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by
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Yvette Claire Rosser

2003
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Copyright 2003 by

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Rosser, Yvette Claire

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 The Dissertation Committee for Yvette Claire Rosser
Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation:

Curriculum as Destiny:
Forging National Identity in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh

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Committee:

IE O. L. David, Jr. Supervisor

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Sherry Field

Zena Moore
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Gail Minault

Rodney Moag
 Curriculum as Destiny:

Forging National Identity in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh

by

Yvette Claire Rosser, B.A., M.A.

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Dissertation

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of

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The University of Texas at Austin

in Partial Fulfillment
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of the Requirements

for the Degree of

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Doctor of Philosophy

The University of Texas at Austin

August 2003
 Dedication

With gratitude and respect to the two women who gave me life and continue to

nurture me with love and wisdom:

My Dearest Mother, Janine Smets Randal, Ph.D., from Brussles, Belgium

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&

Beloved Shrimati Siddhi Ma-ji, from Kainchi Dham, Nainital, India.

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And also to my sister, who supported me through the travails of graduate school :

Danielle Rosser, DVM

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And especially to my three children who bore the brunt of this long academic

journey with patience and love:

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Krystina Shakti

Jai Hanuman

Amar Josef

I would also like to mention Florence Klein and Frank Hutton, Raman Srinivasan,

Susan Raja-Rao, my best friends, who have given me strength and determination

and the closeness of family.

Finally, from my deepest heart I thank and honor:

Param Pujaya 1008 Shri Shri Shri Neem Karoli Baba Maharaj-ji,

who in 1973 advised me to go to graduate school

 Acknowledgements
I have many people to thank. I thank Gail Minault for her friendship and
for her numerous letters of recommendation as well as her copious comments
about this dissertation. I thank Robert Hardgrave who also wrote many letters on
my behalf and who was an inspiration to me. Rodney Moag has been a source of
wisdom and support and I am grateful. The chair of my dissertation committee, O.
L. Davis, Jr. counseled me, wrote letters of recommendation, and nominated me
for funding that allowed me to continue my work. He has been supportive and

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concerned, patient and understanding. Zena Moore and Sherry Field have been
enthusiastic and kind and I am grateful that they were on my committee. I would
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also like to mention in loving memory, JoAnn Sweeney, who took me under her
wing at a crucial time. I hope part of JoAnn’s great spirit lives on in me.
Many people in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India helped me:
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In Pakistan, I am particularly indebted to: Arifa Sayida, who is my heart,
and Mubarak Ali and Rabina Saigol. I respect Dr. Inayatullah, Tariq Rahman and
Rehanna and their two wonderful children. Thanks also to Bilal Farooq. Special
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thanks to my “Punjabi Devi” Rukiya Jaffrey and her daughter Zahar, who
translated the Urdu textbooks. Fond remembrances for Nafisa Hoodbhoy and
Javed Bhutto. Sheemeen Abbass, now my friend in Austin, helped me in Pakistan.
In Sindh, where a little bit of my heart always remains, I have a list of
brothers and sisters whom I must mention. Inayat Magsi, my true brother and his
wife Shaheeda. Lal Gurubaxani, thank you. Rakhsandar Mahar, sisters forever.
Saghir Shaikh and my family in Karachi, Fayaz and Samina, et al. Thanks also to
Jamal Sheikh and Mars, Alta Md. Bhambhro, Jam Saqi, Rahim Bux Jaffri, Noor-
Light-of-My-Life-u-Nisa Ghanghro and her dear Mir, and Imdad Chandio—who
turned me on to Sindh.

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 In Bangladesh I would like to thank my friend and teacher Dr.
Annisuzzama, everyone’s favorite professor. Very special thanks to Ift ekhar Iqbal
“Shefa’ my very sincere translator. And best wishes to Dr. Ratan Lal
Chakraborty. Thanks to Dr. K.M. Mohisin, for all his help. Thanks also to Sona
Bari and Shahid. And especially to Chandan Ikram Ahmed and his mom, Hamida
Banu, and family-- Sajeeda, Faraida and Nurul Haq, Farooq and Ratna and
Chanchal. And at the CDRB, Mr. Md. Enayat Karim, Dr. Shelly, his brother
“Sher-e-Dhaka”, and especially Sarwar, my dear. And thanks to Kishwar Kamal
for sustaining me… and so many others. Joy Bangla!

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In India, which is like home to me, I have many people to thank, along
with Purnima at the AIIS off in Delhi. First of all Arjun Dev and Indira Arjun
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Dev, who are my friends, though we don’t necessarily agree about all the issues, I
appreciate them and am in their debt. And to Krishna Kumar who counseled me
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to whom I provided textbooks from Pakistan. To K.S. Lal for several informative
and inspiring interviews, may he rest in peace and may his books finally,
posthumously be added to university reading lists. Love to Madhu Kishwar who
is a great human being and a friend. First and foremost dunda pranam and love to
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Bhaiya Narottam Das Kapoor in Benares. And in Delhi, Mrs. Sharma and family.
Remembrances to my family in Kainchi Dham, Nainital, also Vinod Joshi who
brings light to my soul. For showing me “alternative” ways to see India, thanks to
Devindra Svaroop-ji and Sandhya and Meenakshi Jain. I also owe a great deal to
Stanley Berly for inspiration and also Vijay Ganapa. I am very grateful to Mr.
Rishi Kumar Mishra of the Observer Research Foundation, and his wife Renuka
for understanding and supporting me. The last person I need to thank is the most
important, my true dost, Raman Srinivasan.

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 Curriculum as Destiny: Forging National Identity in India,
Pakistan, and Bangladesh

Publication No._____________

Yvette Claire Rosser, Ph.D.

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The University of Texas at Austin, 2003

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Supervisor: O. L. Davis, Jr.

This dissertation investigates the political, social, and religious influences

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on curriculum policy and social studies textbooks. It highlight the importance of

historiography in the creation and transmission of national ideologies. This study

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focuses on three nations of the Indian Subcontinent, India, Pakistan, and

Bangladesh, which share thousands of years of history, but who after 1947 have

entertained distinct, often opposing visions of the past. In this context, historical

interpretations, often characterized by omission, elision, and embellishment, may

become standardized narratives used as justification for ethnic violence and

military brinkmanship. The civic imperative to create patriotic citizens finds a

malleable, teleological tool in the social studies. This study seeks to understand

the sources of contentiousness which characterize the relationships between these

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often hostile nations where textbooks may be used as a site for negatively

“othering” their neighbors.

The first section deals with the history of education in the Subcontinent

and background information about the research. The second section looks at the

three countries in the Subcontinent, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India. A brief

conclusion attempts to tie them all together.

History textbooks are narrated with the intent of developing students into

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patriotic, productive citizens. Examples from state-sponsored textbooks can
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illustrate the appropriation of history to reinforce national ideologies. When

history is seen as a tool to mold a nation's youth, interpretations of historical

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events are often manipulated in response to current events, as heroes become

villains across the borders of neighboring countries, and opposing political parties

within nations vie to control the grand narrative of the nation state.
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 Table of Contents

Introduction........................................................................................................... 1
Nationalism: Something to Die For.................................................................. 3
The Sub-Continental Divide .......................................................................... 5
Chapter One: Historical Revisionism in Global Perspective..............................12
History Textbooks ‘R US....................................................................................14
History Wars and the Paparazzi.........................................................................19
Chapter Two: Research Assumptions and Caveats.............................................31
Background Discussion and Transferability of Concepts ...................................34

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“History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.”.................................36
Colonial Precedent: The Communalization of Textbook Narratives...................38
Uprooting the “Beautiful Tree”..........................................................................44
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"Learn English and lose your humanity."........................................................................................55
Chapter Three: The Islamization of Pakistani Social Studies............................68
Pak Studies: Propaganda of a ‘Failed State’.......................................................68
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Light of God/Love of Plunder Schism: Dichotomies of Discourse.......................74
Eliding and Ellipsing: Victim or Villain..........................................................................................78
The Akbar Aurangzeb Axis ...............................................................................................................84
Whose History? Whose Nation?.......................................................................................................95
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Stitching Caps and Staging Coups .................................................................... 106

Hegemonic Hindustan: Pakistan’s Significant Other..................................................................110
The Goal: Complete Islamization..................................................................... 116
Kashmir: A Vehicle for the Creation and Transmission of Nationalism................................128
Omission of Transmission: The Emergence of Bangladesh......................................................132
Investigating the Politics of Curriculum Reform .............................................. 136
Chapter Four: Mukti Bahini to Jihad: Evolution of Historiography in
Bangladesh..........................................................................................................139
‘As the Pendulum Swings’................................................................................ 143
Textbooks and Popular Memory ...................................................................... 153
Cultural Nationalism versus Pan-Islamism...................................................................................158
Urban Legends and The Rewriting of History .............................................................................160
The Bengalees vs. the Bangladeshis ..............................................................................................161
Who Declared Independence?.......................................................................... 166
Subtleties of Distortion.....................................................................................................................174

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 From a Vision of Humanism to the Agenda of Islamism...........................................................187
The Unstable Story of the Nation ..................................................................... 195
November 7, A Tale of Two Tales .................................................................................................202
Political Overdose ............................................................................................ 215
The Return of Rao Farman Ali........................................................................................................220
Bangladesh: The Ghosts of the Generals .......................................................... 223
Hindus and the ‘Pollution of the Political Air’.............................................................................234
Bangladesh: A Tale That Can’t Be Told........................................................... 243
Whither Contemporary History in Bangladeshi Textbooks?.....................................................247
Bangladeshi Identity and Textbooks ..............................................................................................253
The Battle of the Begums .................................................................................................................257
Student Politics ..................................................................................................................................261

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Chapter Five: India: Rewriting History in the Headlines ...............................265
Conflicts and Controversies: No Middle Ground in Indian Historiography ..... 265
Agency, Hegemony, and Risky Stances on the Road Less Taken............................................267
Woe to be Saffron..............................................................................................................................273
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The Hinduization of JNU.................................................................................................................277
Aryans and Ancestral Angst: The Obligation of Identity Construction............ 280
Prelude to Controversy: Romila Thapar and 1977 Textbook Recall........................................294
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Duel of the Dons: A Central Debate on the Fringe............................................ 300
The Power of Silence: Rejecting History for Personal Salvation .............................................306
Tegh Bahadur Singh versus NCERT .............................................................................................314
The New NCERT Textbooks: “It’s Our Turn Now”......................................... 325
Values Education: The Verdict .......................................................................................................329
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High Court Judgment: Vedas Are Not Saffron ............................................................................339

From the Drain Pipe Inspector’s View ..........................................................................................352
“Vituperative, Venom-Spewing” … VHP ....................................................................................360
Back to the Books: The Scuffle Over Values Education............................................................374
The Questionable Textbooks in Question......................................................... 384
Battle of the Booklets: The DHG versus NCERT .......................................................................385
Where’s the Beef? .............................................................................................................................400
Where’s the RSS?..............................................................................................................................405
Vir Savarkar: Revered or Feared? ..................................................................................................412
Oops! Goes the Mahatma & Howlers ............................................................................................416
Are the New Textbooks Communal? .............................................................................................435
Doing History................................................................................................... 444
Medieval India Revisited and Revised: Reviled or Rectified?.......................... 461
A Pulsating Versus a ‘Metabolically Challenged’ Geography.................................................469
Comparing Two Narratives: Whose India? Whose Stories?......................................................474
The ‘Arab World’ in India ...............................................................................................................488
How Many Qassims, Ghaznvis, and Ghoris Do We Need? .......................................................500

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 The Pendulum....................................................................................................................................505
The Saffron Brigade Versus Akbar the Great...............................................................................515
Does India’s Past Have a Future?.................................................................... 525
DHG, Me, and the ‘Others’ .............................................................................................................527
Conclusion: What Flavor of History Would You Like? ...................................541
The Subcontinent as Subject ............................................................................ 542
Irreconcilable Differences ................................................................................ 547
Bibliography........................................................................................................553
Vita...................................................................................................................... 589

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Introduction
One of the swiftest entrees to understanding any modern
society is through listening to political discourse about
education. Power struggles and ideological controversies
about how to socialize and enculturate youth are at the heart
of the processes by which a society is continually recreated. 1

Changes in the narration of history within a nation-state occur in much the

same way as changes appear in languages. Both language and historiography are
reified and given an aura of permanence by codification in the written word.
However, both mutate and evolve through changes resulting from multiple

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processes acting and interacting. 2
Alterations in languages and in historical narratives happen over time,
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through cultural influences such as influxes of foreign occupants, or the
international media, as well as the internal introduction of innovations and
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alternative modalities. Assertive changes in societies often express popular
opposition to stale conventions and are heralded as manifestations of latent
liberation-psychology--whether it is creating new patterns in language to discard
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1 Bryon K. Marshall, Learning to be Modern: Japanese Political Discourse on Education, Boulder,

CO: Westview Press, 1994, p. 1.
2 Keith Jenkins wrote, “The fact that history per se is an ideological construct means that it is
constantly being re-worked and re -ordered by all those who are variously affected by power
relationships; because the dominated as well as the dominant also have their versions of the past to
legitimate their practices, versions which have to be excluded as improper from any place on the
agenda of the dominant discourse. In the at sense re-orderings of the messages to be delivered
(often many such re-orderings are referred to academically as ‘controversies’) just have to be
constructed continuously because the needs of he dominant/subordinate are constantly being re-
worked on the real world as they seek to mobilize people(s) support of their interests. History is
forged in such conflict and clearly these these conflicting needs for history impinge upon the
debates (struggle for ownership) as to what history is.” Jenkins, Keith, Re-Thinking History,
Routledge, New York: 1991.

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outdated usages or the rewriting of history to “jettison cultural deadwood” as
advocated by John Dewey. 3
Textbooks narratives and historical interpretations are by definition
constantly redefined and rewritten based on variables such as changing social
mores and new archeological discoveries as well as on-going research from
different disciplines and by scholars outside formal academia. Historiography,
languages, just like viable species, must be pliable and respond to pressures and
continue evolving. Historical perspectives, like language use and popular cultural
expressions, may change dramatically from one generation to another. Even when

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textbooks are radically altered, education providers and their pupils, in most
cases, casually accept the new interpretations, believing that the revised historical
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facts represent the real truth. However, this truth, found in the contents of the
textbooks, is always changing as it attempts to influence the direction of society
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and as it is in turn impacted by societal changes.
History in textbooks, from nation to nation, is responsive to diverse
pressures. Because of this, textbook writers regularly reconstitute stories of the
past, sometimes obscuring, distorting or decontextualizing certain sensitive
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details. Such contractions and expansions, flips, flops and hops in historical
interpretations, express the cultural dynamics and socio-political demands that
motivate nations to write and unwrite and rewrite the past to suit the present.4
Textbooks, as a pliable and public product, can provide a lens on the ever-

3 In Annihilation of Caste, Ambedkar wrote, "Professor John Dewey, who was my teacher and to
whom I owe so much has said, 'Every society gets encumbered with what is trivial, with dead-
wood from the past, and what is positively perverse. . . . As a society becomes more enlightened, it
realizes that it is responsible not to conserve and transmit the whole of its existing achievements,
but only such as make for a better future society’, from: Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and
Speeches, Vol. I, Government of Maharashtra, Bombay, 1979, pp. 79.
4 In 1984, George Orwell stated that ‘The past not only changed, but changed continuously’ (pg.
64); he also wrote ‘If all others accepted the lie … if all records told the same lie--then the lie
passed into history and became truth’ (pg. 32), Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, NY: 1983.

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changing self- image of a society. “The ways in which what happened and that
which is said to have happened are and are not the same may itself be historical.”5
The study of textbooks is in itself historical.

Nationalism: Something to Die For

Nations come into being based on certain shared perspectives that undergo
a continual process of reevaluation as the societal and the political situations
change. Allegiances and expectations erected through the process of nationalism
and national consensus create a passionate commitment to an abstract, constantly

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transforming, transpersonal entity: the nation-state. National symbols such as
anthems and flags as well as historical narratives elicit powerfully felt emotive
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responses. However, carefully hidden from the patriots’ purview is the reality that
the cultural signification implied by these symbols are transitional and perpetually
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liminal in absolute terms, and the construction of the “nation” is at best
ambivalent.
Homi Bhabha, in Nation and Narration eloquently states,
Nations, like narrative, lose their origins in the myths of time and
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only fully realize their horizons in the mind's eye. Such an image of
the nation--or narration--might seem impossibly romantic and
excessively metaphorical, but it is from those traditions of political
thought and literary language that the nation emerges as a powerful
historical idea in the west. An idea whose cultural compulsion lies
in the impossible unity of the nation as a symbolic force. This is not
to deny the attempt by nationalist discourses persistently to produce
the idea of the nation as a continuous narrative of nation progress,
the narcissism of self- generation, the primeval present of the Volk. 6

5 Trouillot, pg. 4.
6 From "Introduction: narrating the nation" by Homi K. Bhabha, in Nation and Narration, ed.
Homi K. Bhabha (New York: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1990).

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 David Lowenthal in, The Past is a Foreign Country,7 explains that these
primordial myths and images, cultural metaphors used by successive generations,
move in and out of the predominating historical record,
Perspectives on historical understanding are as diverse as its
components. They include what is sometimes derogated as
mythological. ‘In history of history a myth is a once valid but now
discarded version of the human story’, notes Becker, ‘as our now
valid versions will in due course be relegated to the category of
discarded myths’.
Lowenthal adds, “Soothsayers, priests, storytellers and minstrels are historians
too…written history may acquire the poetic, universalizing character of myth as

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time outdates its specific factual content”. 8 Extending the metaphor of history as a
form of myth, Lowenthal quotes a scholar from India,
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In perceptions of India’s past, there are ‘no criteria for differentiating
between myth and history. . . What the Westerner considers as
history in the West, he would regard as myth in India; . . . what he
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called history in his own world is experienced by Indians as myth’. 9
In a footnote, Lowenthal quotes what he terms the “more mordant view”
of V.S. Naipaul, the 2001 Nobel laureate who commented in a 1976 article 10 that,
[T]he golden Indian past is not to be possessed by inquiry; it is only
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to be ecstatically contemplated. The past is a religious idea,

clouding intellect and painful perceptions, numbing the stress in bad
times. 11
If history provides a nation or a people with spiritual meanings, the essence of
which is seen as essential for maintaining the core values of the society, then

7 Lowenthal, David. The Past if a Foreign Country, (Cambridge University Press: 1985).
8 Ibid, p. 212.
9 Panikkar, Raimundo. ‘Time and history in the tradition of India: Kãla and Karma’, in Cultures
and Time, Paris: UNESCO, (1976), pp. 63-88, (as per Lowenthal, p. 212).
10 Naipaul, V.S. ‘India: Paradise lost’, N.Y. Review of Books, 28 Oct. 1976, pp. 10-16 (as per
Lowenthal, p 212).
11 In the decades since this writing, Naipaul has reevaluated his analyses of Indian civilization.
Reference to his more contemporary perspectives will be included later particularly regarding the
impact of Islam on Hindu society.

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textbooks are, in the modern world, one of the primary methods through which
this lore, this core of the civilization is disseminated.
This voluminous study is based on my doctoral dissertation project
research that sought to understand how the nations of the Indian Subcontinent
view themselves, how they view each other, and how and why these images vary
over time. It looks at how nations and communities in the South Asia use a
common historical legacy to forge what are often diametrically opposite
nationalized identities. Though history textbooks and interviews from field
research form the core of the data, this study places the discourse about

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historiography in the public realm and takes media analyses, academic disputes,
and Internet discussions into account. IE
Narratives of the past, as they appear in “official” textbooks, are often
quite different than those popularized among citizens of different ethnic groups.
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In some textbooks, stories of aggression, oppression, or enslavement are
downplayed in an effort to create a feeling of national integration. 12 However,
these historical memories usually remain alive in popular discourse. This study is
also an attempt to give agency to those voices. The purpose of this dissertation is
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to discuss the political controversies that implicate the narratives in social studies
textbooks in three nations of the Indian Subcontinent.

Introduction: The Sub-Continental Divide

In India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, as in all countries, revisions in

historical narratives must be considered within the social, religious, and political

12 For example in Pakistani textbooks, the violence perpetrated against Sindhis by Md. Bin-Qasim
is not discussed. In Pakistani textbooks, Qasim is seen as a savior. This same narrative is used in
textbooks written by Indian “Marxist historians”. These convoluted, contrasting, and overlapping
issues will be discussed in detail below.

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milieu in which they were proposed and implemented. Different pressures
operating in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have resulted in quite oppositional
historical interpretations, as would be expected from nation-states that have been
on opposite sides of variously drawn battle lines for over fifty years.
Textbook narratives by their very definition can never be irrevocably
standardized. Social and political forces inevitably challenge historical
interpretations found in textbooks. The then changed textual codification resulting
from the reformulated or reevaluated interpretation of history leads to new
confrontations by other political or subaltern groups critical of the now revised

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standard rhetoric.
In each of the three countries of the Indian Subcontinent these forces have
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worked to create not only the obvious variations that naturally occur between
nations, but tectonic fractures in civilizational moorings. Sharp divides about the
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meaning of specific historical events are not unique to Bangladesh, Pakistan, and
India, but characterize such debates in most countries. Understandably, as nations
experience changes in perspective through the years these changes are eventually
incorporated into the standard historical narrative as reflected in the social studies
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curriculum. This is a process that can take decades to percolate up from popular
culture, or can happen within a few weeks due to a radical change in government.
In the case of Pakistan, curricular changes have been, more often than not,
top down mandates, issued by martial law administrators. Bureaucrats at the
textbook boards usually unquestioningly incorporated these mandated changes
into the textbooks. As will be seen in chapter three on the Islamization of
Pakistani Social Studies, since 1947 the historical record has become more and
more codified to express a conservative, orthodox Islamic perspective. An
Islamized approach to the writing of history began as soon as the nation came into
being and can actually be traced to earlier historical narratives from the colonial

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and even the medieval period. How the textbook boards will respond to General
Musharraf’s call to tone down the jihadi rhetoric, and how they will situate
Pakistan beyond or outside of fundamentalist discourse that has dominated for
that past two and a half decades, is something that remains to be seen.
Since 1947, most Pakistani politicians and leaders have sought to appease
the fundamentalist factions by allowing them voice in cultural matters, offering
them a certain level of empowerment or control over the educational discourse. In
the early fifties the writers of the constitution bent over backwards to
accommodate the orthodoxy and since then all the rulers, including both Bhuttos

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and Nawaz Sharif have placated the fundamentalists with promises to pass stricter
blasphemy laws, do away with interest (riba), label certain sects as non-Muslim,
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and bring in the Shari’at as the law of the land.
As will be seen, during General Zia's period, the Mullahs ruled by proxy.
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In the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001, tensions have arose between
some sections of the military and the more fundamentalist clergy. Though General
Musharraf made verbal promises to reign in the powers of the religious parties
and the militant mullahs, instead as a result of the contrived election held in
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October 2002, the fundamentalist parties won a unprecedented number of votes. It

will be very difficult for the Pakistani Intelligence agencies (ISI) to disentangle
themselves from the decades long drive towards the promotion of an extreme
expression of Islam.
Textbooks in Pakistan reflect this move towards fundamentalism, wherein
the history of Pakistan during Mughal and colonial days, and the events that led to
its meteoric emergence as an independent nation, were gradually replaced with
exhortations to Islamize the nation. The impact of decades of Islamization and the
resulting anti-Western, xenophobic discourse in the historical narrative in

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Pakistani textbooks has come under international scrutiny since September 11,
2001.
Many liberal Pakistani scholars, with whom I discussed textbook history,
have privately and publicly argued that advocating militant fundamentalism in
textbooks will produce negative consequences. Given the new found political
clout of the fundamentalists it will be difficult for the Pakistani establishment to
act on the post 9/11 shift in policy and implement changes in the discourse of
Jihadi Wahabbism propagated in textbooks since the time of General Zia ul-Haq.
This Islamized narrative has produced results that are detrimental to international

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cooperation and internal security. As will be seen in chapter three, Pakistani
textbooks often encourage students to discriminate against non-Muslims and
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exhort them to lead an international jihad towards the creation of a purely Islamic
world.
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In Bangladesh, in comparison with Pakistan, what is interesting is the
obtuseness of changes that were actually implemented in textbooks during the two
decades of military rule. As will be seen in chapter four, in the analysis of
Bangladeshi textbooks, due in part to the indomitable Bengali spirit 13 , when
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military regimes mandated changes in the historical record, the professionals at

the NCTB (National Curriculum and Textbook Board) in Dhaka, were slow to
respond and in fact in some cases, refused to fully implement ordered changes. 14
Since the restoration of democracy, Bangladesh has experienced a see-saw
between the two competing political parties. Both have serious reasons to control

13 It used to be said that whatever happens in Bengal, happens twenty years later in the rest of
India. For a more than a century Bengalis led the Indian Subcontinent in many areas, including
social reform movements, educational institutions, literary achievements, and especially, the
political activities associated with the freedom movement.
14 A friend of mine in Dhaka pointed out that this inaction may not only reflect a certain anti-
establishment stubbornness for which Bengalis are famous, but a penchant for procrastination as
well.

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the historical narrative. Historiography is in a state of flux. The textbooks were
altered in 1996 when the Awami League won, and then again in 2001 when the
Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) returned to power. Because of this instability
brought on by democracy itself, chapter four on Bangladesh will bring out the
ironies that often result when the textbooks are considered to be the personal
property of political parties.
The battle over historiography in India continues to generate tremendous
intellectual interest and intriguing scholarly debates, both domestically and
internationally. Since the political rise of the Hindu Revivalist/Hindu Nationalist

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movements in India, there has been an enormous amount of journalistic and
academic attention to the rewriting of history advocated by those wishing to
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convey more Indo-centric perspectives. Regardless of which side you support, the
issue continues to consume a tremendous amount of column space in newspapers
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and spam- level bandwidth on the Internet. There were even law suits filed
concerning the writing of new textbooks and the recall of official publications.
In India there has been an avalanche of newspaper articles and public
debates because each policy decision, proposal, or appointment made by the BJP
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(Bharatiya Janata Party) government is met with immediate condemnation during

well-orchestrated media events. News conferences and protests are regularly
staged by groups who oppose the BJP government’s educational and social
policies. Opponents from the Leftist or Marxist factions 15 are particularly vocal.
During the last few years in India, all officially initiated discussions
regarding textbooks or curriculum have been hotly discussed in the popular
media. Chapter five on India, will look at these on- going controversies. Because

15 Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, and the liberalization of the Indian economy, in
1990, those who identified with Marxist or Leftist socio-political agendas, now prefer to be called
secularists or progressives. (This shift in nomenclature was explained to me by both ‘former’
Leftists and their critics from the Hindu nationalist camp.)

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India is by far the largest country in the Subcontinent, and the debate is
particularly public and heated, the chapter on India is somewhat longer that the
chapters dealing with Pakistan and Bangladesh. It must be added that my take on
the situation in India will be considered highly controversial by some parties and
path-breaking by others. Suffice it to say, I do not see the process of Indianization
of historical narratives in NCERT textbooks to be a threat to world peace.
The changes being discussed regarding historiography in India are mild in
comparison to the results that the active promotion of Jihadi Islam had on the
school children of Pakistan. In India, the perceived threat of Hindu

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Fundamentalism, vis- à-vis the “rewriting of history” is mo re rhetoric than
substance, and mostly promoted by well established scholars who object to the
IE
new interpretations. The focus of the Indigenous or Indo-centric school is
primarily on delving more deeply into certain issues such as the origin of the
EV
Aryans, or the contribution of India to world civilization, quite benign in
comparison to exhortations to international jihad found in Pakistani Studies
textbooks.
Many nations in the world today are in the process of revaluating their
PR

standard historical narratives. In a number of countries, this very public discourse

about historiography has occupied the attention of the scholarly community and
the general population as well. All countries, not only post-colonial nation-states,
are constantly reevaluating historical interpretations and recreating stories and
narratives about their pasts.
Chapter two, Research Assumptions and Caveats, discusses textbook
theory and the pressure on historiography that are the result of competing political
groups. Drawing from the work of scholars such as Michael Apple and Sam
Wineburg it looks at the uses of historiography in the creation of national identity.

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It also includes a section about nineteenth century historical precedents in
conflicts over textbooks in the Subcontinent, based on a study by Avril Powell.
International media attention often highlights the battles that various
factions within a nation are willing to wage in order to control the meanings and
change the tellings of the tales of the nation’s past. Chapter one, Historical
Revisionism in Global Perspective, highlights examples from journalistic sources
that underscore the importance of the rewriting of history textbooks from an
international perspective. It puts the “history wars” being fought in South Asia in
global perspective. When leaders and/or groups of citizens raise a cry about a

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particular slant or bias in the historical record, it inevitably generates a flood of
journalistic and academic articles, a few of which will be cited in the first chapter.
IE
Chapter one seeks to contextualize the rewriting of history in the Indian
Subcontinent as a phenomenon common to all parts of the planet.
EV
PR

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Chapter One: Historical Revisionism in Global Perspective

[P]articular social formations want their historians to deliver

particular things […] the predominantly delivered positions
will be in the interests of those stronger ruling blocs within
social formations, not that such positions are automatically
achieved, unchallenged or secured once and for all and ‘that
is it’. ---Keith Jenkins 16

In history textbooks written for school students, significant stories about

the ancestors of the nation, be they cultural or political, are appropriated,

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packaged and presented to promote particular ideological perspectives. Writers of
curriculum, employed by state agencies or serving on advisory commissions, are
often more concerned about nurturing specific political ideals and social values in
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the minds of the youth than they are with the many troublesome details of
objective historiography. In social studies textbooks the story of the nation,
EV
whichever nation, is projected through the lens of a prescribed paradigm.
Historiographies found in schoolbooks, often elide or ignore inconvenient facts,
twisting the logic of cause and effect this way and that to support a particular
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perspective of nationalism or an ideological trajectory. Textbooks often deny even

simple chronology in order to conform to the heroics of nationalist identity
formulations.
This teleology of indoctrination is not an unfortunate shortcoming or
accidental outcome--a side effect of social studies textbooks. Ideology is integral
to the ultimate purpose of a social studies curriculum. Historical narratives usually
reflect the views of the dominant culture and report events through a lens with a
narrow focus. These popularized stories of the past are not considered to be
ideological, they are considered to be fact by the vast majority of teachers and

16 Jenkins, Keith, Re -Thinking History, Routledge, New York: 1991, pg. 17.

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