By Krishna Jha
Indian History Congress (IHC) has criticized the NCERT’s new modules on the Partition of India that have been developed to enliven the “Partition Horrors Remembrance Day”. The IHC has alleged that these modules contain “falsehood” aimed to underline the “communal intent.” Those who prepared the modules have charged the Congress and the Muslim League for being responsible for Partition.
They did not stop at that. They absolved the colonialists who ruled the country with iron hands, torturing and killing the fighters for freedom and crushing away any movement that could awaken the masses against the excesses committed by the British masters. The producers of the module even went to the extent of rationalising the charges against the British masters. It was not only that. Among the reflections of extreme sufferings of the masses, mostly highlighted were those of Hindus and Sikhs during the partition days, though without uttering even a word to mention the positive contributions made by the minority communities.
The contents of the modules or the reading material, as they are categorized, for classes VI to VIII describe those responsible for “partition” as the “culprits of Partition”. One of them is Jinnah, who demanded it; then the Congress party, that accepted it; and Mountbatten, who formalised and implemented it. They also state that the British tried their best to preserve India as one till the end.
“Turning history completely upside down, the modules hold not only the Muslim League but also the Indian National Congress responsible for the Partition of the country. Quite in tune with the loyalist stance of the communal forces during the freedom struggle, the British colonial rulers are given a clean chit in these modules,” the IHC said in its statement.
“What is not mentioned is the two-nation theory propounded by ‘Hindutva’ icon V.D. Savarkar several years earlier, in 1937, in his presidential address to the Hindu Mahasabha: ‘India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and homogenous nation, but on the contrary there are two nations in the main, Hindus and Muslims, in India’,” it added.
The IHC said it is indeed ironical that Hindu communalists are never included in the list of those responsible for Partition.
“But among the chief ‘culprits’ are said to be the nationalist leaders when the entire spectrum of the national movement struggled relentlessly against religious and communal division, its greatest leader Mahatma Gandhi giving up his life for it,” it said.
The modules also noted that post-Partition, Kashmir emerged as a “new problem”, which never existed in India before, and created a challenge for the country’s foreign policy. It also flagged that some countries keep giving aid to Pakistan and exert pressure on India in the name of the Kashmir issue.
IHC also attacks NCERT’s Partition modules alleging that they spread “falsehoods with a clear communal intent”, which may leave a distortion in the material for freedom struggle. It is harmful for the tender minds who would suffer from the distorted facts and would be unaware of our secular, scientific understanding of history that comes under our glorious traditions.
We never believed in distorted and polarized history, warned IHC. But in this context it becomes imperative to note the role played by VD Savarkar, the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS. Savarkar, after all, laid down theoretical framework for the growth of a politics of competitive communalism. In 1923, about a year before his release from prison, he penned a slim book, Essentials of Hindutva, in which he claimed the whole of India for Hindus by virtue of the fact that they alone, and not Muslims or Christians, considered its territory sacred. The text defined the term ‘Hindutva’ literally meaning Hinduness—as a politically conscious Hinduism that sought to organize Hindus as a nationality. India’s Muslims and other religious minorities did not constitute a part of his vision of the nation.
The text also conspicuously echoed Savarkar’s call for action against Muslims, for he specified that ‘a conflict of life and death’ ensued after Mahmud of Ghazni crossed the Indus to invade India in the eleventh century. ‘In this prolonged furious conflict our people became intensely conscious of ourselves as Hindus and were welded into a nation to an extent unknown in our history,’ he wrote. Thus, the book tried to convince Hindus that their interests were more incompatible with Muslims than the British rulers. It carried Hindus into a state of opposition, seeking to channel their dominant anti-British sentiment into anti-Muslim action—an orientation that fitted into the colonial government’s strategic policy of divide and rule.
In December 1937, as the president of the Hindu Mahasabha, he said: “There are two antagonistic nations living side by side in India. Several infantile politicians commit the serious mistake in supposing that India is already welded into a harmonious nation, or that it could be welded thus for the mere wish to do so. […] India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and homogenous nation. On the contrary, there are two nations in the main: the Hindus and the Muslims, in India.”
The two-nation theory evoked as much ridicule as bitterness when Savarkar first delivered it in a clear cut terms. The senseless and disastrous political line that he expressed now eventually added to the deteriorating communal environment in the country, especially when the Muslim League picked up the thread and passed a resolution demanding the partition of India three years later in 1940. (IPA Service)
