The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s dislike for historians knows no boundary. Ever since the formation of this saffron organization a century ago its bigwigs and apologists have been baying for the blood of many scholars.
Unable to distinguish between facts and fictions as well as facts and myths the Sangh Parivar has come up with their own version of the past. It is another thing that, notwithstanding all-out efforts the acceptability of the history books written by them is low.
To overcome this drawback, the rightist politicians as well as some media commentators occasionally indulge in abusing and accusing historians on one count or the other. Recently veteran journalist Tavleen Singh undertook one such exercise. She missed wood for the trees when she in her July 20 column in Indian Express “Time to get beyond history books and address problems of today” lamented that ‘so little’ was taught about the ‘magnificent achievements’ of pre-Islamic India to her in school days in comparison to the ‘great Moghuls’. She blamed ‘dogmatic leftists’ for writing ‘boring’ history books which made her ‘asleep’ in the class.
But before putting pen to paper 1950-born Tavleen Singh should have looked back at her own past. As per her profile available on Google she started going to school in mid-1950s and by 1969 she completed her course in Journalism. That was the year when Jawaharlal Nehru University, said to be the bastion of Communists, was established.
Thus, she should understand that the ‘boring’ books she had to study in her school-days were actually written during the British period and not by the ‘dogmatic’ leftists. Tara Chand, Ishwari Prasad, R C Majumdar, D D Kosambi, Jadunath Sarkar, K P Jayaswal etc. were some prominent historians of the first half of 20th century. So, in the eyes of Tavleen Singh all the historians even of 1950s and early 1960s, when she was in school, were ‘dogmatic’ leftists who ignored the glory of Hindu rules and exalted the ‘great Moghuls’. The truth is that most of them were nationalist historians and nothing to do with Marxism.
Limited time
Besides, what she failed to appreciate is that school books are written for children and are different from scholarly works. A person in early teen has to learn several other subjects in a limited time. History is an ocean and not everything can be taught to students at such tender age. In the higher study Ancient History is a different subject.
Not only that history books are written keeping in mind the human psychology. Why talk about children, even the grown-ups want to know more about the contemporary period and recent past. That is why our history text-books for schools give more space to post-Independence years than British Raj and latter get more attention in comparison to Moghul rule. Farther we go in history, lesser average readers want to know about it. School students cutting across community-lines feel more connected if they are taught detailed history of 19th century Bengal Renaissance or Arya Samaj movement in comparison to the Delhi Sultanate of 13th century. Therefore, the latter gets less attention in comparison to the former in school text-books.
Not boring
Tavleen Singh may have her own point when she accused secular historians of exalting the Moghuls and diminishing the Hindu rules of the earlier period. But to state that their books were ‘boring’ is unacceptable. She must know that several Nobel Prize winners in Physics and Chemistry had either failed or got poor marks in these very subjects during school days. Should we blame the books or their writers?
If Tavleen Singh later in her life enjoys reading history, in the same way these scientists got so much fascinated by Physics or Chemistry later in their life that they ended up getting the most prestigious prize of the world.
Apart from being a professional journalist, I have an experience of voluntarily teaching Social Science to a lot of young students—both in schools and at home. I observed that these budding minds are more inclined in learning about modern world, rather than some very significant development which took place anywhere in India some 2,000 years ago. This does not mean that they are not proud of ancient cultural heritage.
Avoid generalization
Before making a sweeping generalization about school years Tavleen Singh should know the ground reality. A journalist colleague of mine was extremely upset when his son got just 77 marks in Sanskrit in the CBSE Class-X exam. That brought down the overall percentage of his son. Hailing from an educated Kayastha family he claimed that his son was a very good student, and never expected such a poor rating only in Sanskrit. Whatever be the fact should one blame Sanskrit evaluator of the answer-books for spoiling the career of the boy? Or the writer of the book should be held responsible? Or, may be that his son really fared badly in this ancient Indian language.
Instead of blaming ‘dogmatic leftist’ historians Tavleen Singh should have looked into her own weakness. The readers are not interested as to why she used to sleep in the class.
As the parents of the present generation want to remain updated more and more of them are now asking their children to opt for language which matters in the world today as subject rather than stick on Sanskrit just because the old language and tradition should be preserved. They think that these tasks should be left on the shoulders of the elders and not the kids. Glorification of the past is one thing, but the reality of the present world is entirely different issue.
At the same time, it is true that historians all over the world tend to pay more attention to happenings around the centre of power. A student knows more about London, Paris, Cairo etc. rather than Liverpool, Lyon, or Port Said. As Moghuls ruled from Delhi and Agra and British from Kolkata and Delhi we find history school-books focusing more on North India in comparison to South. This does not mean that the latter has been ignored.
Figments of imagination
If the Marxist historians have done injustice to Hindus what prevented the RSS historians to rectify this mistake in the last one century. Where were they all these years? They should have flooded the market with history books which find more acceptability in the society. Figments of imagination cannot be termed as a synonym to history.
Nobody is going to defend the barbarity committed by the rulers during the Moghul period. But is it not a fact that mothers, both Hindus and Muslims, in 18th Century Bengal would sing Lullabies recalling the terror of Marathas to make their babies fall asleep. Lakhs of people were killed in six invasions of Bengal between 1740 and 1751. Should we also drop the Maratha-Rajput bloody feud of the 18th century from our text-books?
In 17 years of rule by Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Narendra Modi, the saffron camp has failed to come up with alternative text-books for children in History. Criticizing somebody is very easy, but it is really difficult to come up with creative and credible work. Just a cut-and-paste job would not do.
| 
