Re: How much of Indo Pak history is right and how much is mixed?
First of all, you gotta understand: that “Textbooks under BJP rule” are not a monlithic entity. Textbooks varied with the school board, and under the Maharashtra State Board for Secondary and Higher Secondary Education, the Shiv Sena definitely went more gung-ho on historical nationalism when the BJP took the reins.
To your questions, no they did not vilify muslims- as I’ve said is not possible in India because of electoral politics- but they did vilify muslim leaders. Even if they were not invaders.
I’ve already asserted that the kind of debasing that takes place in Pakistan’s history is of a higher level altogether. This is due, in part, due to Pakistan’s ‘nation-creating’ imperative.
Consequently, the ‘distortions’ in history are not comparable. As this line from my previous para will demonstrate: "with Pakistan’s emergence as a nation-state, and the imperative of nation building, history was skewed to inordinate proportions to distance themselves from the ‘other’.
However, let’s not put blinkers on our eyes and say that distortions in India history, as pertains religious nationalism, have never existed. Here is an excerpt from ‘History Textbooks in India: narratives of Religious Nationalism’ by K.N. Panikar:
*“The introduction of new textbooks by the NCERT (under BJP) was inspired by the political purpose of seeking rationale from history for constructing India as a Hindu nation. The textbooks were, therefore, recast as narratives of Hindu religious nationalism. Claimed as an effort to retrieve the true nationalist history from the motivated distortions of colonial historiography they attribute to Indian nation an exclusively Hindu character.”
“During this period the political climate in the country turned in favour of the Hindu fundamentalist forces, which enabled them in 1998 to lead a coalition government in which the Ministry of Human Resource Development which dealt with education was headed by a long standing cadre of the Hindu fundamentalist organization, Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh( RSS). Under his stewardship the government spared no effort to change the content and character of education, of which the introduction of new textbooks, was perhaps the most prominent and indeed controversial.”
“The idea of India being a Hindu civilisational state runs through all the texts, either directly expressed or indirectly suggested. The question of the indigenous origin of Aryans and the identity of Harappan civilization with the Vedic society has some bearing on this issue. The former is quite central to the fundamentalist agenda of claiming the nation as Hindu, as the migration theory would deprive the Hindus of indigenous lineage. Therefore, against the widely held scholarly opinion Aryans are credited with indigenous origins, subscribing in the bargain to the colonial view of Aryan race. In the former case the textbooks put forward the view that the Aryans were indigenous to India and that the opinion widely held by scholars about their migration dismissed as inconsequential. In defense of indigenous origin no substantial evidence is adduced, except negative reasoning. It is asserted that the ‘the oldest surviving records of the Aryans, the Rig Veda, does not give even an inkling of any migration. It does not have any knowledge even of the geography beyond the known boundaries of Ancient India.’ It further says: ‘Many scholars think that the Aryans were originally inhabitants of India and did not come from outside. It has been argued by such scholars that there is no archeological or biological evidence, which could establish the arrival of any new people from outside between 5000 B.C and 800 B.C. This means that if at all there was any migration of Aryans or for that matter of any other people in India, it may have taken place at least eight or nine thousand years ago or after 800 B.C. to both of which there is no evidence. Further, the skeletal remains found from various Harappan sites resemble the skeletons of the modern population of the same geographical area.'”*