Orwellian tone in NCERT book

In George Orwellrsquos dystopian novel Nineteen EightyFour Winston Smith the protagonist muses ldquolsquoWho controls the pastrsquo ran the Party slogan lsquocontrols the future who controls the present controls the pastrsquordquo Presiding over Orwellrsquos imagined totalitarian superstate of Oceania the Party seeks to justify its policies by altering records of the past In Oceaniarsquos present its past is constantly recreated The process was simple for as Smith notes ldquoall that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memoryrdquoIndia is no Orwellrsquos Oceania yet as you read Recent Developments in Indian Politics a revised chapter in the NCERT Standard XII Political Science textbook and compare it with the one previously taught hereinafter original chapter you will feel the Bharatiya Janata Party wants to triumph ldquoover your own memoryrdquo of the 1992 demolition of the Babri MasjidThe NCERT working under the Union Education Ministry has achieved this for the BJP by deleting passages from the original chapter rewriting sentences and adding new text to it In doing so the BJP wishes to create a new past for those who are 17 or 18 years old a past remarkably different to what you lived Your children in years to come will say your memory is a lieYet ironically the BJPrsquos attempt to invent a new past betrays its subconscious desire to neutralise the moral condemnation inherent in its role in the demolition of a place of worship This the revised chapter does by depriving the Babri Masjid of its sacredness choosing to call it a ldquothreedome structurerdquo The demolition of a structure disconnected with the notion of the sacred does not sound as morally reprehensible as the act of destroying a mosque wouldThe original chapter said ldquoSome Hindus believe that it Babri Masjid was built after demolishing a temple for Lord Rama in what is believed to be his birthplacerdquo But the belief of ldquosome Hindurdquo turns into a historical fact in the revised chapter which says a ldquothreedome structure was built at the site of Shri Ramrsquos birth place in 1528 but the structure had visible display of Hindu symbols and relics in its interior as well as its exterior portionrdquoThe use of the word ldquobutrdquo in the sentence is perplexing perhaps the person who wrote the sentence was aware that even the Supreme Court in its 2019 judgment on the Ayodhya dispute said there is no proof that the Babri Masjid was built after demolishing a temple The reference to Hindu relics and symbols in effect projects the threedome structure as a usurpation Might not the Standard XII student feel it is morally justified for such a structure to be pounded to rubbleThe revised chapter does not dwell upon the violence the Ram Janmabhoomi movement spawned It merely says that ldquotensions heightened between both communities over ownership rightsrdquo to the threedome structure resulting in ldquonumerous disputes and legal conflictsrdquo But these disputes were bloody which the original chapter puts on record thus the BJP along with the ldquoRSS Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Vishwa Hindu Parishadrdquo convened a series of mobilisation programmes leading to ldquosurcharged atmosphere and many instances of communal violencerdquoThe revised chapter snaps the link between BJPrsquos politics and violence It shies away from saying that Hindutvarsquos ascendancy was preceded by a bloodshed surpassed only by the Partition riots By contrast the original chapter mentioned the 199293 riots in Bombay as an example of HinduMuslim clashes erupting following the demolition of the Babri Masjid The effacing of such details from the revised chapter makes the Ram Janmabhoomi movement appear democratic and nonviolentIt is Orwellian of the NCERT to delete from the original chapter a passage on the 2002 Gujarat riots That passage saidldquoAs in the case of antiSikh riots of 1984 Gujarat riots show that government machinery also becomes susceptible to sectarian passionsrdquo These events the chapter noted should ldquoalert us to the dangers involved in using religious sentiments for political purposes This poses a threat to democratic politicsrdquoNCERT director D P Saklani said they took out the portion on riots because they ldquowant to create positive citizens not violent and depressed citizensrdquo What would depress them is not the truth recounted in the textbook but the BJPrsquos propensity to mix religion with politics witnessed during the recent Lok Sabha elections By deleting references to the 1984 and 2002 riots the NCERT is crafting for students a moral universe where the harnessing of religion for political mobilisation would seem benignmdashand therefore acceptableFor all its faults the Congress did allow the NCERT during the first tenure of Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister to include in the political science textbook a critique of Indira Gandhirsquos decision to impose the Emergency The inclusion suggested the Congress belatedly realised its mistake in suspending democracyThe revised chapter on the other hands conveys the impression that instead of changing its politics the BJP will seek to create a new past for the Indian teenagermdashand notch endless victories over your memories as well Those who controls the past think they can control the future but are defeated by the persistence of memoriesThe writer is a senior journalist and author of Bhima Koregaon Challenging CasteSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper