Being brought up in Rajasthan, my life has revolved around culture, vibrant festivals, and explicit reflections of a rich history. To be able to walk around the city and see history unfold right before my eyes in museums, forts, and palaces, hearing or reading their rather fascinating stories always excited me. Naturally, this history and culture has become an integral part of my identity.
However, today, I can feel this history slowly slipping from the hands of my people, as there are powers at play attempting to erase parts of our past.
Pages and voices containing everything that this regime does not agree to are all being systematically removed through a careful process of “selection”. Although this rewriting and reforming of history has been observed in several state boards, Rajasthan has emerged as its epicenter with the election of a BJP-led State Government in 2013.
Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education sets up like many other boards, with a committee for textbook revisions at periodic intervals. In 2011, this committee was set up with the aim to revise elementary education. It consulted a wide range of experts coming from various backgrounds, assessed them for sensitivity towards gender and different communities, and went through rounds of testing before getting approved. Finally, these books were introduced for the academic session 2013-14, and it was then and there, that the process came to a halt. The government changed and Mr. Vasudev Devnani became the Education Minister. In July the following year, an entirely new committee with 165 members was set up. For a political party that promised “equality of opportunity in ‘access’ and ‘success’ to all learners”, the committee had less than 30 members who were women. Further, any member who dared to oppose the head of the committee and their imposed nationalism was called a ‘Leftist’, a ‘Communist’, or ‘Anti-National’.
As opposed to the 2011 Committee, this committee comprised predominantly of members of the Sangh (ideological parent of the BJP), and it was the first time ever that the State Government was giving instructions to the committee to edit educational content a certain way. From Social Science to Math, all textbooks were saffronised. History was altered to fit a pro-Hindutva narrative, and the
English books held poems that appreciated the Lotus, deeming it the flower of the divine. For instance, in a history book, there are attempts to fabricate recorded facts, and talk about how Akbar’s army lost the war of Haldighati to Maharana Pratap. Political Science textbooks now teach students about the policies introduced by the Prime Minister, his efforts to improve foreign relations and about demonitisation. But, it doesn’t call for its critical analysis, rather students are made to cram answers to questions like “Who gave the slogan of sabka saath, sabka vikas?” The development of the Indian education system from a system of rote learning to one of critical analyses was turned backwards.
From editing out eminent historical personalities to fabricating facts to support a pro-BJP narrative, this right-wing administration, as per Mr. Rajiv Gupta of the Rajasthan University, has been working on creating the perfect example of ‘manufactured consent’ (a system that creates citizens obedient to certain principles, through use of sponsored propaganda). However, Mr. Devnani only ever saw it as an attempt to ensure that “no Kanhaiya is ever born in the state” 一 which can safely be called as an attempt to see that there is no other Kanhaiya, no Rohith Vemula, no dissent, no opposition; that our world is one-coloured with only saffron, and that no green or white ever mixes in.
Textbooks are the most effective and the most perilous method of 'manufactured consent’. Young adults who will be turning into votes in just a few months and years have been continuously brainwashed and fed information that sees things only through one lens. The country has seen 5 years of an exclusionist education that ensures that those in power stay, and that the citizens become unquestioning puppets. For the next 5 years, the government promises an inclusive and accessible education system, but, their past actions prompt me to ask what this exactly entails, to ask if like other promises this, too, is just jumlaa.
These revisions brought on a wave of disagreements, and there have been all sorts of attempts at trying to legitimize these changes by the government representatives. The fact stands that the board syllabus became a tool for propagating pro-Hindutva ideals, and masking what Indian history truly entails. Students studied fabricated parts of historical narratives and any previous attempts made at bringing subaltern history into focus were made null and void. These were not mere changes in the syllabus; these were attempts at purging our history of anything the current rule does not agree with.
A government’s responsibility is to construct the present and shape the future of the country it serves. Sadly, we are represented by a body adamant to erase our past. India’s rich history is diverse, and not monochrome. Sadly, those who represent us are adamant to drench it in saffron.
टिप्पणियां