Which textbook is right?

This time, Karnataka is in the news for education. And, it has led to a state-wide flutter. The controversy was triggered with the printing of new school textbooks that incorporated sweeping changes proposed by a committee helmed by contentious writer Rohith Chakrathirtha. In 2021, the former mathematics professor was appointed chairperson of Karnataka's textbook review committee, and has been accused by critics of "saffronising" school textbooks.

The changes, as reported by the Bengaluru-based digital news platform The News Minute, included the removal of writings by 27 Dalit writers, and lessons on women social reformers (Savitribai Phule, Tarabai Shinde, and Pandit Ramabai among others), Mahatma Gandhi, Dr BR Ambedkar, and Jawaharlal Nehru. Some of the newer additions include teachings and speeches by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and KB Hedgewar, both RSS ideologues.

Professor A Murigeppa, former Vice-Chancellor, Hampi Kannada University, Karnataka, during a convention held last month against revisions of school textbooks at the Kondajji Basappa Auditorium, Bengaluru

Last week, 26 position papers prepared by the focus groups constituted by the Karnataka government to guide the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, were made public. And it only stoked the flames. As part of the NEP-2020, which replaced the 34-year-old National Policy of Education-1986, Karnataka had instituted the focus groups to draft position papers to offer direction to create a new state curriculum. Close to 800 such papers have been prepared across states, each put together by an expert committee with a chairman and academicians, to present to the NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) and the Ministry of Education.

One position paper, Knowledge of India, claimed that the Pythagoras theorem had Vedic roots, Newton's law of gravity was "fake"; others recommended the adequate inclusion of information on the genocide of Malabar Hindus, Maharashtrian Brahmins and Kashmiri Hindus, and the adoption of "age-old memorisation practices" by students.

Collective Bangalore, a progressive student-youth organisation, during a protest against the textbook revisions made by the Rohith Chakrathirtha committee

If there were any sincere attempts to "decolonise" Indian education, some of the ideology-leaning suggestions may have diluted the cause, progressive groups have argued.

Pooja Prasanna, editorial head (reporting), The News Minute, feels that Karnataka has now become the centre to experiment with right-wing strategies. "It's a much more ideal place to attempt this, when compared to say, Gujarat or Uttar Pradesh. Think about the hijab issue, and the manner in which it was dealt with by the right-wing ecosystem in Karnataka... it offered a template for other states," she tells mid-day. She says that the grouse of school textbooks being uprooted of their Indianness, has been a long-standing one of the right wing.

Pooja Prasanna, Monidipa Bose Dey, Zeenat Bhojabhoy and Rajashekhar VN

Although Madan Gopal, who heads the task force for implementing NEP in Karnataka, clarified recently that the suggestions wouldn't be implemented immediately, Prasanna says, "They have now been presented with an opportunity to go for a complete rehaul, instead of dropping one chapter every year. So yes, they are preparing a blueprint, which is likely to implemented in other parts of the country, including Maharashtra."

R Mahalakshmi is professor at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She thinks that the "larger goal of pursuit of knowledge and critical perspective... has been the effort behind textbook curriculum-making in the Indian context from the 1950s and 1960s". "Before this, books that were used in Indian educational institutions followed the British prescriptions, and were seen by scholars, many of whom were great nationalists, as ridden with problems. It is in this context that the attempt to write textbooks in independent India was first undertaken. It was also felt that the values and vision of the national movement, embodied in the Indian Constitution, must be upheld to inculcate a sense of national pride and appreciate the values for which so many Indians sacrificed their lives. It was towards this end that the Kothari Commission was set up in 1964," she says in an email interview. The Commission made recommendations about the reach of education, but also about issues related to language policy and curriculum.

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) was instituted in 1961, and based on the recommendations of the Kothari Commission, published textbooks from the 1960s onwards. In the discipline of history, RS Sharma, Satish Chandra, Bipan Chandra and Romila Thapar were asked to write these textbooks for different classes. It's these history textbooks that first became the targets, with the "Janata Party-led government appearing to be bending under pressure" to remove textbooks authored by Romila Thapar and Bipan Chandra. "This again happened in 2000 when the NDA government was in power, and new textbooks of a very poor academic standard were briefly introduced. Today, we see the same thing happening; the difference is that we have a strong state-led attack..." she says.

The NEP 2020 and the notice issued by the Rajya Sabha Secretariat last year on the need for "reform in context and design of textbooks, and removing references to un-historical facts and distortions about our national heroes from textbooks" she feels "flag issues that the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] had been talking about and even implementing in their own textbooks".

On the other side of the discourse is Monidipa Bose Dey, columnist and heritage writer, who argues that so far, there has been a "left control over Indian academia, especially in context of school-level history textbooks". "...[that] must go," she insists. "Indian history, post Independence, has largely been turned into a history of the invaders. The school level textbooks have many chapters glorifying the Islamic invaders/rulers, turning them into benevolent characters when the reality was exactly the opposite. The brutalities and oppression unleashed on the non-Muslim subjects by these foreign dynasties [including the Timurid dynasty referred to as the Mughals]; and the barbaric acts of the colonial powers, such as the British, Portuguese, etc [example Goa inquisition, Bengal famine] have been completely whitewashed and brushed under the carpet... No other country perhaps has seen such a phenomenon where the nation's history has been purposely rewritten in such a manner where the barbaric invaders are glorified and the native citizens vilified. This needs to change and students need to know what actually happened. History should be based on facts from archaeological and literary texts, and not fabricated theories based on pure speculations," says Dey in an email interview to mid-day.

Dey feels that there is an urgent need to change the history taught at the school level, because the "history they [kids] learn in school will ultimately colour their thought about their country, culture, and religion".

Recent researches on the Sindhu-Saraswati valley civilisation, she argues, must be made a part of the school-level history syllabus, so that students remain updated on the various archaeological findings. According to her, the "resistance is mainly from the so called progressive lobby". "...simply because they were at the helms of academia until recently, and they had turned Indian history into a fertile playground for indoctrination of political ideology of a certain colour into the minds of young students... With course corrections this will change, and that is their greatest fear - the loss of control over minds," she argues.

Professor Mahalakshmi disagrees: "There is absolutely no ground for talking of sanitising or whitewashing history. The main issue is this - history is not about kings succeeding one another and their exploits. It is about their governance, the economic structures, the social groups and the lives of ordinary people, about art and architecture, and scientific and technological developments. Sometimes, our sources limit the kind of information we get about a time period, but it is still possible for us to reconstruct the society through a corroboration of various sources."

The All India Save Education Committee (AISEC), a national movement of education, has been at the forefront of the protests against the proposals for textbook revisions by the Karnataka government. Rajashekhar VN, all India secretariat member, AISEC, says Baraguru Ramachandrappa, who was the former president of the Textbook Revision Committee (2015) of Karnataka, was thorough when it came to looking into inclusions and omissions in textbook curriculum - at the time, all the stakeholders' recommendations were sought, and revised texbooks were published in 2016-17. Under the new government, the textbooks were re-reviewed by Rohith Chakrathirtha's committee. "Some truths seem to be hard to digest... but for that, you cannot change an entire school textbook," he argues. "Textbooks should be written by educationists, academic scholars and democratically-instituted bodies. Unfortunately, that's not the case... every government that comes in, be it Congress or BJP, tampers with textbooks to suit their narrative." He says that even the task force overlooking the NEP-2020 position papers in Karnataka was headed by Gopal, a former IAS officer and not an educationist.

Basanti Roy, who retired as the Divisional Secretary with the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Education, Mumbai Division, says the NEP has given state governments greater freedom to design their curriculum. "Usually, a national curriculum framework is prepared, which is then shared with the states. The state has to incorporate 70 per cent of this curriculum framework, while adding their own inputs in order to give state flavour and best represent the values and history of the state. This has been the procedure for years. However, with the NEP, state education departments have been given instruction to develop their own curriculum and send it to the Centre for reviewing and finalising. Once the curriculum is approved, the syllabus is designed by an expert committee, and the textbooks are developed at the last stage." Roy doesn't see a problem with state governments being involved to participate in designing curriculum. "Our education system is quite heterogeneous... we have different of education boards, and you have the freedom and flexibility to choose."

Zeenat Bhojabhoy, senior advisor and former principal at Vile Parle's Jamnabai Narsee School, feels that the country should adopt, a "one nation, one national [age appropriate] curriculum". "We need to bring our educators together under one common platform to create a 20-year education plan for our children... what we are doing right now is creating differences and boundaries. We don't even have a common national curriculum anymore, and that's affecting our children. If a child relocates from Karnataka to Maharashtra or even Kashmir for that matter, they'll be completely at loss. Imagine the trauma they'll be experiencing." In her own school, she says, students are taught yoga, Vedic maths and Sanskrit, as part of the extra-curricular studies, when this can be easily adopted as part of the main curriculum. "As a country, we have so much to offer. We should try and introduce newer ideas and concepts into mainstream education. Yoga, for example, can easily be part of the main curriculum. A good blend of conventional practices and current trends in education [is needed]."

Back in 2017, the Maharashtra education department had revised textbooks for Class VII and IX, removing chapters on Mughal rulers and Western history, including the French Revolution, Greek philosophy, and the American War of Independence. At the time, the committee argued that they wanted to make the syllabus more Maharashtra-centric. Bhojabhoy admits that our history needs relooking, "but we need to focus on the positive aspects of Indian history". "There is a need to learn from our pasts, but we are focusing on the frivolous negative parts... we need to remember that we are nurturing intellect for two decades down the line. We are not even sure about the kind of challenges our children will face. COVID has already thrown us out of gear. Why not teach our children to be ready for such a scenario, so that they can tackle problems together as a community?"

How 20th century scholars interpreted history

According to Professor R Mahalakshmi, the greatest strides in Indian history have been taken "because of the efforts of those who strongly criticised the British and Western scholars who tried to undermine the attainments of our civilisation". She argues that DD Kosambi, a mathematician and Sanskritist by training and a self-taught historian, followed the materialist interpretation of history and always cautioned against using ideas that were incongruous with Indian realities. "So, what the scholars in the 20th century actually did was present a homegrown Indian history by delving into sources, critically engaging with earlier interpretations, and contesting Western and indigenous interpretations that were not borne out by sources."