Why Indian history textbooks are in absolute and urgent need of revision
3 years ago

Why Indian history textbooks are in absolute and urgent need of revision

Firstpost  

I guess I was asked to write this article because I’m a Westerner who has been defending India for a long time, and I have written many books, both in French and in English, which rewrite Indian history. Compare this with Shivaji Maharaj, who is only given a few lines in Indian history books — and sometimes even called “a plunderer”. When I say revolutionary, I’m thinking for instance about the Aryan invasion theory, which has been proven wrong long ago but is still the foundation stone of every history book, Indian and Western, as well as all the school curriculums in India and abroad. I have seen when I went to Maharashtra to do a feature on the Warlis; Christian missionaries convert them by saying: “You are not a Hindu, you are the original inhabitants of India, convert to the true God.” The shortcoming in India’s history books isn’t just confined to the Aryan invasion theory.

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History of this topic

Aditya Mukherjee Book Review: Analyzing Nehru’s India Through History and Time
1 week, 5 days ago

Aditya Mukherjee Book Review: Analyzing Nehru’s India Through History and Time

The Hindu  

Published : Dec 11, 2024 14:59 IST - 7 MINS READ At the launch of historian Aditya Mukherjee’s Nehru’s India: Past Present & Future in New Delhi earlier this month, invited speakers shared their own sense of intellectual, political and cultural affinity with Nehru, referring to certain highpoints of Mukherjee’s book in passing. I would like to concentrate on Mukherjee’s …

How outside-the-classroom initiatives are redefining History education in India
7 months, 2 weeks ago

How outside-the-classroom initiatives are redefining History education in India

The Hindu  

In 2023, when former journalist Amit Arora and Prof. Rakesh Basant, former Dean at IIM-Ahmedabad, organised India’s first History Literature Festival at Ahmedabad University, they worried that the experiment might fall flat. Over the past few years, this is becoming somewhat of a norm, with several outside-the-classroom initiatives drawing an ever-expanding audience of students and history enthusiasts across age groups. …

How RSS textbooks are reshaping Indian history and science under Modi
10 months ago

How RSS textbooks are reshaping Indian history and science under Modi

Al Jazeera  

The chain of schools run by the BJP’s far-right ideological mentor also served as a laboratory for government changes to syllabuses. “The NEP has taken some of our schools’ practices to the broader sphere,” he said, hoping for more information from the Sanskriti Bodhmala books to find their way into the formal national school syllabus. ‘Glorious culture’ Vidya Bharati says …

The Hindu on Books | Remembering Gandhi, countdown to Jaipur Literary Festival and more
11 months ago

The Hindu on Books | Remembering Gandhi, countdown to Jaipur Literary Festival and more

The Hindu  

Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter. Read about the sessions at The Hindu Lit Fest here In books this week, we interview Mary Beard, Professor Emerita of the Classics at Cambridge, and an expert on the Roman world, who will be addressing two sessions at the upcoming Jaipur Literary Festival from February 1-5, and Booker winner …

Rewriting history in two leading democracies
1 year, 5 months ago

Rewriting history in two leading democracies

Hindustan Times  

Scotsman George MacDonald Fraser, famous for his Flashman novels and many screenplays, wittingly noted, “I think little of people who will deny their history because it doesn't present the picture they would like.” That's the conundrum facing two standout democracies on the opposite sides of the globe: American, which prides itself as the oldest, and Indian, which boasts of being …

Why is India cutting back on teaching evolution in schools?
1 year, 6 months ago

Why is India cutting back on teaching evolution in schools?

Al Jazeera  

On Wednesday, June 14 at 19:30 GMT: This school year, students under 16 will no longer be taught about evolution or the periodic table of elements. The changes to textbooks – which include historical revisions that suit a Hindu nationalist agenda – have shocked educators in the country, who fear the curriculum changes are a sign of a greater acceptance …

Review of A New History of India — From its Origins to the 21st Century: Heroes and villains
1 year, 7 months ago

Review of A New History of India — From its Origins to the 21st Century: Heroes and villains

The Hindu  

For some time, professional historians have wondered whether a single, usable, Indian past can any longer be written. Professional historians have of late also been dealing with the political challenge to their practice, as a wide range of ‘custodians’ of the past have emerged, from amateurs, ‘scientists’ and community gatekeepers, to hyper-ethno-nationalists, who lay exclusive claim not only to historical …

To edit Muslims out of India’s history is to deny them a future
1 year, 7 months ago

To edit Muslims out of India’s history is to deny them a future

Al Jazeera  

Other countries have made this mistake. References to independent India’s first education minister, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad — a senior figure in the country’s struggle for freedom from British rule, a close comrade of Mahatma Gandhi and a beacon of Hindu-Muslim unity — have been eliminated. The medieval historical period is such a crucial era of India’s past — one …

Why is Modi so scared of history textbooks?
1 year, 8 months ago

Why is Modi so scared of history textbooks?

Al Jazeera  

The PM’s party is editing textbooks to create a fantasy of India as a Hindu-only nation that has always been loving and just. After nine years in power, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government has finally defeated the long departed Mughal Empire and other Muslim rulers. It’s shocking – how will students make sense of present-day India without …

The Fallacy of Debate over NCERT Textbook by the Prophets of Doom - News18
1 year, 8 months ago

The Fallacy of Debate over NCERT Textbook by the Prophets of Doom - News18

News 18  

The academic commissars are back again, haunted, apparently by the spectre of saffronisation of the National Council of Educational Research and Training textbooks. From concerned historians, a pseudonym for the old contractors of the history syllabus in India, to journalist-activists eager to peddle the political agenda of the elites of the ancient regime, to the scores of political parties desperate …

AP History Congress panel slams NCERT decision to erase chapters on Moghuls from history textbooks
1 year, 8 months ago

AP History Congress panel slams NCERT decision to erase chapters on Moghuls from history textbooks

The Hindu  

Without the study of Mughal history, the history of India will remain incomplete and an academic void will be created, say members Members of the Andhra Pradesh History Congress have expressed serious concern over the National Council of Educational Research and Training ‘s decision to erase certain chapters on the Mughal Empire from Class 11 and 12 textbooks. They argued …

Row over removal of portions on Gandhiji in Class XII textbook
1 year, 8 months ago

Row over removal of portions on Gandhiji in Class XII textbook

The Hindu  

The National Council of Educational Research and Training, the key government body that prints textbooks for Indian students from Class 1 to 12, has claimed that the key deletions in the rationalised syllabus for 2023-24, which include Hindu extremists’ dislike for Gandhi and a ban on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh after his assassination, were not declared in the public domain …

‘The Religious Enterprise’ by K.M. Shrimali is a deep dive into matters of faith
1 year, 10 months ago

‘The Religious Enterprise’ by K.M. Shrimali is a deep dive into matters of faith

The Hindu  

Published : Feb 02, 2023 15:34 IST A work dedicated to the history of religious traditions in early India has been a long time coming. The Religious Enterprise: Studies in Early Indian Religions By Krishna Mohan Shrimali Aakar Books, 2022 Pages: 716 Price: Rs.3,500 There are 13 chapters in all, seven in the first volume and six in the second. …

Why India needs to rewrite its history without falling into jingoistic traps
2 years ago

Why India needs to rewrite its history without falling into jingoistic traps

Firstpost  

There are many reasons for the re-examination of our historical narrative. The Aryans did not ‘invade’ India, but migrated in batches, coexisting with the Indus Valley civilisation inhabitants, some two thousand years before 1500 BCE, thereby making India one of the oldest civilisations in the world. The third area needing revision is the stubborn attempt to devalue the verifiable, remarkable …

India Must Rewrite the Past But Remain Vigilant Against 'Dinanath Batra' School Of History - News18
2 years ago

India Must Rewrite the Past But Remain Vigilant Against 'Dinanath Batra' School Of History - News18

News 18  

Is there a need to rewrite Indian history? The Aryans did not ‘invade’ India, but migrated in batches, coexisting with the Indus Valley civilisation inhabitants, some two thousand years before 1500 BCE, thereby making India one of the oldest civilisations in the world. It follows, therefore, that the authors of the Rig Veda, who describe the river as ‘great’, ‘vast’ …

Indian history must be told from India’s perspective: Exposing Marxist rope trick - the Vikram Sampath way
2 years, 1 month ago

Indian history must be told from India’s perspective: Exposing Marxist rope trick - the Vikram Sampath way

Firstpost  

Vikram Sampath’s new book, ‘Bharat’s Bravehearts’, tells the story of 15 bravehearts, half of them women. Vikram Sampath’s new book In this vastly distorted worldview enters a new book by Vikram Sampath, Bharat’s Bravehearts, which promises to turn Indian history, as we have known so far, upside down. Bharat’s Bravehearts, initially, intended to be a “quicky”, which was quite “tempting” …

Eminent scholars launch report on 12,000 years of Indian history
2 years, 2 months ago

Eminent scholars launch report on 12,000 years of Indian history

The Hindu  

Published : Oct 10, 2022 16:34 IST Several eminent scholars on October 9 launched a 600-page report on 12,000 years of Indian history and civilisation, prepared by a collective of more than 80 scholars worldwide, including experts in genetics, archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, philosophy, and history. Prime Minister Narendra Modi reportedly appointed a committee in 2018 to rewrite Indian history as …

India at 75 - Non-fiction
2 years, 4 months ago

India at 75 - Non-fiction

The Hindu  

Published : Aug 14, 2022 06:00 IST The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian Nirad C. Chaudhuri Hailed as “the one great book to have come out of the Indo-British encounter” and remembered both for its blatant Anglophilism and its scathing attack on the moral hypocrisy of the Bengali middle class. My Story Kamala Das The English translation of Ente Katha, …

First Draft | Indian history is badly distorted: Here’s how it can be rewritten
2 years, 5 months ago

First Draft | Indian history is badly distorted: Here’s how it can be rewritten

Firstpost  

Since Independence it has become almost a religious dogma of Indian and Western historians to rewrite history and to project ancient Indian/Hindu civilisation as a remarkably and uniquely inhuman civilisation, whose only characteristic was an iniquitous caste system Is Indian history being “rewritten” at the moment? But after 1947 it became almost a religious dogma of Indian and Western historians, …

Mohan Guruswamy | Rewriting history, with an open mind or empty mind?
2 years, 5 months ago

Mohan Guruswamy | Rewriting history, with an open mind or empty mind?

Deccan Chronicle  

Historical revisionism is the process of rewriting history to correct the misinterpretations of the past or for an ideological purpose. British scholars, who seemed genuinely interested in how this country evolved, wrote most of modern India’s history. As a young student in a Catholic school, in recently independent India, the first history lessons imparted to me told that story, particularly …

Rewriting ‘old history’ for a New India
2 years, 5 months ago

Rewriting ‘old history’ for a New India

The Hindu  

Recent investigative reports bring to light proposals for deletions and changes to school textbooks across the board. However, the changes made in the history textbooks specifically target certain areas of India’s past and will result in an ideological shift in history teaching at the school level. The Report of the Parliamentary Committee notes right at the beginning that, ‘School Textbooks, …

The Glorification of Invaders and Concealment of Hindu Kingdoms in School Textbooks Must Be Corrected
2 years, 6 months ago

The Glorification of Invaders and Concealment of Hindu Kingdoms in School Textbooks Must Be Corrected

News 18  

The National Education Policy of 2020 had one salient feature that has now begun taking form. A major point of contention for disgruntled folk within the media fraternity seems to be the fact that individuals associated with the RSS have been made part of the National Curriculum Framework’s national focus groups working on curriculum changes. They have even counted how …

DC Edit | Why rewrite history?
2 years, 6 months ago

DC Edit | Why rewrite history?

Deccan Chronicle  

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s wonderment about how history can be revisited is as much pregnant with political meaning as the call of home minister Amit Shah on its need. History is history,” Mr Kumar said in reply to Mr Shah’s statement that “we can write our own history.” While the home minister who had his political baptism in the …

Why Indian history must be written as per historical evidence and norms, and not ideological agendas
2 years, 11 months ago

Why Indian history must be written as per historical evidence and norms, and not ideological agendas

Firstpost  

There is a lot of noise being made on the new education policy and rewriting of history and social sciences textbooks. All one could gather was that there was agreement among some of the ‘eminent historians’ and the topics are those that can be used for the blackening of the ancient period of Indian history. In an absurd vein, AJP …

Three reasons why Indian school textbooks need an overhaul and a rewriting
3 years ago

Three reasons why Indian school textbooks need an overhaul and a rewriting

Firstpost  

Importance of school textbooks in our lives cannot be undermined. Similarly, it was observed that school textbooks do not give adequate coverage to some of the great Indian empires like that of Cholas, Chalukyas, Vijayanagar, Gondwana or that of Travancore and Ahoms of the northeastern region, whose contributions in the expansion of India’s standing on the world stage cannot be …

Irfan Habib: Defender of history
3 years, 3 months ago

Irfan Habib: Defender of history

The Hindu  

A remarkable symposium, entitled “In Defence of History”, was hosted by the reputed academic journal Social Scientist, the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust and Tulika Books on August 12 to celebrate the 90th birthday of Professor Irfan Habib, legendary historian, progressive intellectual and leading role model for generations of students and scholars. Aditya Mukherji’s presentation drew attention to “the close umbilical …

Communalising history textbooks
3 years, 4 months ago

Communalising history textbooks

The Hindu  

“Of all the social sciences, it is history which rouses the greatest interest in the minds of the politicians. Gopal, ‘The Fear of History’, Seminar, 1978 More than 40 years ago, the debate about what kind of history should be presented in school textbooks emerged in the public domain when the Janata Party-led government appeared to be bending under pressure …

College draft syllabus: Messing with history
3 years, 6 months ago

College draft syllabus: Messing with history

The Hindu  

The new history syllabus drafted by the University Grants Commission for undergraduate students is old wine in an old bottle, with a clear ideological slant towards “Bhartiyakaran” or Indianisation of history. Counting historians Bipan Chandra, Irfan Habib, Romila Thapar, Arjun Dev, Mridula Mukherjee, Aditya Mukherjee and Sumit Sarkar among the contributors, the project laid bare all claims of all-round depiction …

Indian history and distorted narratives
3 years, 8 months ago

Indian history and distorted narratives

The Hindu  

The University Grants Commission document on Learning Outcomes-based Curriculum Framework, 2021 for undergraduate education in history begins with the declaration: “History, as we all know, is a vital source to obtain knowledge about a nation’s soul”. The first paper of the course is titled the ‘Idea of Bharat’ and seeks to study the “primitive life and cultural status of the …

Activist sends legal notice to make amends to NCERT books over 'distorted history' on Mughals
3 years, 9 months ago

Activist sends legal notice to make amends to NCERT books over 'distorted history' on Mughals

Op India  

An RTI activist has sent a legal notice to the NCERT and sought to make amendments in the book after the NCERT said that they had no references to the claims in 12th standard books that Mughal emperor Aurangzeb gave grant for repairs of temples. #NewsAlert | Activist from Bharatpur sends a legal notice to NCERT over the content on …

Meeting held to discuss revision of NCERT history textbooks
3 years, 11 months ago

Meeting held to discuss revision of NCERT history textbooks

Op India  

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education met on Wednesday to discuss the revision of current National Council of Educational Research and Training history textbooks in schools. During the debate over the need for change in the syllabus, former NCERT director JS Rajput and representatives of the Bhartiya Shikshan Mandal told the committee that current history textbooks in schools are not …

Mughal history whitewashed in textbooks, educationists tell House panel
3 years, 11 months ago

Mughal history whitewashed in textbooks, educationists tell House panel

The Hindu  

At its meeting on textbook reforms on Wednesday, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education heard presentations from right-wing organisations and educationists, including the man at the centre of a debate on the “saffronisation” of textbooks under the Vajpayee government. The panel’s agenda for the meeting was to remove “references to un-historical facts and distortions about our national heroes”, to ensure …

How India’s historians have reflected on the country’s history, culture and heritage
4 years, 2 months ago

How India’s historians have reflected on the country’s history, culture and heritage

The Hindu  

THE term ‘Indian history’ is deceptively simple at first sight, so much so that we take it as a given rather than as a point of reflection: it assays a study of the past of the Indian subcontinent. As early as in 1935, Shafa’at Ahmad Khan, in his presidential address to the first All India Modern History Congress, warned of …

Standing up for Hindus: In Conversation with Francois Gautier
4 years, 4 months ago

Standing up for Hindus: In Conversation with Francois Gautier

Op India  

Francois Gautier is a vocal and visible Dharmic voice, a lover and defender of Hindus in India and abroad. But Sri Aurobindo’s was a struggle for complete independence, but his place in Indian history books is not there. So we need to think – I have to be good, not kill, not steal, but here in India, when I started …

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