Comment by kamaal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kamaal | Hacker News Reader

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>>fix the education system that has been messed by the previous administration.

There is an assumption that the education system currently is in 'mess'. That is not true.

>>The 1% of history gets 99% focus

That is how school level education works. Do you think they teach 99% of physics or math in school? Or 99% of entire literature of whichever language you study? You can always opt for Masters or Doctorate in history, instead of other engineering or medicine courses.

>>whereas an equally amazing 99% is not mentioned

Feel free take up History as your specialization after 10th standard. You can go up to Doctorate and beyond.

>>either due to laziness or due to scheming history writers, wanting to support a particular ideology.

History is already well written and you can read if you wan to. And even study it full time. You just have to pick the right course. Don't expect to opt for Engineering and Medicine and then study history there.

>>Whats worse, is an Indian kid learns more about 200 to 400 yr old architecture around the world, but zilch about a 1000yr old fort or a temple in his/her own state.

As an Indian kid in the past, now adult. Who used to spend a lot of time in libraries, you can walk into any government library and pick up any book on any era and specialize on. There is mountains of work written. People just don't read it because the economic value of such knowledge is 0.

>> There is an assumption that the education system currently is in 'mess'. That is not true.

Oh please stop with that attitude. You must have gone to a good private school with good teachers and expensive tuition classes after school to get to where you are today. Just look at the schools that economically backward children go to today and try taking their classes. This comes from someone who has personally gone to some classes in those schools (especially in rural areas). Ground reality is that the education system is really a mess. This is not an assumption.

Universal health care, education and food security are long shot problems. Impossible to solve to solve on the short term problems in India.

Its just the scale. There aren't enough tax payers, or the scale of the economy to collect that much taxes to fund these sort of policies. The population is mind boggling. At the state level there are still many policies to solve these which are being chased. But its not a easy problem to solve for our population numbers.

There is an even deeper problem of tax accountability you need to fix and go on to these things. This mostly a policy problem.

The parent is trying to imply a problem with the content of education syllabus.

While i agree Indian history cannot be taught properly in a history text book i think each state introduces its own biases and the CBSE textbooks do a big disservice to Indian icons like Shivaji and their contribution to the country especially at the expense of Muslim rulers. The well documented atrocities of a despot like Aurangzeb are whitewashed

Sure, if we are talking about this sort of stuff, let's do away with Hindi language being mandatory. We already have English as a common language. And you guys are suggesting local culture and its history comes first. So local state language and english should be enough.

One less subject means we could add a 'History' elective to high school syllabus.

Those who are interested can opt for it. Others can opt for whatever they want(Math, Economics, etc etc).

Why English?

In my schooling in New Delhi in the 80s -- when the Congress-ization of the NCERT was at its peak -- I clearly recall being taken on a school trip to see a film about Shivaji, and also learning about the cruelty of Aurangzeb to everyone including his own family. So I'm not sure what sort of whitewashing you're referring to. Where did you go to school?

There's a difference between what history textbooks/syllabuses teach, and the history that you learn from your parents, amar chitra kathas, films, and even your teachers. The whitewashing happens in the syllabus and textbooks, but fortunately, it's very difficult to whitewash the collective memory of a society that has been subject to a brutal rule and that has been transferring knowledge from generation to generation by word of mouth.

Also, it's pretty hard to hide the clearly visible signs of destruction of idols, temples, and other hindu architecture, so a society would need to suffer from an extreme case of cognitive dissonance to accept what's in our history texts as truth.

Is there some reference you can point to about this whitewashing in the textbooks? Because I don't recall it being so.

Yes, of course. Just get the NCERT history texts of Grade 6 and 7[1]. Grade 6 deals with ancient india till Harsha (6xx AD). Grade 7 starts with Delhi Sultanate (12xx AD). 600 years of history that included the brutalism of Ghazni and Ghori gone. Poof. Just like that.

1. https://www.books4jobs.com/ncert-books-history-class-6-12-ia...

Also, try reading the account of historians of the period and compare the description of brutality - mountains of skulls, 100,000 infidels (taken as slaves) put to death overnight, etc. with the description in your favorite history text which probably says "Timur ransacked Delhi".

Opened the Class 7 book, immediately found multiple references to Ghazni, one to Ghori. For perspective, Maharaja Ranjit Singh also gets one passing mention. So I guess I'm not seeing the systematic effort so far; perhaps there is more in other textbooks but my attention span is limited.

Compare:

Noon had not arrived when the Musulmans had wreaked their vengeance on the infidel enemies of God, killing 15,000 of them, spreading them like a carpet over the ground, and making them food for beasts and birds of prey.

...and twice that value was obtained from the necks of those of his relatives who were taken prisoners, or slain, and had become the food of the mouths of hyenas and vultures. God also bestowed upon his friends such an amount of booty as was beyond all bounds and all calculation, including five hundred thousand slaves, beautiful men and women.

with... (ncert text)

One of the best known of such rulers is Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, Afghanistan. He ruled from 997 to 1030, and extended control over parts of Central Asia, Iran and the north-western part of the subcontinent. He raided the subcontinent almost every year – his targets were wealthy temples, including that of Somnath, Gujarat. Much of the wealth Mahmud carried away was used to create a splendid capital city at Ghazni. He was interested in finding out more about the people he conquered, and entrusted a scholar named al-Biruni to write an account of the subcontinent. This Arabic work, known as the Kitab-al Hind, remains an important source for historians. He consulted Sanskrit scholars to prepare this account.

Sorry, the former is simply too graphic for a textbook intended for 11/12-year-olds, and I'm not sure why you chose the latter passage vs: "During his campaigns in the subcontinent [Ghazni] also attacked the temples of defeated kings and looted their wealth and idols. Sultan Mahmud was not a very important ruler at that time. But by destroying temples – especially the one at Somnath – he tried to win credit as a great hero of Islam. In the political culture of the Middle Ages most rulers displayed their political might and military success by attacking and looting the places of worship of defeated rulers."

I chose the passage to highlight the gross distortion:

"He was interested in finding out more about the people he conquered, and entrusted a scholar named al-Biruni to write an account of the subcontinent"

No. He was not interested in finding out more about the people he conquered. The biographical works of his time are very clear - he wanted the loot and he wanted to get rid of the infidels and idol worshippers.

An example of meddling with history, at least in South India, is how Tipu Sultan and Hyder Ali are portrayed.

There are many areas in Karnataka that have suffered from their plunder, and all we see in text books is that they are heroes, because they fought against British.

Now, if you are a muslim in S.India, you'll not speak out against this portrayal. If you are a Kodava (people from Coorg), you'll be seething red with any such portrayals of Tipu and Hyder Ali, because they plundered, massacred, raped and forcefully convereted hundreds of thousands after every attack.

Now if Osama Bin Laden was a figure from pre 18th century India, I bet he'd be revered as a hero in Indian school textbooks and movie industry.

You can look at any area in India and you would see these stories, because that is how Kings work.

How do you think Ashoka built his empire? Techniques weren't any different than what Aurangzeb used. Or what Romans used, or what the Persians used or what the Greeks used.

Wars work that way.

Also there is a reason why 'foreign culture' gets acceptance in any culture. If you deny education, commerce and other social opportunities to your masses for millenniums they are bound to be attracted to other cultures even if they are foreign. If anything they get a divorce for their unbearable current affairs. A foreign ruler comes across way more acceptable than the existing domestic ruler who doesn't let you study, doesn't let you participate in war, doesn't let you trade and large looks down on your as some sort of slave labor whose sole purpose is tax revenue. Easiest escape from these scenarios is to change your identity- Change language, religion, culture, residence etc.

If this is what troubles you, then the solution to this is not rewriting history, but pushing for equality and upliftment of those who have been suffering for thousands of years. And that of course involves dismantling social structures and privileges that have existed for all thousands of years.

Otherwise all this is just an exercise in futility. You can rewrite what you like, and if the conditions on the ground don't improve, people will toss out whatever their current identity is and just move on to whatever works for them. And don't blame them, its not exactly wrong to want to live a good life.

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