(In context
to the changes brought out by the Maharshtra State Board in the History
curriculum for Standards VII and IX)
Imagine that you are a detective. You will probably relate
the nature of your work to solving jigsaw puzzles. As a detective, you will be
required to put together the missing pieces and arrive at a plausible
explanation of the situation/event you are examining. This explanation that you
arrive at will be a theory that you will formulate, which, according to you, will
be the most convincing explanation of the situation under examination. The
strength of the theory you formulate will depend on the strength of the
evidences that you have in support of your theory.
Now, imagine you are a historian. What kind of work do you
think you will be required to do as a historian? Do you think it will have any
similarity to the work of a detective as described above? Does the possibility
sound too far-fetched to you? If you will pause and reflect for a while, you
will actually realize how similar both tasks are. A historian is also a person
who pieces together parts of a jigsaw puzzle and tries to make sense out of it.
Out of the various evidences available to her, in the form of artefacts,
archaeological remains, written and oral narratives, paintings, coins, and so
on and so forth, a historian tries to place these in context, weighs them for
their authenticity, relates them to other existing pieces of evidences and
narratives, and then tries to formulate a narrative or a theory based on these,
which, to her, sounds the best explanation for the situation under examination.
Again, the strength of the theory formulated depends on the strength of the
evidences provided. A historian, thus, also understands that a theory that she
is putting forward is not sacrosanct but is falsifiable, and thus liable to be
modified or discarded in the wake of stronger counter evidences emerging. Also,
since it is a theory based on her interpretation of the evidences in front of
her, the historian also realizes that there may be equally plausible alternate
explanations or interpretations of the same evidences, which may lead to
alternate theories. Again, the strength or weakness of all such theories
depends on the strength or weakness of the evidences the respective theories
are based on and the interpretations provided. Thus, by virtue of the very
process involved in the construction and re-construction of History, there is
bound to be a possibility of the existence of multiple histories.
All of us have studied History as a subject throughout our
student lives. How many of us have been encouraged to visualize it in the
manner above? I am sure many of us haven’t. The above visualization is
something that is provided by the Avehi Abacus Project, through its program
titled ‘Sangati’. The above analogy (between the work of a detective and a
historian) is drawn in the third kit of the Sangati program, titled ‘How
Societies Developed’. Sangati, incidentally is a supplementary program that is
being transacted with students of classes V to VII in the municipal schools of
Mumbai, since 1990. It comprises of six kits, which are transacted, mostly once
a week, with students of classes V to VII, by the regular school teachers. This
three-year supplementary curriculum has been envisaged with a vision to fulfil the objectives of education, to ‘equip
children with the knowledge and skills that they will need to face the world,
to build values that will help them take care of themselves and contribute to
the society they live in and to bring about a positive change in individuals
and society’ (Avehi Abacus Project, 2001).The entire curriculum is
based on certain themes that are interlinked with each other. These flow
logically and smoothly into each other. The journey starts with the self,
understanding oneself, one’s body and the needs that all human beings possess. While the needs are common to all they are met in
diverse manner and not provided for equally to all. As these needs are met by
the resources provided by the earth, the second kit then moves on to ‘Our
earth’ and the ‘Web of life’ that we all are a part of. The attempt here is to
understand our place in the universe and how complex and prolonged the process
of evolution of life on earth has been. It is hoped these inputs will form the
basis of creating feelings of humility towards nature. The third kit then moves
on to ‘How societies have developed’ over time, across the world. This kit
encapsulates the history of human civilizations from early times to the 1950.
The focus is on phenomena, structure and processes rather than on isolated
events or characters. History is looked at as a collective heritage and is
constantly connected with the present. Historical events are also located in
context of the geography they enfolded in adding more the layers to
understanding why they happened, how the conditions prevalent in the space
influenced them. The fourth kit then focusses on our society and ‘The way we
live’ in the present, discussing various issues like caste, religion, gender
discrimination etc., and understanding important topics like patriotism,
democracy, the influence of media etc. As change is a constant and continuous
phenomenon, the next kit then focusses on ‘Understanding Change’, and analyzing
it better so that we can ‘create the society we want’ by
developing a discerning mindset to differentiate between ‘change and progress’.
The curriculum ends with a forward looking note and helps understand how to
‘Prepare for the Future’, as an individual and as a society. The entire
curriculum is designed to be interactive and joyful, to replace ‘teaching’
by a voyage of exploration to discover facets of ourselves, our society and the
world, to accommodate the understanding that each child thinks and learns differently,
to encourage students to express their thoughts and share their life
experiences, to help them cope with different situations and make the right
choices and determine better futures for themselves and those around them’
(Avehi Abacus Team, Dear Teacher..., 2001).
Although, the entire Sangati curriculum is not designed
based on the subject matter boundaries that our education system has devised,
yet just for the sake of comparison, Kit III, titled ‘How Societies Developed’,
can be related to the subject matter of History, as taught in schools. However,
it has a very different take on how and why students need to be made aware of
‘History’. First and foremost, it does-not talk about one single ‘History’, but
multiple histories, of kings as of common people, of wars as of their futility,
of path-breaking events as of their impact – both positive as well as negative,
of India as of the world. It does not limit History to dates and times, to
kings and the boundaries of their empires, or does-not try to color it one way
or the other. Instead, it encourages students to live it, to explore and to
discover it, to go through the excitement of finding the pieces of jigsaw
puzzle and trying to put them together in a way they think is most plausible.
It, then, does-not discredit one arrangement of jigsaw puzzle in favor of the
other, instead it gives the message that many different arrangements are
possible, and all will equally have to stand the test of falsifiability. It
titillates and challenges the minds of the students, encouraging them to play
with ideas and look at things holistically.
At this stage, I want you to have a look at the following
passage from a school History textbook. The title of the chapter is “Conflict
with the Mughals”. The chapter begins as follows:
“So far, Shivaji Maharaj had successfully fought the
Adilshahi; but for expanding the Swaraj, conflict with the Mughals was
inevitable. The Mughals posed a great threat to the Swaraj even as it began to
expand. Maharaj triumphed over this threat too. He regained his forts and
territories from the Mughals. He got himself crowned. He took up a campaign of
the south…”(Maharashtra State Board).
The above is a passage from the recently published ‘History
and Civics’ textbook for Standard VII, by the Maharashtra State Board. The
‘History’ it intends to deliver to the students consists of one name,
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, and looks at everything else in relation to this
one name – how India and Maharashtra were before him, his struggle with the Mughals,
his quest for ‘Swaraj’ from the ‘foreign’ Mughals, the ideal rule that he
established and what happened after his death. The entire narrative of the
textbook is built in terms of “Us versus them”, where Muslim rulers, especially
Mughals are portrayed as foreign invaders whom Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and
other Hindu rulers fought throughout their lives. However it is not mentioned that Shivaji’s
grand-father, father and older brother also worked for other Muslim rulers. It
also never conveyed that the wars that Shivaji fought and the alliances that he
made were born out of political considerations rather than religious ones. Many
Hindu kings fought against him. He also had many Muslim officers holding key
positions in his cabinet. Rather than
acknowledge these facts, history, in this visualization, is limited to
glorifying one man and his rule. Additionally, it also aims at discrediting one
religious community and portraying its rulers as foreigners who invaded our
nation, and how numerous struggles had to be undertaken to rid the nation of
the foreign yoke. There is no attempt to look at Shivaji as a product of his
times, responding to circumstances not always of his choosing. He is made to appear
larger than life. Any inconvenient facts about him or narratives contrary to
the dominant one are not allowed space in the pages of the textbook. History, here, is also presented as a finished
product that has to be accepted as it is, completely in contrast to the
alternate vision of Avehi Abacus, where it is treated as a process and a
journey of exploration, waiting to be undertaken by young and curious minds.
The above mentioned are two contrasting visualizations of
what ought to constitute ‘History’. One views ‘History’ as a dynamic living
process, another as a static end-product that is too fragile to be tampered
with in any manner and has to be taken in the form it is presented, no
questions asked.
In the context of the attempts to rewrite history, Neeladri
Bhattacharya states, “The past does-not come to us with a unitary truth
embedded within it; the facts that historians mine do not ever speak with one
single voice. As our perspectives change we look at the past in new ways,
reinterpret events, discover new meanings within them, pose new questions that
could not even be formulated within the limits of earlier frameworks of
analysis. So historians tell different stories of the same past, refigure
evidence in diverse ways in the act of rewriting history – an act that enriches
the conceptions of our past.”(Bhattacharya,
2002).
So, essentially the process of rewriting and reinterpreting
lies at the heart of the historical process. However, this reinterpretation
needs to conform to the standards of scientific enquiry. It needs to be based
on legitimate evidences. It needs to put those evidences out in the open for
scrutiny and examination. The theories that are put forward need to be
falsifiable. Each and every statement that is made needs to be supported by
some evidence and also has to be open to challenge in the face of a
counter-evidence.
The above example that I have cited from a school History
textbook is culled out of the recently published History textbook for Standard
VII, by the Maharashtra State Board. It was brought out as a process of rewriting
and reinterpreting History, the purported aim being of making the students
aware of their real ‘History’, claiming in the process that everything other
than this should be deemed to be a distortion.
As is amply clear from the tone and methodology of the above
process of rewriting, it is meant to be an exercise in pushing through a
dominant perspective. In the extant case, Shivaji is portrayed as a Hindu
ruler, whose primary focus and agenda is to rid India of foreign Muslim rule.
He is portrayed as a righteous Hindu king, a bigot, protector of cows and
Brahmins and hateful of all Muslims and their culture. (Several letters issued
by Shivaji and by his ministers are available today, but none of these use the
description of Shivaji as the protector of cows and Brahmins.)However, while
putting forth these narratives, even the slightest of efforts are not made to
corroborate them with any kind of evidence. It is meant to be an exercise in
communal polarization. In contrast, to this lopsided and uncorroborated portrayal
of Shivaji, I would just like to quote a few lines from Govind Pansare’s book,
‘Who was Shivaji?’ He states:
“Shivaji’s tolerance for Muslim religion is recorded in
many ways in historical documents. A passage, taken from the Muslim historian
Khafi Khan, is very eloquent in this respect….” (Pansare,
2005). He further goes on to quote the passage which talks about
how Shivaji had made rules so that mosques would not be harmed, the Quran would
be respected etc. He further states, “Raghunath Panditrao quotes one such
command by Shivaji in his letter dated 2nd Nov. 1669. It is very
clear in this respect.” (Pansare,
2005). The command quoted by him is as follows: “Shriman
Maharaj (has ordained) that everybody is free to follow his religion, nobody is
allowed to disturb it.” (Pansare,
2005). The above portrayal of Shivaji, as presented by Govind
Pansare is corroborated by concrete pieces of evidences. The only way to
rewrite History in the wake of these could have been to convincingly challenge
these evidences and provide evidences to the contrary. However, this has not
even been attempted, instead the nature of the subject has itself been modified
by divorcing it from the rigorous process of scientific enquiry itself.
As Neeladri Bhattacharya rightly says, “…when history is
mobilized for specific political projects and sectarian conflicts, when
political and community sentiments of the present begin to define how the past
has to be represented – what can be told and what had to be erased, when
history is fabricated to constitute a communal sensibility, and a politics of
hatred and violence, then we need to sit up and protest.”As much as this is
true, I would like to add here that at such times, if not always, we also need
to realize and acknowledge the efforts of those who have been trying to put
forward counter narratives, challenging and questioning the above process of
fabricating history and providing an alternative vision, that is based on the
principles of enquiry rather than a final word that is considered to be
sacrosanct. In such a vision, the values of today are tested on the anvil of
the past values and vice versa making them a stuff of real life and not as the
deified glorious past or a binary of good vs evil. Avehi Abacus Project and ‘Sangati’ are the
living embodiments of such a vision.
References
Avehi Abacus Project. (2001). Dear Teacher.... Myself,
My Body, Our Needs : Sangati Kit I. Mumbai, Maharashtra: Avehi Abacus
Project.
Bhattacharya, N. (2002). The Problem. Seminar,
122-128.
Maharashtra State Board. (n.d.). Conflict with the
Mughals. In M. S. Board, History and Civics: Class VII.
Pansare, G. (2005). Who was Shivaji? In G. Pansare, Who
was Shivaji? Mumbai: Prakash Viswasrao.
Acknowledgements
I am extremely grateful to Ms. Simantini Dhuru, Director,
Avehi Abacus Project for providing constant guidance during the course of
finalization of this article. My first draft of this article was pretty much
all over the place and I am thankful to her for helping me put my thoughts in
perspective. Not to mention, her readiness to part with her invaluable time to
go through the article repeatedly and provide inputs which were central to the
finalization of the article.
I did my field study with Avehi Abacus Project during my
post- graduation course in Elementary Education from TISS, Mumbai, where I got
an opportunity to look at the ‘Sangati’ curriculum in detail. When the
Maharashtra State Board revised the History curriculum recently for Standards
VII and IX, the idea for the above article struck me. I wanted to just share a
glimpse of the contrasting ways in which ‘History’ could be viewed and dealt
with. Avehi Abacus Projects’ powerful vision of History (in this case) and of Education
– its aims and objectives, in general, is as relevant, much more so, today, as
it was when the Sangati curriculum was first introduced in 1990 in Mumbai
schools. The above is also an attempt in providing a small peak into the
‘Sangati’ curriculum and its transformative potential.
To contact the team for any enquiries, or for donation
purposes, please write to the following e-mail ID: avehiabacus@gmail.com.
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