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NCERT rewrites Partition
history, vilifies Jinnah more Says seeing a religious community as a
nation means
sowing seeds of antagonism
WSN Network
New Delhi: In a departure from the tone of political correctness,
the NCERT history textbook for Class XII for the first time has
identified the villains of Partition, putting the blame on Mohammed
Ali Jinnah for sowing the ‘‘seeds of antagonism’’.
Explaining Jinnah’s role in Partition in the context of communalism,
the book states: ‘‘Communalism... is a particular kind of
politicisation of religious identity and ideology that seeks to
promote conflict between religious communities. In the context of a
multi-religious country, the phrase ‘religious nationalism’ can come
to acquire a similar meaning.
In such a country, any attempt to see a religious community as a
nation would mean sowing the seeds of antagonism against some other
religion(s). Jinnah saw the Muslims of British India as a nation and
desired that they obtain a nation state for themselves.’’
While explaining communalism, the textbook, in its page number 384,
states, ‘‘One could say communalism nurtures a politics of hatred
for an identified ‘other’ — Hindus in the case of Muslim communalism
and Muslims in the case of Hindu communalism. This hatred feeds a
politics of violence.’’
NCERT officials believe it’s high time that students should know the
truth behind the causes of partition.
‘‘Till now, textbooks have been averting the controversies by
writing politically correct sentences. But we have felt the need to
tell the real story, as many of these students may become historians
and policy makers in future and so they should know their past,’’
said an NCERT spokesperson, adding that they don’t intend to attack
any individual or religion by highlighting the truth.
The book also talks about the atrocities inflicted upon common
people, especially women.
‘‘Women were raped, abducted, sold, often many times over, forced to
settle down to a new life with strangers in unknown circumstances.
Deeply traumatised by all that they had undergone, some began to
develop new family bonds in their changed circumstances. But the
Indian and Pakistan governments were insensitive to the complexities
of human relationships,’’ the book states.
While elaborating how women were being treated by both the
governments, it stated: ‘‘Believing the women to be on the wrong
side of the border, they now tore them away from their new
relatives, and sent them back to their earlier families or
locations. They did not consult them, undermining their right to
take decisions regarding their own lives. According to one estimate,
30,000 women were ‘recovered’, overall, 22,000 Muslim women in India
and 800 Hindu and Sikh women in Pakistan, in an operation ended as
late in 1954.’’
26
September, 2007
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