Hindu society and that many of
its proponents were Brahmanas. “
The communists and
leftists in India
understand the nature of the political center and political construct and hence
have been the leading proponents of a Indian history devoid of periods where a
commendable role has been played by non-Muslims. The main conclusion of the
pre-Islamic history of India
[propagated by Delhi historian-
Romila Thapar] was that there was no national political center for the entire
country and no realpolitik ever practiced and hence the memory of a political
center for the vast majority of non-Muslims is non-existent. The main policy of the western nations is to
make sure that the sense of a central political center does not arise in Indian
population at all in future and if there is any such political party, which can
espouse a weltanschauung, such a party should be weakened and its ideology
should be trashed. The political philosophy of an enemy country is an important
center of gravity, which any major power would target to destroy it. Congress
party is one of the main victims of this strategy. The western countries
understood that Nehru/Indira Gandhi were centers of gravity of the congress
party and also the political center. The party was run by personal charisma and
supported by pre-independence nationalism. By reducing Indira Gandhi’s prestige
or eliminating her the entire congress party would become weak and India,
which was dependent on one party for most of the 56 years after independence,
would not be able to create a central political authority and fall into chaos.
One of the reasons
given for the teaching of Mughal rule is that allegedly there is no hard
political legitimacy for a central rule in India by the non-Muslims and India
has no previous precedence (it means India was never a country) and hence it
should look at previous one for inspiration and possible emulation in future.
This gives a ready opening for a Islamist dream of supremacy of Islam and
making India a
Islamic political country in the long run. Pakistan
has been promoting this idea of a Mughal rule for the last 10 years from 1988
(when a sham democracy was imposed in Pakistan
with tacit support of the western powers) with all the jihadi movement (which
is actually a social movement) and in the process to create fervor
for
change of government to a favorable Islamic government. Somewhere the essence
of India got
eroded in the last 43 years. Gai (cow), Ganga and Geeta
have now become communal symbols. By reducing
the Civilizational identity of India
the ground was being prepared for creating a sub-national political center,
which can threaten the nation state of India
with fragmentation.
By denying that India
was ever a nation, the leftists overlook the fact that until the advent of
Napoleon , many of the nation states that make up Europe
today did not exist two centuries ago. Prominent among these are of course Germany
and Italy. The
concept of a political center and a nation state is of relatively recent origin
and why the requirement of nation state be imposed on India
is never explained. This is yet another example of India being subjected
to unique and subjective criteria What is more relevant in the context of India
is that a person such as Sankaracharya was able to travel the length and breadth
of India without any difficulties caused by provincial borders, passports or
language.
One quote from an
informed Indian: [Quote] - Historical
Indian view of power and hegemony diverge from that of it in the west. The
Indian view holds domestic tranquility and external security as prime
currencies of power and hegemony. Thus, to the Indian view, a chaotic domestic
environment and great power status are incompatible (as with Soviet Russia
& Stalinist purges, or Maoist China and its cultural revolution putsches);
this, in my opinion, has the backdrop of that "Ram rajya"
ideal. The other Indian yardstick for a great power is the ideal of a secure,
non-threatening environment. The greatest freedom, in the Indian context, is
the freedom to be left alone. This is a rare and expensive commodity requiring
a lot of power. It is not isolationist by any means, as a lot of migration and
colonization (physical and cultural) from India occurred in such circumstances. Thus
Western (ie, European) concepts of great power
attributes are quite different from their Indian (and,I
suspect, Chinese) constructs. I would suggest that if it were put to the Indian
masses that India was secure from all foreign threats, that peace prevailed at
home, and that Indians were free to turn the rest of the world away from their
doors if they chose, or to interact with it to their comfort level, then
Indians would say that they are a "world power". The idea of
projecting power beyond its borders and shores ("kala
pani"), is not native to Indian concepts of a
great power. Thus south East Asian Indian kingdoms were never in the role of
colonies in the western sense (even east Prussia, for instance). Finally, while economic
activity and even prosperity came freely to Indian societies, the concept of
economic power or of wielding such power of economic and commercial activities
are not an Indian concept in my opinion. One need only compare Roman and
Mauryan empires to see the difference in their outlook. [Unquote]
Since the British
period was cruel, and pre-Mughal India is dismissed as primitive (except for
Buddhism which got intellectually moved from India over to East Asian Studies),
what is seen as positive Indian culture is Mughal centric! In these minds, India's
worthwhile culture starts only when the Muslims colonized it. The reason is
simple: they lack knowledge of Indian Classics.
In his book, Pakistan or the Partition of India, published in 1940, Ambedkar says that for a nation, its entire group must
have a common shared view
of history or at least must not have a hostile history. If the heroes of one group are the villains of the other group, then
it is impossible to form a nation. This is being
reinforced by Pakistan to create hostility towards Indians inside its
population. The west is giving them the support and legitimacy for this
history. The support from the west for the Muslim political history and the US policies in Middle East to create a Muslim political center makes the
entire scenario complex and dangerous in the long run. Some western historians
who are classified as experts of south Asian history such as Stanley Wolpert
say that Mughal rule was good for the Indian subcontinent giving it a image of
greatness and respectability for sub-continental Muslim political history.
While each rich and powerful
civilization emphasizes its indigenous cohesiveness and continuity, and
with scholarship under control of those loyal to it, the reverse is the trend
among the economically weak
civilizations such as India. In the case of Indian civilization, the
scholars’ emphasis has been on how there might not even be such a historical
entity as India or Hinduism, and how its civilization was entirely brought to
the region by foreigners into India. This intellectual breakup of Indic
Traditions into historical layers of cultural imports, each with a nexus in
some other part of the world, is the intellectual equivalent of the political
breakup of India. Bringing India
to such a state, minimizing the unique
Civilizational identity of the subcontinent and breaking up India
into disparate nations has been the most successful achievement of the
British/Anglo intellectuals till now.
B Raman (from Saag)
says:
Let there be no
mistake about it. The long-term objective of Pakistan’s Army of Islam vis-à-vis India is no longer the
acquisition of territory in J&K. It is to make the sub-continent safe for
the spread of Islam by weakening Hinduism, by debilitating the Indian State and thereby
paving the way for the restoration of the Mughal State.
The increasing resort
to political, economic and psychological covert actions by the Western
intelligence agencies since the 1950s was accompanied by a mushrooming of
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) focusing on human rights, trade union
rights, environmental issues, etc. Many of these NGOs were inspired and funded
by the intelligence agencies of the US
and other Western countries. The net result is that we have a chaotic version
of history for different groups who look at different role models in their
version of the history. Different denominations of Christians have different
version of the Aryan invasion theory and different dates for beginning of
Sanskrit language (all after Christ)
The long-term aim of the
major powers is to exploit the cleavage inside the Indian society and the
contested history to create chaos and instability. They have figured out that
the Indian political state will become weak and crumble which can be
effectively exploited to increase the reach of Islam and other non-Indic
traditions. This will make the Indian society ripe for social change (re-engineering)
including revolution and spread of Islam. This will delay the development of India
and make it lag behind other potential powers such as China
and SE Asian countries. The final long-term goal may be creating a larger
Islamic political structure and center from within the Indian landmass, which
will finally give legitimacy to the Islamic civilization.