Hindustan Times, 6 June 2000 | Editorial
TALIBANISATION OF TEXTBOOKS:
SANGH BRAND HISTORY HAS CRASS COMMUNAL OVERTONES
THE STUDY of history might once again hit the centrestage of Indian
politics.
And predictably, it is the Sangh parivar which is at the centre of this
controversy. As reported in this newspaper, thousands of Rashtriya
Swayam Sewak schools are teaching a brand of history, especially where
it concerns the Babri masjid demolition and the minorities, which does
not always apply either an objective methodology or a factual historical
paradigm. Instead, it is loaded with crass communal overtones. Clearly,
the sole purpose of this reinterpretation of historical facts is to
indoctrinate and poison young minds with a prejudiced vision of the
past.
For instance, the textbook curriculum of the Vidya Bharati Akhil
Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan, which is affiliated with the RSS, has
claimed that the Babri masjid was not a mosque because Muslims "have
never till today offered namaaz there". Other fantastic revelations
state that from 1528 to 1914, 350,000 "devotees of Lord Ram have laid
down their lives to liberate the Ram temple" and that foreigners invaded
Sri Ramjanambhoomi not less then 77 times. In terms of the contemporary
history of modern India, the textbooks state that November 2, 1990, will
be inscribed in black letters "because on that day the then Chief
Minister, by ordering the police to shoot unarmed kar sevaks, massacred
hundreds of them." All this, of course, is complete nonsense - packed
with lies and untruths.
The National Steering Committee for Text Book Evaluations has expressed
its concern over the use of "blatantly communal" writings in the series
"Sanskrit Jnan" in the Vidya Bharati schools. This is a dangerous trend
because it tries to compel young minds to deny the pluralist character
of Indian society and create a mindset in which minority communities
become targets of hate. The RSS should realise that in its great zeal to
rewrite history, it often looks like the mirror-image of the Taliban.
The fundamentalist outfits in Pakistan and Afghanistan have brainwashed
an entire generation of young people through their madarsas, with
hatred, dogmatism and violence as their raison d'etre. The RSS seems to
be following in their footsteps.
Young people come to schools with faith and innocence. They believe
their textbooks to be the final repository of truth. Hence, no school,
run by any institution, private or governmental, should be allowed to
use communal or sectarian propaganda. To poison the minds of the young
is the equivalent of cultural genocide - you destroy not just an
education, but an entire culture. Murli Manohar Joshi's HRD Ministry
must move quickly to remove the poison from our schools. And as for the
RSS - if Mr Sudarshan does not want to go down in history as the
knicker-clad Ayatollah Khomeini of India - it should disown the books
and the mindset that produced them. Nobody has the right to turn India
into the Taliban's Afghanistan.
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