The Christian Science Monitor, April 25, 2001, Wednesday, Pg. 6
HEADLINE: India's history goes more Hindu
BYLINE: Scott Baldauf Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
DATELINE: NEW DELHI

HIGHLIGHT:
Critics warn this month's decision to replace texts will push majority
culture at the expense of others.

    For years, Romila Thapar's "History of India" was as much a part of
the Indian classroom as a chalkboard and a ceiling fan.

It was not only the primary history textbook for most high schools, it was
the world's most-recognized guide to understanding India, the second
most-populous country, after China, and one of the world's oldest
civilizations.

But this month, the government's National Council of Education Research
and Training announced that Dr. Thapar's book would be shelved in favor of
a history text that would promote "patriotism," "values education," and
"India's contribution to the world civilizations."

Thapar's book, along with others brought in under previous governments, is
the product of "Marxist and leftist" thinking, government officials
argued, and must be replaced.

While supporters of the move say that teaching values and national pride
is the key to an ailing society corrupted by movies and television,
opponents say teaching values in a society as diverse as India's raises
one key question: Whose values do you teach?

There is broad agreement that the curriculum battles today will
reverberate beyond the nation's classrooms: At stake is nothing less than
India's place in the world and its experiment with secular democratic
governance.

"History is an issue that runs across all cultural boundaries, and it is a
very major issue for a multicultural society as diverse as India," says
Krishna Kumar, professor of education at Delhi University in New Delhi.
"In India specifically, this comes from a conflict between those who want
to define India as a Hindu society, and those who think it must be a
secular society."

The more than 1 billion population is 80 percent Hindu, 14 percent Muslim,
and has significant numbers of Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists (Buddhism
originated here), and Jains. In a country just over one-third the size of
the US, there are 24 languages spoken by a million or more people, with a
multitude of less-spoken languages and dialects.

India is not alone in wrestling with the values taught in public schools.
In the US, parents, teachers, and plenty of lawyers are tangling with
questions of whether to promote prayer in school. The state of Kansas
famously attempted to promote Creationism as a Biblical alternative to the
Darwinian theory of evolution.

In Japan, nationalist politicians have attempted to rewrite history
textbooks to downplay Japan's role in World War II. And in South Africa,
education ministers are trying to decide when African history begins: with
the arrival of the Dutch, of the British, or with the ascendance of Nelson
Mandela.

Hindu-oriented ideology

The driving force behind the moves by India's current government is the
ideology of Hindutva, or Hindu-ness. Embraced by nationalists during the
struggle for independence from British rule, and rejected by the nation's
founder, Mohandas Gandhi, Hindutva teaches that Indians can take
possession of their destiny only if they take more pride in their past.

Relying on this ideology, the current government, led by the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP), has urged a raft of proposals for changing the
curriculum taught in India's public schools.

In a summary of proposals released last December, the government has
suggested:

* Teaching Hindi as the official language, and the ancient language of
Sanskrit "as the language of traditional wisdom and culture." (Sanskrit is
rarely spoken outside of university study halls these days, but was the
language of the Indo-Aryan tribes who invaded India thousands of years
ago.)

* Teaching Vedic mathematics (an archaic form of math with few modern
applications), herbal and ayurvedic medicine, and astrology, as examples
of India's contribution to world thought.

* Giving Indian students a new set of historic role models, or "heroes,"
from the famed medieval warrior-king Prithviraj Chauhan to the freedom
fighter Shankar Dev, who fought against British rule from his base in the
state of Assam.

In the history books, specifically, government officials say they hope to
cut down on the "quantum" of information taught in history classes.

Critics say that initial drafts of the government's recommendations
indicate they would diminish the importance of India's famed Moghul
period, which spanned about 300 years after the arrival of the Persian
conqueror Akbar, a Muslim, in the 1500s. It was a time of architectural
feats and the fusion of Hindu and Islamic thought.

Some historians argue that Moghuls were the first rulers to unify India in
nearly its present form.

Use facts to teach values

For Murli Mohan Joshi, India's minister for Human Resources Development,
it was long past time to give India's public-school students an education
that emphasizes not only facts but also values.

"We thought that it's about time the curriculum should be rewritten with a
view toward recent developments in human knowledge, such as more emphasis
on information technology, or biotechnology, and Indian contributions to
world civilizations," says Mr. Joshi. "We want Indian students in Kerala
and Assam and Delhi to feel that Indian history is their history. Nobody
should be excluded."

A vital part of teaching that history, he adds, is inculcating Indian
values, rooted in India's deep spiritual traditions. "What are we
teaching? To speak the truth. Don't steal. Be compassionate. Respect your
elders. Have tolerance for other religions," he says. "These are not
religious values. They are human values, the relationship of one human to
another."

But for Thapar, the historian, the government's curricular changes are
just one more act of a government that she says intends to saffronize, or
Hinduize, Indian society.

"They're not academics, so you don't get to meet them and discuss these
issues in public," says Thapar, speaking of her detractors. "In the old
days, one used to laugh at this sort of thinking. Now one despairs,
because they have become very, very popular."

Changes reflect religious bias

The problem is not so much that her own book is about to be replaced,
Thapar says, but that the values the government wants taught are meant to
uplift India's religious majority - and push down everyone else.

"The real target of attack are the Muslims," she says, seated in a living
room surrounded by books and Asian art. "In the old days, these people
used to say that [the Muslim conqueror] Akbar was allright but Aurangzeb
[a later Muslim ruler] was terrible. Now they're saying they're all
demons."

Boiling history down to a list of national heroes and villains, and
compiling a list of India's "contributions," takes away all opportunity
for teachers to explore the grayer areas of each society, she says.

"There is no doubt that they are making sure that the next generation of
Indians are going to be morons," Thapar adds. "What you will get are two
levels of society. Those who go to private schools and go off to Europe
and America for college. And then you'll have the others who are left
here."

Sayeed Shahabuddin, a prominent Muslim voice on national issues, says that
the government's attempt to promote "values" is "nothing but a facade to
promote cultural nationalism.

"Their objective is the Hinduization of Indian culture, and the
brainwashing of the youth," says the publisher of Muslim India, a cultural
and political magazine based in New Delhi. "Their entire ideology is one
country, one culture, one system, which is almost fascistic."

Ashish Nandy, a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Developing
Societies in New Delhi, agrees that following the government's version of
history is "a sure way to create an Indian state in the European model of
the 1930s." But still, he views India's sudden passion as an antidote to
an even greater evil: apathy.

"I personally think this is a healthy development for Indian society," he
says. "During the Scopes trial [on whether to teach Darwinism in US public
schools], I would have supported Darwin. But I think we need to create
some space for a diversity of views in society."

(c) Copyright 2001. The Christian Science Monitor