Swami Dayanand Saraswati meets PM on Textbooks Issue

[Guest guest]

Why should History books keep to the Left?

 

Barkha Goel/ New Delhi

 

Politicisation of education needs to be stopped. If the UPA considers

the NDA history texts to be biased, the earlier texts are full of

flaws, distortions and have Marxist leanings. This is what leading

scholars have briefed President APJ Abdul Kalam about as they sought

to promote a healthy national debate on history.

 

In a letter addressed to the President, eleven scholars headed by

Swami Dayanand Saraswati, had asked the Government to work for a

lighter, fulfilling and stimulating education, based on innovative

"pedagogy and promoting great human values and achievements" of the

Indian culture.

 

According to its signatories, the real issues at hand include

correcting historical distortions in the teachings on Indian culture

and heritage and the modernisation of Indian education. The

signatories included scholars like Padman Subrahamanyam, Nanditha

Krishna, R Nagaswamy, P Parameswaran, Tavleen Singh, Prema Pandurang,

P R Krishneswaran, Brahmachari Abhayamrita Chaitanya, Kapil Kapoor and

Makarand Paranjape.

 

Referring to the earlier NCERT textbooks, they pointed out that most

of them were written by Marxist historians and contained considerable

distortions.

 

These books, they said, not just portrayed an obsession with caste or

a zeal to promote unscientific theories such as the Aryan invasion

theory, they also dismissed the concepts of Hindu, Buddhist or Jain

scriptures in a dry paragraph or two. The Hindu society is also

portrayed as regressive, according to them.

 

Superstitious or stagnant white Islamic and Christian inputs receive

much praise, the scholars highlighted. In fact, Islamic rulers are

depicted as generally well-intentioned, progressive, broad-minded and

tolerant, while their millions of victims are denied even the right to

be remembered.

 

The scholars argue that such history is the legacy of colonial history

and in effect denies "the spiritual foundations of the Indian

civilisation". Why so many past and present western thinkers, poets,

novelists, scientists should have been so deeply influenced by India

is not explained, they underlined.

 

As a result, the scholars maintained, students who receive this

education gain no self-respect and are devoid of pride in their country.

 

The authors of the letter stressed that calling for an intelligent

integration of Indian culture and heritage in education is not

"communal" but progressive. They point out that students have no

inkling of India's contributions to thought, science, technology,

medicine, literature and art in many regions of the world.

 

"Why India should be presented as a dark hole of ignorance, with all

worthwhile knowledge seen to be coming from the West, is inexplicable.

This only reflects on the ignorance of our educationists and

textbooks," they wrote.

 

Finally, the letter criticises the heavy syllabus and mechanical

memorisation which "smother a child's inquisitiveness and creativity".

Neither debate nor inquiry are encouraged. Textbooks are of generally

a very poor standard, with irrelevant, undigested and seriously

outdated data, shabby language, and unappealing printing, they said.

"What Indian intellectual life and education are yearning for is not

ideology but freedom from ideologies," they pleaded. Concluding, the

scholars called for the creation of a task force to modernise Indian

education.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/indexn12.asp?main_variable=front%5Fpage&file_name=st\

ory5%2Etxt&counter_img=5?headline=Why~should~History~books~keep~to~the~Left?