The CBSE's ``edict''

BY ISSUING A circular ordering schools affiliated to the Board to delete portions from the text books, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has sought to reduce the study of history into a string of court chronicles. Such a method of history writing was indeed followed by emperors in ancient and medieval times. This was because a critical approach to the social realities of the times were inimical to their vested interest. The only difference here is that while the rulers of the past indulged in issuing edicts only where it involved recording their own present, the mandarins in the CBSE (and also those in the NCERT) have decided to go back into the past and distort history to suit the designs of the Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi, and his masters in the RSS headquarters. And in order to achieve the objective of distorting history and to ensure that a whole new generation is brought up as bigots, the CBSE officials resorted to an unprecedented step and ordered the heads of those schools affiliated to the Board to ensure that specific portions in the text books were neither taught nor even discussed in the classes.

The circular also contains a stern warning to students who may internalise the arguments or the contents from these portions in their answer scripts; there is an instruction to the teachers ``not to evaluate the students' understanding of the content of the portions''. By implication, students of history, in Class XI, are bound to be penalised if they choose to even mention in their answer scripts that the `varna' system, which started out as a division of labour, was then made hereditary by law and religion. For, this portion which had remained in the textbook since 1977, is among the paragraphs in the 11-odd pages that the CBSE has now ordered to be deleted from its history text. The motive behind the deletion is far too clear. While these historical truths were included by Prof. R. S. Sharma (an authority that he is on the socio-economic history of the Vedic times that qualified him so eminently to be commissioned by the NCERT to write the text book) in the text only in order to explain the inequity that was perpetrated during the times, the deletion ordered now is clearly aimed at ensuring that a whole new generation is brought up in a way to celebrate the odious caste-based oppression in vogue during the Vedic ages. This, after all, is the only means by which the various forms of assertion by the oppressed caste groups can be painted as social crimes.

Such distortions in history, as are being carried out by the mandarins in the NCERT and the CBSE in the past couple of years since the BJP-led NDA came to power at the Centre, are not mere attempts with a view to ensuring that religious sentiments are not affected as it is claimed. On the contrary, the objective is to paint a distorted picture of the past - that the ancient rulers were benevolent to the hilt so that the past, despite all the exploitation, loot and plunder indulged in by the kings and their courtiers is glossed over - and to conclude that those were the golden ages. Such a history is, indeed, universal and not just restricted to our own land. In other words, all the kingdoms and the empires that flourished in the past were marked by such barbarism. The purpose behind bringing this truth out in the form of history text books is to ensure that the lessons are learnt and that such barbarity is not replayed. And history is replete with experiences when rulers and demagogues were allowed to deny this process in history with a view to glorifing the past. The experience with Adolf Hitler is an example of this. There are very little differences between Hitler's attempt to paint the German people as belonging to a superior race and the attempts now on to paint the Vedic ages as being without any blemish. Herein lies the danger.

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