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Sangh doesn't want to talk caste, all CPM wants to talk about is working class

SUBRATA NAGCHOUDHURY

KOLKATA, NOVEMBER 27: IF for the BJP, the idea of Brahmins eating beef is unspeakable, for the Left, Karl Marx is the sacred cow. Between the two, Indian history in the classroom is doctored, filtered, tailored, call it whatever you like.

For the 23 years that it's been in power in West Bengal, the Left Front government has systematically done what Prime Minister A B Vajpayee urged last weekend: ``If history is one-sided, we should change it.''

So while the BJP drops negative references to Brahmins and the caste system, the comrades add references to Marx and look at history through red glasses. So history books from Class VI to X include a
string of references to Das Kapital, dialectic materialism, the Long March and the Communist manifesto.

In fact, Marx slips into the syllabus as early as Class V which is the stage at which children begin their first lessons in world history. ``The traditional stress on the national freedom movement has been substantially diluted,'' says a teacher who did not want to be named.

``The focus evidently has been to show how people's movement in various parts of the world gained momentum down the ages,'' says Madan Mohan Acharya, assistant headmaster and history teacher at the
Ramakrishna Mission School for Boys in Narendrapur, considered one of the premier state schools.

The history syllabus-right from Class V-introduces terms like capitalism, socialism, human rights and equal rights. In fact, the common strand running through the curriculum is the emphasis on how the poor and the downtrodden exacted their rights and powers, how the working-class established its authority over the privileged and how communism and socialism ``gained popularity.''

A sample of chapters from the history books for Class IX and X:

Working Class Movement-1918 to 1934.

The role of the working class in the non-cooperation movement of 1920 The state of trade unions and leaders of that age

Criticism of Gandhiji's policy of reconciliation during the Ahmedabad mill agitation which sought to supress the ``class struggle of the working class.''

Teachers of several schools say there is a standing directive from the Board not to teach the ``violence and depredations'' unleashed by Mughal emperors on Hindu temples as this would contibute to communal
animosity.

There is resentment within the Left Front as well-from those who want to plug their own heroes. Shyamapada Ghosal, leader of Forward Bloc's educational wing, recalls how his party's proposal for setting up a chair by the name of Netaji Subash Chandra Bose in the department of philosophy or political science at Calcutta University was stonewalled for years by the ``Big Brother.''

Ultimately when the university Senate conceded it, Anil Biswas, the CPI(M) general secretary and then a Senate member objected to the title `Netaji.' And approved only Subash Chandra Bose. In all this,
the Vice Chancellor was a ``mute witness.''

Once again, in the late '80s, the Forward Bloc was outraged when the Left Front all but scrapped Netaji from history extbooks. Strong protests forced the CPI(M) to restore it.

The West Bengal Teacher's Association, an anti-Left body, dragged this to the Kolkata High Court when the Left began tinkering with the books. Pritwish Basu, a spokesman of the organization, said the High
Court indicted the government and urged it to desist from making such changes. The state government filed a petition in the Supreme Court but was forced to withdraw it after being censured.

Kanti Biswas, state Secondary Education minister, has a ready though not very clear answer: ``Ours is a matter of policy. You can't equte the two. What the BJP government is doing is distortion of history.''

More vocal is Amitabha Mukhopadhyay, a retired professor of history at the Jadavpur University:

``Colouring history is a crime that everyone committed. In this game, it is difficult to differentiate who is progressive and who is reactionary. Everyone is trying to teach his story, not history,'' he says.