Opinion Abhinav Prakash writes on deletions in textbooks: History textbooks have gaps and silences, must reflect India’s diversities

Medieval era history is largely about imperialist campaigns and the settler-colonialism of the Central Asian invaders rather than the resistance put up by the people to foreign rule. Large parts of India hardly came under the effective role of these foreign dynasties, and indigenous polity continued to flourish.

The same is true about the narrative of Indian interaction with Western imperialism. The rapid transformation of India in the early modern period and various political, social and religious changes haven’t received adequate attention.

Then we have a monolithic narrative of history from the Harappan era to the Vedic age followed by the Mahajanpadas and the rise of the first empire under the Mauryas. From the Guptas and Harshavardhana, the account moves on to the Delhi Sultanate, followed by the Mughals and the British. The dominance of north India, especially Delhi, in the textbooks fails to do justice to the diversity and plurality of Indian history. The Cholas and Satavahanas are simply touched upon. The Vijayanagar Empire is largely ignored despite lasting almost as long as the Mughal Empire and shaping the polity and society of a large part of India.

There is little about the Chalukyas, Gurjaras, Pratiharas, Pallava, Kashmiri dynasties, Kakatiyas, Rashtrakutas, and Ahoms. Do we read about the Eastern Gangas and Palas of Bengal, who ruled for four centuries each? What about the Western Ganga dynasty, which ruled from 350 CE to 1,000 CE? For centuries, several of these dynasties and empires ruled areas larger than the largest European countries. And then we have the absence of the Northeast in our textbooks. The Dalits and tribals are also absent from the mainstream history textbooks. Instead, their role and agency in history are denied by presenting their culture and religion as the imposition of the “Aryan Invaders”. In a single stroke, the whole Dalit-Bahujan Samaj is robbed of its culture, ingenuity, history and spirituality and de-humanised as people lacking agency, reduced to the footnotes of history.

The immense role played by Dalits in the first war of Independence needs to be addressed, with freedom fighters like Uda Devi, Matadin Bhangi, Vira Pasi, and Chetram Jatav included in the textbooks. The various agrarian movements led by Dalit leaders, like the Ekka movement of Madari Pasi, have been reduced to obscure events despite their massive scale and appeal during the British Raj.

Students hardly learn about the tribal society, polity, spiritual systems and vibrant tribal kingdoms and culture. Also, the fierce and continuous tribal resistance to Western imperialism is one of the most glorious chapters in world history but finds only passing mention in the Santhal uprising.

Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes constitute nearly 25 per cent of the Indian population, and any history writing can’t have legitimacy without them as active participants in the making of history.

Another significant issue is that there is too much history and too little archaeology, facts and data. Recent discoveries have yet to be incorporated into textbooks. Countless manuscripts, letters, secret communications, contemporary reports and personal diaries in various languages are gathering dust in libraries and private collections — they are rarely studied.

India is a civilisation with strong oral traditions. Most local histories and histories of castes and communities are only preserved in oral traditions. But systematic attempts have yet to be made to record and analyse these narratives. Instead, history writing consists of references and cross-references within a small group of English language historians, with a premium on references to Western historians.

History is much more than political history. Topics like environmental history, social history, economic history, history of technology and knowledge production, arts and literature, production processes, and Indian industry must be emphasised in textbooks. It will widen the scope, rekindle our interest in history and give us a better understanding of our millennia-old journey.

India’s interaction with the world down the ages has not received much attention. The strong maritime traditions of India and the spread of Indian ideas and philosophies across the world are yet to get their due in textbooks.

Interactions with the world are an essential part of the history of any country and civilisation. It is more so with India which exerted a tremendous influence on the socio-political and economic development in the Indian Ocean Region and Central Asia.

India has always had a strong maritime tradition: Lothal in Gujarat is among the world’s first international ports. From her, Indian ships sailed to Arabia, Iran, Africa and Babylonia, carrying with them not just goods but people and ideas. Harappans maintained trading posts as far as the northern reaches of Afghanistan, and as early as the 3rd century BCE, sailors from Odisha were navigating the waters of Southeast Asia. These trade relations led to the flowering of the rich tradition of cultural exchange and the spread of knowledge systems across Asia. And India too was shaped by such interactions over its history.

History has to be a dynamic study involving multiple points of interaction and can’t be reduced to contemporary political battles like maligning Savarkar just to target the ruling party. Above all, the history of India should be the history of the people of India. It should be an Indian story, told by Indians in an Indian narrative style.

The writer is National Vice-President, BJP youth wing