Opinion NCERT deletions: They pander to a majoritarian ideology that seeks to crush out history that has shaped the nation

Instead of viewing this speech as a call for retribution, people saw it as giving voice to the voiceless and the persecuted, and as underlining the basic humanity that binds us all. Such re-readings, which enhance or challenge previous interpretations in the face of historical developments, are precisely what imbue literature with vitality and immediacy. This constant churn infuses old works with excitement and energy. But a churn arising from a divisive political agenda can bring forth only poison.

Such an example is the National Council for Education, Research and Training clandestinely deleting sections of various textbooks, including chapters on the history of Mughal courts. Responding to a flood of criticism, the NCERT first called the deletions an oversight and then dismissed them as insignificant, saying that it wanted to lighten students’ burden. But its explanation is far from convincing, revealing that the move was political rather than pedagogical. NCERT has done what the current regime believes will make it popular with a section of the population.

By critically and rigorously reviewing aspects of history, we can stimulate fresh discussion, but simply wishing them away is both absurd and juvenile. English literature, which I have taught for four decades, offers several examples of how texts continue to be read even though the way readers and critics respond to them, their characters, and their writers keeps changing.

Take Shakespeare. He might enjoy a reputation of being the greatest English dramatist of all time, but that has not deterred critics, and some quacks, from raising questions about his very existence, from attributing his writings to famous contemporaries, and, more recently, from doing investigative work to prove that it was a woman who wrote all his plays. To some, he is a great humanist and stellar reader of human character, while to others, he is a racist and imperialist.

Even in the prudish Victorina age, Thomas Bowdler failed in his attempt to tamper with the plays for moral reasons. The pendulum keeps swinging, but Shakespeare lives on, a tourist industry all by himself.

Another example is Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, published in 1847. More than a hundred years later, Jean Rhys wrote a feminist and post-colonial prequel, Wide Sargasso Sea, set in the Caribbean, in which the protagonist had been shut away by Bronte in the attic as a madwoman. Critics have interpreted Rhys’s book as a feminist and post-colonial critique of Bronte’s book.

Then in 1970, the book Sexual Politics by Kate Millett called out the sexist stances and patriarchal premises of canonical male writers such as D H Lawrence, Henry Miller and Norman Mailer. Conversely, Elaine Showalter’s A Literature of Their Own brought to light the long but neglected tradition of women writers in England.

Casebooks in Criticism, a set of books on major texts and films, exemplifies the extent to which readers’ and viewers’ responses to these works change over time. Each Casebook explores a seminal work and traces its critical reception through the ages — from reactions at the time the works came into being to the present, highlighting how historical context, changing social mores and cultural trends play a role in this evolution. By adding new interpretations of texts, however critical of older ones, we enrich our understanding, while banning or censoring texts and their interpretations stunt our imagination and intellect. The ability to engage and live with contradictory interpretations of texts and history is a sign of maturity.

In direct contrast, the NCERT has pandered to a majoritarian ideology that seeks to crush out of our consciousness parts of history that have shaped the nation and influenced its ethos. Today, many still remember this history, and therefore resist these distortions. But such deletions attempt to shape and impoverish future knowledge. As the regime tries to “Indianise” knowledge and filter Western impurities, a time may come when Indians who value scholarship and nuance have to look to the West to recover their own history.

The writer is a Mumbai-based academic and social commentator