Editorial: History Lessons

Recently, when people from the North East and their fears in South India were making headlines, the debates and discussions on the issues of the marginalised frequently touched on aspects of how the country at large is plagued by an embarrassing ignorance about its own people. There were many sniggers when Amitabh Bachchan mistakenly referred to Mary Kom as being from Assam [a mistake he quickly corrected], but can he really be faulted for not knowing his Assam from his Manipur? Just as the North East grows up largely unaware of what cultures, languages of people make up South India, so does the rest of India mature without learning anything about the northeast. Cable Television might have replaced books for the young, but school text books still remain the source of much of what Indians grow up learning. And the curriculum is woefully incomplete when it comes to projecting what makes up India.
History, they say is always written by the victor who decides which aspects of the vanquished history suit his greater plans and which bits are best left untold. The same has held true for the history taught in schools in India. The curriculum is embarrassingly North India-centric, so much so that even though students learn by rote the names of all those who made it emperor in the Slave Dynasty, ask them about what the northeast was up to in the meantime and they draw a blank. It is accepted that prior to the advent of the East India Company, there was no concept called India, but the school text books are not of that vintage and should have been compiled to tell stories from all parts of what is now India so that a connect was established early enough in life. The history we study in school is actually the composite histories of the areas which came together to form the Union of India in 1947 and later. Well, that should have been how things were, but that is not the case. The focus is too limited to the areas which were on the ascendent in the 19th century and beyond. Take a close look at the number of MPs each state has and the number of pages devoted to those areas in books teaching Indian History will be directly proportional to that number. But that’s not history. The blind-spotting of areas that got cut off with partition is even worse. The Muslim League for example was a part of the Indian Freedom Struggle and the demand for creation of Pakistan came much after the movement had progressed. We, however, read very little of the role played by this group. Icons like Subhas Chandra Bose and Bhagat Singh too are glossed over. But that’s another debate.
Before progressing further it is important to make clear why we study history at all. The main reason is to get a better understanding of where we belong - where we fit into the larger scheme of things. There has been much talk about making Sikkim join the mainstream [as also the rest of the northeast] which is why it is not enough to just study Sikkimese history in schools in Sikkim. Sikkim needs to figure in the history books studied elsewhere in the country. In junior school, students learn of what Confucius meant to China even before they are taught when and how Sikkim joined India. Ask a child, even in Sikkim, which dynasty ruled Sikkim and chances are that you will get the wrong answer. One is not suggesting going parochial here, but Sikkim does have a history that’s worth learning. Few dynasties have ruled for the 331 years [two more than even the Mughals] that the Namgyal dynasty has to its credit. The British rule which hogs the history books lasted less than a hundred years and stretched 200 years if we include the East India Company’s presence on Indian shores. Surely the Company’s intrigues with Tibet should make for interesting reading as should the Gorkha misadventures in Sikkim. There are some who might argue that most of what is passed off as Sikkimese history is actually myth. Well, it will remain so till some serious study is conducted on it. It might not be out of place to even suggest here that Sikkim should prepare two chapters on Sikkimese history to fit into text books for schools all over the country and take it to the Centre for whetting by the text book boards for inclusion in the syllabi. In fact this is something that all Northeastern States should do. The recent string of events might even pave the way for these chapters to get included in the national curriculum and this could be the one silver lining that the nation draws from the episode...