DC Edit | Why wrestle with history?

The geographical area which was later known as India used to command close to one-fourth of the global gross domestic product before the British set foot on it, as far as received wisdom goes. A good share of Indian students of Class XII will now be at a loss when asked what the administrative form was that existed in India at that time, for they would have next to no idea about four centuries of Indian history since the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has ‘rationalised’ their history syllabus. The central agency has decided to purge chapters on the Mughal period and their courts from its study material.

The Indian right wing has always complained that the Indian Left has had a disproportionate say on academics in India and that history, including of the national Independence movement, has been seen from a limited perspective while local and regional efforts were practically ignored. They have also complained that Indian history takes an empire-centric view, ignoring the glorious periods of smaller kings and their kingdoms. They are now on a mission to ‘right’ those ‘wrongs’.

It is one thing to broadbase the knowledge system so that the students get the larger picture and they become better informed citizens, but entirely another to cut the syllabus into a shape that fits the philosophy of the incumbent government. This is because such an action will create generations of Indians handicapped in the knowledge of their past, warts and all. They will be competing with fellow Indians, and outsiders, who have had their educations under better, open and confident systems. Worse, most of those who will receive truncated lessons in history will be those whose only access to education is provided by State agencies. The Indian State and those who run it better realise that it’s a wasteful exercise to wrestle with history. You can create history, but you have to accept the past.