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INDIA: Textbook Tyrants

The Rajasthan board of secondary education has recently announced its
intent to include a chapter on the life and achievements of Mr.
Narendra Modi, the Prime Ministerial candidate of the Bhartiya Janata
Party (BJP) in its school textbooks. Following this, the Madhya
Pradesh state government has announced the same.

The announcements have no shock value of their own; politicizing
textbooks is nothing new in a country marked by sharp socio-political
divisions that often ride on caste and community axes. Politicians
affiliated to different political parties have exploited education
being included as a subject in the concurrent list of the constitution
and pushed through chapters in school textbooks eulogizing their own
life and/or individuals ideologically suited.

Such attempts have also resulted in a game of musical chairs being
played with children’s minds, with parties opposed to each other, on
assuming power, purging and replacing chapters. The states of Tamil
Nadu, where Ms. J. Jayalalitha purged a chapter on her arch-rival and
former chief minister, and Bihar, where Mr. Nitish Kumar did the same
to Lalu Yadav, come readily to mind. Add to this the chapters on
Nehru-Gandhi family littered all over textbooks across states, partly
because of the family patriarchs’ role in the freedom struggle and
partly because of the family having held power for a majority of the
post colonial period.

What makes the case of Narendra Modi special, though, is that none of
the erstwhile leaders have been as polarizing. And, none of the other
politicians whose lives figure in textbooks have reneged their
constitutional duty – to protect a section of citizens under their
watch from genocidal mobs – as he did in Gujarat in 2002.

That the jury is still out over his direct participation in the
pogrom of the Muslims is true. However, no one denies that the state
machinery under his watch looked the other way when murderous mobs
affiliated with his political party were out on the streets killing
members of the minority with unprecedented brutality.

Forget the skeptics, even Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the then Prime
Minister of India belonging to Mr. Modi’s own party, when visiting
the relief camps, reminded Mr. Modi of his “Raj dharma” (duty of a
king to look after his subjects without discrimination) and to not
discriminate on the basis of ‘caste, creed or religion’. In a
further indictment Mr. Vajpayee had shot another letter to Mr. Modi on
1 June 2002, voicing his concern over the fragile communal situation
in the state and doubting if the interests of riot victims were being
properly looked after.

Many later developments substantiated the charges of criminal
dereliction of duty by Mr. Modi. These include Supreme Court orders
transferring many of the related cases out of Gujarat and conviction
with a life term for Maya Kodnani, a senior minister in Modi’s
government, for her role in the riots. Furthermore, many journalists
have reported on and captured rioters belonging to the organizations
affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological
fountainhead for the BJP, owning up to their acts, unaware that they
were being filmed.

Forget about apologizing for his failure to protect citizens he was
oath-bound to protect, Mr. Modi has not even regretted the carnage.
Though his persona non grata status in most of the civilized world,
earned by his handling of the pogrom, is set for an overhaul because
of geopolitical realities, can Indians allow the same in textbooks
meant for young and impressionable minds?

The court cases may or may not continue; India’s criminal justice
system is notorious for its inadequacies and may never catch up with
those who orchestrated the mayhem.

But can the Indian democracy allow a hagiographic chapter in school
textbooks on the life of such a figure? What is being communicated to
the youth? Is the lesson that nothing succeeds like success no matter
what the means and cost, no matter what violence it takes to get
there? Is the lesson a medieval one: history written by or on behalf
of victors? Certainly, all such hagiographies that have found their
way into school curriculums scream about the whitewashing qualities of
power and financial clout and the brainwashing depths of servitude in
public life.

This is another test for the republic, something India claims to be.
While the true unshackling of colonial history – so Indians can
comprehend the traumatic nature of colonial rule and its continuing
impact – is still awaited, so is a rewriting of post-colonial
history free from subservient chapters penned by court poets.