A Skewed History

 

 

 

 

 

A Skewed History

The University Grants Commissioner (UGC)’s document on Learning Outcomes- based Curriculum Framework (LOCF) for BA History undergraduate programme 2021 is likely to create a huge controversy.  Its Preamble says:” History, as we all know, is a vital source to obtain knowledge about a nation’s soul.… Today, more than ever before, the challenges of globalization obligate historians and researchers to go beyond the local, national, and even continental frontiers of their knowledge… competing and keeping pace with the ever expanding horizon of history, one has to be sensitive in understanding the issues of nations history on larger canvas…”

India has a glorious past, pride of its history and civilization. However, the UGC’s curriculum falls short of its stated objectives.  The first paper of the history course titled the Idea of Bharat has five units covering the concept of Bharatvarsha; Indian knowledge tradition, art and culture; Indian education system; the concept of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam; science, environment and medical science; science and technology in ancient India: and Indian economic traditions.  The ancient India is  identified as the period till the end of Maurya dynasty 550 CE.

The curriculum presents  'Bhartvarsha' as an eternal concept-as the nation that lies in the ancient past, as a period untouched by invasions- be it Kushan or Sunga people of the early historical period, Timur and Babur of the medieval period or the British in the modern times- with Bharat as an exclusionary concept with little space for land and people south of the Vindhyas or from the east and the north-east. It presents a history of only north India. It is strange the ancient history is presented as the history of Bharat , Hindustan or India. And that as a nation it was crafted into being through the struggle of its people. By bringing the terms like 'Aryan Age', 'Hindu Society', and 'Muslim Rulers', the curriculum undoes the work of generations of historians, demonstrating the ideological bias. Further, it treats the 'Hindu Society' and the 'Muslim Society' as discrete entities in the medieval period, and that these communities existed as separate nations.

As the historian Anubhuti Maurya says, "This curriculum framework quite egregiously, omits some of the finest writings in Indian history. Instead a bulk of suggested readings span from the 1900s to 1980s, with a heavy dependence on the work of Indologists. The omissions seem deliberate and ideologically motivated.” Most importantly, rather than enabling students to critically engage with diverse schools of historiography and reach their own conclusions, it seeks to curtail the resource base available to them. And “to develop critical thinking students must be encouraged to read divergent opinions and engage with different ideological hues of historians. A curriculum framework that does not encourage this only provides faulty foundations for disciplinary education.”

Shashi Tharoor says:"The Discovery of India is stirring evocation of the past as an instrument to explain the present and give hope for the future, and as such it is the primordial text in what I have argued was ultimately, Jawaharlal Nehru’s invention of India.” If we compare the UGC’s history curriculum with The Discovery of India, we realize many important periods of Indian history were chopped off, almost neglecting the medieval history, the history of Mughal Empire and the British India. Seen in its entirely, “the LOCF is determined to project into the past majoritarian and divisive conceptions of contemporary Indian politics. It is limited and narrow in its understanding of processes of historical change, out of touch with the current state of research in the discipline of history, and dated in its pedagogy.”

Nehru wrote in his book The Discovery of India, " the long panorama of India’s history unfolded itself before me with its ups and downs, its triumphs and defeats. This panorama of the past gradually merged into the unhappy present when India for all her past greatness and stability as a slave country, an appendage of Britain…We had to wipe out some generations of shameful subservience and timid submission to an arrogant alien authority.”  P.N. Chopra, Chief Editor of the Collected Works of Sardar Patel, in his book- Nation Flawed: Lessons from Indian History says: “A nation is condemned if it forgets its past and does not learn lessons from it… Despite all the efforts made by some of India's great rulers, saints and scholars, Indians have yet to develop a sense of shared pride in their civilization. Indians also lack a sense of history, and have failed to learn from it."

Indian history is also a history of betrayal by its own rulers when the foreigners invaded India. Jayachandra betrayed Prithviaj Chavan   by joining hands with Muhammad Ghori,-a mass murderer of Hindus-who invaded India several times and was defeated,  to defeat him finally at the battle of Tarai in 1192, paving the way for a long spell of  Rule by Muslim conquerors in India; it was the treachery of Mir Jafar in 1757 that made Robert Clive to defeat the Sultan of Bengal  Siraj-ud-Daulah at the battle of Plassey, reducing the mighty India to a British colony,leading to establishment of the British Raj in India for next two hundred years; and  it was the betrayal of local rulers in 1761 at the third battle of Panipat that the Marathas were defeated  by the  Afghan invader  Ahmed Shah Addali.

Shashi Tharoor in his book “An Era of Darkness’ writes “In 1930,the American historian and philosopher Will Durant wrote that Britain’s conscious and deliberate bleeding of India was the greatest crime in all history. Some 35 million Indians died because of acts of commission and omission by the British-in famines, epidemics, communal riots and wholesale slaughter like the reprisal killings after the 1857 War of Independence and the Amritsar massacre of 1919.  Besides, the deaths of Indians, British rule impoverished India in manner that beggars belief.  When the East Indian Company took control of the country in the chaos that ensued after the collapse of the Mughal Empire India’s share of world GDP was 23 per cent. And when the British left it was just about 3 per cent.”

It is important that our youth study an unbiased and objective account of Indian history right from the ancient times to the present so that they learn positive lessons; as to how to save the country from repeating its past blunders and failures and help march towards attaining higher goals of humanity. To ignore the unpleasant and ignominious and inconvenient historical periods, and glorifying the invented and skewed history is to do disservice not only to the present generation, but also to posterity.