Rethinking history education

It would be superfluous to repeat here the details of the mass killings and systematic sexual violence committed by the Pakistani military on Bangladeshis in 1971. Accounts by journalists, diplomats, and those who participated in the war preserve much of the horrors, and subsequent research has only added to the strong case of calling the events a genocide. And yet, many Pakistanis today suffer from a historical amnesia when it comes to 1971. Why this denial of history after almost 50 years?

Every nation has to deal with its past; the ways in which they do differ. Take the contrast between Germany's strict laws regarding Holocaust denial and Turkey's stance in denying the Armenian genocide – where one tried to learn from its shameful past, the other, lives in an alternate reality. In the case of Pakistan, the distortion and indoctrination of history starts with its school level history education.

School students in Pakistan today are taught to blame Awami League and India for the violence; the principal victims are shown to be Urdu-speaking non-Bengalis. One Scroll.in article this March, citing this distorted history, pointed to the Class 9 and Class 10 Pakistan Studies textbook of the Federal Textbook Board of Islamabad.

It reads: "Indians and Bengalis charged Pakistan Army with wholesale massacre and desecration of women. On December 19, 1971, world media teams were shown the dead bodies of Bengali professors, intellectuals and professionals who were allegedly killed during the said unrest. Large-scale killings were publicized in the media to defame Pakistan Army."

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In school, a common joke, when studying the history, was asking which facts were correct for that particular year: they changed every time governments changed. It seems less funny now when one thinks of the student who would grow up with a distrust of a subject where facts did not matter. For this student, the purpose of studying history is to aggregate the acceptable facts, remember certain dates and names, and regurgitate the events and interpretations as the writer of the textbook seemed fit. As one former teacher of the History Department of the University of Dhaka complained, the once celebrated department of the university now only receives students who fail to get admitted in any other subjects.

Use of history to propagate a nationalist version of the past, where the present day nation state is projected to the glories of pre-national civilisations, is not new. BJP's attempts to rewrite the history of pre-modern and modern India into a version where a utopian Hindu civilisation is destroyed by a supposedly "violent" Muslim invasion to give way to a society sharply divided along communal lines highlight this, ignoring actual historical work by authors such as Richard Eaton and Romila Thapar, which refute this communal version.

In Bangladesh, history has been made it into a squabble over national identity (ethnic or religious), in turn homogenising the plurality of Bangladesh.

"A modern, progressive, and non-partisan approach to history is crucial if we are to have future citizens who are embracing of plurality and unafraid of multi-culturalism. After all, education has a higher purpose than just ensuring a livelihood or instilling an ideology.

Take the example of our Bangladesh Studies textbook for class 7 when it deals with the Santal rebellion as part of the history of rebellions which ultimately led to the Liberation War. Now teaching the Santal rebellion is laudable; but to appropriate this in a nationalist narrative is to ignore the unique identity and history of the Santal community. This is all the more disturbing because the same pages which glorify the attempts of the Santal for standing up against oppression fail to mention any of their afflictions today. The chapter, in seeking to give the Santal rebellion a nationalist character, claims that Hindus and Muslims of Bengal joined the Santals in their fight. But the fact is Hindus and Muslims were largely unsympathetic towards the revolution and strongly opposed it, even calling for its suppression. Alongside, the problem remains that history is still taught in a sanitised, dumbed-down way: there is no overarching intellectual purpose which the textbooks try to teach its readers.

One is not made to memorise 2+2=4, but is taught how addition works. On the other hand, when the intellectual rigidity of history as a subject has moved on to many interesting avenues of critical thinking, the textbooks are stuck within an antiquated framework of kings and empires, of great men changing the world.

The NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) in 2005 took on the task of revamping history education, when Neeladri Bhattacharya, among others, was hired for the job. The writers of the books tried to impart to the student that there is no single linear narrative, to teach them events in the local and global context. It tried to teach students how to deal with primary sources and the analysis was left open-ended on purpose, to encourage students to try and work out their own resolutions.

Neeladri Bhattacharya in speaking of this new syllabus, wrote: "The books do not focus on the history of any single territorial unity. They look at the way […] how different people, different communities and classes, and different regions have participated in the making of the modern world as it is today." This approach to teaching history teaches to look at the past beyond grand narratives. It is built on the established assumption that there are multiple viewpoints of looking at the subjective past.

Such an approach needs to be built on a philosophy of history: that of engaging with the plurality of perspectives, opinions, and cultures. It teaches to look at the same history through different lenses of interpretations, and most importantly learn the process through which a "history" is created.

Such a syllabus might seem to be too complicated for school going students. But, students are not taught calculus in class 5; there is a gradation. If the syllabus can incorporate the idea of history as a subjective interpretation in the earlier classes, this could be built on to involve more analysis and theory in the higher classes. Additionally, history should not be a fringe subject as it is now: it should be extended as mandatory to classes 11 and 12.

Of course we will not be able to make the jump in a short span of time. It is not only about what is taught, but how it is taught: why else are the "Creative Questions" of our new education system still accused of favouring memorisation over critical thinking? The textbooks today are much better, but as a glance through the Bangladesh Studies book shows, it is still parochial and selective of its subject matter. It highlights our glories, and glosses over our failures. It talks of Bangladesh in a global vacuum, and instead of teaching us to see ourselves as one nation among many, it isolates. It may be argued that instilling the love for one's motherland is necessary, but where does one draw the line between jingoism and patriotism? And, is history the right subject for this purpose? Should not history education be a reason for us to be less conceited and allow us to be open to multiple perceptions while blindly believing none? What the writers of the NCERT textbooks tried to do in 2005 is not the only way to approach this. But we must start thinking about it now. The onus is on our professional historians, and they should be leading the debate about what should be taught and how, not state officials.

Every country, from America to Britain, has suffered when it has chosen to forget its past. Why else is today America so scared of refugees and Britain suffering from a "glory to the days of Empire" syndrome? A modern, progressive, and non-partisan approach to history is crucial if we are to have future citizens who are embracing of plurality and unafraid of multi-culturalism. After all, education has a higher purpose than just ensuring a livelihood or instilling an ideology.

The writer is a member of the editorial team, The Daily Star.