The HindustanTimes
Friday, January 3, 2003  
Op-Ed.

End of history
Amar Farooqui
When the first batch of school textbooks for social sciences published by the NCERT were released in October, one almost felt cheated.

The two books that came out — India and the World (for class VI) and Contemporary India (for Class IX) — were just not worth the heated public debate that preceded and followed their release.

The books are an anti-climax after all the hue and cry sparked off by the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCFSE), especially in the context of the syllabi for social sciences envisaged in it. While some of India’s leading educationists and social scientists were preparing detailed critiques of the NCFSE, putting forth invaluable suggestions for improvement, and making extensive comments on the proposed changes with the objective of developing an update curriculum framework, the NCERT was just not listening. So much time and energy, including that of the Supreme Court, was simply wasted.

Eminent educationists, social scientists and political activists (for there are political issues at stake) have raised serious objections to the textbooks. One would like to make a few observations about the social sciences textbook for class VI in order to indicate that many of the objections are valid.

This book begins with topics on the universe, the solar system, stars, planets and the physical geography of Earth. One is not very sure whether some of these topics should be included in a course on social sciences. For one, teachers dealing with social sciences may not be able to do justice while teaching astronomy.

The second unit of the book, ‘People and Society in the Ancient Period’, is where the real problem of this book lies. There are two sets of topics in this unit: the first set is intended to be a survey of the evolution of human societies from the emergence of humankind to the rise of early non-Indian civilisations; the second deals with the history of ancient India. If the purpose of discussing early non-Indian civilisations is to give students some idea about how great civilisations of the ancient world arose, what their main features were and the ways in which they contributed to human development, then one can only say that the first set is a disaster.

However, if the intention is to promote ignorance, as the ideologues of the Sangh parivar would prefer, then the authors of the book are more than successful. It may be recalled that some time back the HRD minister had declared at a meeting that there was no need for Indian universities to include Graeco-Roman history in their syllabi. The treatment of non-Indian civilisations in the textbook follows the line of thinking of the minister.

The history and achievements of six major civilisations — Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman, Chinese and Iranian — are compressed within 22 pages of large print with several illustrations on almost every page. An 11-year-old would be utterly confused by the kind of material provided in the chapter. This is primarily a pedagogical problem.

There are serious errors as well. Egyptian civilisation, we are told, “developed around 7,500 years ago” (p 59). This means that Egyptian civilisation began circa 5500 BC. In other words, the date for the beginning of this civilisation has been pushed back by nearly 2,500 years! The consensus among historians (as reflected in the recently published volumes of the UNESCO History of Humankind) is that Egyptian civilisation began c. 3,100 BC. Researches of the last few decades have established that the Nile valley could not be inhabited till 6,000 BC due to large-scale flooding in the area during the period following the end of the last Ice Age.

That this date is not a ‘printing mistake’ is obvious from the section on Mesopotamian civilisation. This civilisation is stated to have developed around “7,000 years ago” (p 63), making it later than Egyptian civilisation. It is generally recognised by historians that Mesopotamia (Iraq) was the home of the world’s oldest civilisation — the Sumerian civilisation. The sequence in which the section on Mesopotamia is placed (it comes after Egypt) suggests that the authors are convinced that it developed after the emergence of the Egyptian civilisation. Moreover, the beginnings of Mesopotamian civilisation go back to c. 3,500-3,200 BC (i.e. less than 5,500 years ago, and not 7,000 years ago).

The authors apparently do not have a clear idea about the concept of ‘civilisation’. While introducing non-Indian civilisations, they state rather vaguely that civilisation represents a stage of development “during which we find such things as cities, villages, writing, big buildings, great work of art and craft” (Italics added).

They add that, “This [?] not only required participation of people on a large-scale but also obeying the law and realising one’s own responsibilities as part of community, society, culture and nation” (p 57). They then obliterate the distinction between pre-history and civilisation by declaring that Indian civilisation “has unbroken [sic] history of about 8,000 years, i.e. from neolithic times” (p 58; emphasis in the original).

Either the authors are not certain that the term ‘civilisation’ denotes a specific stage of historical development which follows the paleolithic and neolithic ages or else they are surreptitiously trying to convey the impression that Indian civilisation is older than all others.

The ideological motif of the textbook is revealed by the concluding para of the introduction: “You may be surprised to know that Indian and Chinese civilisations are the only ones which have survived right from the time they came into existence till date. They have retained many of their basic and distinguishing characteristic features which link them with the past. All other early civilisations have disappeared and the present people/civilisations have no connection with the past ones” (p 58). The assumption behind this kind of sweeping and unhistorical formulation is that religion is the defining feature of a civilisation and that, according to the NCERT, India and China have unbroken historical religious traditions.

Then there is the treatment of the Iranian civilisation. Here, while discussing Zoroastrianism, the book makes it a point to emphasise: “The Zoroastrianism [sic] was wiped out as a major religion of that area by the spread of Islam in seventh and eighth [sic] centuries AD and later.” (p 77) There is no historical context or reference stated to the process whereby Islam became the dominant religion of Iran. In fact, the early history of Islam has been altogether excluded from the book.

A box placed prominently at the end of a separate chapter on ‘major religions’ seeks to clarify that it is proposed that a discussion on Islam will be taken up in the “next class” (p 138). And yet the Arab conquest of Iran is mentioned a second time in the discussion on major religions, again without giving the student some sort of background: “Zoroastrianism was the religion of Iran until its conquest by the Arabs when most of its people were converted to Islam” (p 138).

The reluctance to include the early history of Islam in the chapter on major religions of India becomes even more inexplicable when one goes through the chapter on ‘India’s Cultural Contacts with the Outside World’. Here, a reference is made to the Arabs building “their Islamic empire” (where?) and that the “sea and land routes came under their control” (p 129; which sea and land routes is not mentioned). The prejudices of the authors become apparent.

In the case of Christianity, they jump from Jesus Christ to the much later schism in the Church. The book appears to be more interested in drawing attention to “disagreements among the Christians” (p 138). There is no clue as to what these “disagreements” were all about. Nor are the students given any relevant historical information except the inaccurate comment: “Two sects clearly emerged — Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Churches.” (p 138; emphasis added). From here a jump is made to Martin Luther who, it is stressed, “did not agree with certain teachings of Catholic Church [sic] and established a separate order known as Protestants” (p 138).

One could continue, but the book is just not worth the trouble. It is indeed a pity that students dependent on NCERT history textbooks will have to read and memorise and reproduce all the ignorance and prejudice that they contain.

The writer is Reader in History, Hansraj College, Delhi University