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OpinionJanuary 22, 20255 min readModis Government Aims to Trample Indias HistoryHindu nationalists are committed to turning India into a Hindu nation-state. They are rewriting history in textbooks to shape that future, trampling Indias true pastBy Vinay Lal edited by Dan Vergano ImagesBazaar/Getty ImagesIndia has since 2014 been governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a Hindu nationalist party notorious for its intolerance for competing visions of the idea of India. Led by Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, his partys rule has led to unchecked control of the media, widespread and zealous suppression of dissent, and tacit (and sometime open) support of bigotry against Muslims, Christians and lower-caste Indians.In last years national elections, the BJP returned to power for a third five-year term, albeit with a reduced presence in the Indian Parliament that has now compelled it to govern with coalition partners. One might have thought the Modi government, projected to achieve a landslide victory, would have been chastened by this turn of events to embrace a vision of India open to its unparalleled religious, cultural and linguistic diversity. Instead Indias National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) last year announced substantive revisions to the social science textbook used in class six (sixth grade), encompassing history, political science and geography, which suggests the present government has no intention of changing course. These revisions seek to present a radically altered and jaundiced understanding of the Indian past.The idea of history wars is by no means new. Japan, for instance, has triggered official protests from China over history textbook attempts to whitewash Japanese war crimes and imperialism in the 1930s and 1940s. The history wars in the U.S., now often placed under the larger rubric of culture wars, have lasted a century. A 1923 Oregon statute, which stressed that school history textbooks shall adequately stress the services rendered and the sacrifices made by the founders of the Republic, which shall inculcate love for and loyalty to our country, barely shows its age considering recent efforts to legislate patriotism, including a law in Florida that requires instruction suitable for an upright and desirable citizenry that recognizes and accepts responsibility for preserving and defending the liberty inherited from prior generations and secured by the United States Constitution.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.In considering the disputes over history textbooks in India, one U.S. example has yet more resonance. This was the dispute, which lasted from 2005 to 2009, over the representation of Hinduism and the ancient Indian past in history textbooks in California. Hindu conservatives, advised by the Hindu Education Foundation and the Vedic Foundationwhich takes its name from the Vedas, the most revered of the Hindu scripturesargued, inter alia, that the caste system had been depicted incorrectly, that women in India did not have an inferior status, and that the Aryans, rather than migrating to India, had originated in India. Many historians, including me, argued at that time that some of the changes would have the effect of falsifying history.But what, if anything, gives the present governments attempts a distinctive color and an alarming, even ominous, tone? Its revisions to school history textbooks furnish the most illuminating and even palpable answer. Perhaps the clearest verdict came in a 2023 New York Times headline: New Indian Textbooks Purged of Muslim History and Hindu Extremism.Islam arrived in India before C.E. 700. What may, with some justice, be described as the unification or incorporation of most of India into one political entity was achieved by the Mughal Empire by the 1500s. Countless European writers, whatever other prejudices they may have held against Indians, had no difficulty in recognizing Akbar the Greatwho reigned from 1556 to 1605 and turned the Mughal empire into a beacon of tolerance at a time when most of Europe was plunged into religious warsas one of the greatest monarchs in world history.What, then, is there about this past that greatly unsettles the Modi-led government? What is gained by diminishing Muslim rulers or altogether eviscerating some from history textbooks? Modi has from the outset of his rule since 2014 argued that he was determined to free India from 1,200 years of slavery, an obvious reference to the submission of India to Muslims, followed by the British. Muslims, however long they may have been in India, must forever be counted as foreigners.Secondly, from the Hindu nationalist standpoint, the world must recognize India as a country that in its most essential characteristics is Hindu. The long Muslim presence in India, on this view, was the principal factor in the decline of their country. Hindus have long been aware that India is distinct (or nearly so, if one discounts nearby Hindu-majority Nepal) as the only country and indeed civilization that is home to Hindus. Where Muslims can claim over 50 countries as Muslim-majority, Hindus have nowhere else to turn to but India. India must, on this view, be restored to its distinct place in the world as an essentially Hindu civilization. Thirdly, Modi is animated by the idea that Hindus, long accustomed to centuries of slavery, a phrase that appears repeatedly in his speeches and admonitions to fellow Indians, must be able to take pride in their religion; his greatest accomplishment, as he sees it, is that he has given Hindus the confidence to assert their identity as Hindus and not merely Indians. And, lastly, Modi and his followers in the Hindu middle class doubtless view Islam as an impediment to Indias progress and development.Clearly, more extreme Hindu nationalists are committed to turning India into a Hindu nation-state and greatly diminishing the Muslim presence in all spheres of life. They know that textbooks play by far the most critical role in shaping our understanding of the past. The destruction on December 6, 1992, of the Babri Masjid, a 16th-century mosque in Ayodhya, by a mob of Hindu militants was their first step in reclaiming India as Hindu India; if that can be described as a purge of Islam, the revisions to the textbooks can be described as effecting a similar purge in realms of education and pedagogy.Indian school textbooks are often poorly produced and contain egregious mistakes. One states that Japan launched a nuclear attack on the U.S. in World War II. Other, non-BJP governments have also introduced highly questionable revisions to history textbooks, though never on the scale witnessed since the BJP swept into power. In 2023 the 12th-grade history and politics textbook was revised to exclude the passage found in previous versions that Mahatma Gandhis steadfast pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity provoked Hindu extremists so much that they made several attempts to assassinate him. Gandhi, a devout Hindu, was assassinated by yet another Hindu, Nathuram Godse, but this fact has been deleted from scores of textbooks. There is no mention of the pogrom of 2002 that led to the deaths of over 1,000 Muslims and the displacement of some 200,000 people, under the rationalization exercise undertaken by the NCERT. One could easily cite hundreds of other instances of such obfuscation of the truth.Mohandas Gandhi, anointed as the Father of the Nation, was unequivocally clear that the litmus test of a democracy is how it treats its minorities. India is failing this test. The revisions undertaken to history textbooks under the present political dispensation in India are, in other words, the surest sign that when a country is gravitating towards authoritarian rule, truth will be the first casualtyas it has been so often in the past.This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
