History Text Book

For a school student ‘History’ will be a subject he yearns to get over with. He has to gulp down indigestible names and forgettable dates to spit in to his exam papers. Years down the line there will be shivers down the spine when he is asked to recollect the rebellions, revolutions and wars.

Examine our History and we will see the cycle of incidents turning up again and again. The only hope for humankind to survive is study the history and make sure the mistakes do not repeat by themselves. But is our educational system capable in EDUCATING our kids on history?

I turned a fan of the ‘dirty old man’ reading his novel, ‘Delhi’. It’s a historical fiction which depicts the glory and fall of the city. The book quickly rolls on from the times of Indian Kings, Mughals and finally to the British. The Indians have been eagerly taught to put the entire blame for the ills in the country on the White Man. They divided the otherwise unified country on ‘religion’. But Kushwant argues it was the Mughals, namely emperor Aurangazeb, who discriminated people on religion. And he ratifies it with the divided response from the Indians during the First war of Independence.

Read the biographies or autobiographies of a Maoist or Marxist. He will argue that China is not a bad neighbor. They will claim the India China war was due to the brashness and idiocy of V K Krishna Menon. Our text books say he is a great personality. I have read more than one writer (not leftists) who do not have a great opinion on V K. There is also arguments and counter arguments on who violated the ‘Panchsheel’ agreement first.

Patrick French would argue the ‘Mahathma’ status of Gandhiji. He points out the curious and unnatural methods and beliefs of Gandhi. We have rarely come across them in any depiction on Gandhi. May be we are afraid to humanize the father of our nation. And he also contests the widely held belief of attributing the independence to Gandhi. We have ignored many other factors and have sidelined the contributions of Bose, Bagath Singh as failed attempts. Recently I watched the movie ‘Kheilenge Hum…’. Did we ignore or we chose to ignore the many who sacrificed the prime of their youth for Independence so that the Congress party can claim the sole legacy?

There are many facets to history. Programming the students to think through a limited framework wouldn’t do good to the nation building and world harmony. They must be given the freedom to choose their beliefs.