By Krishna Jha
Jawaharlal Nehru University plans to teach the “Concept of Akhand Bharat”. It does not end here. The process has been unleashed. More distortions would be brought through Vidya Bharati, an institution through which the RSS runs a massive network of schools across the country. And here comes the question. How many deletions are to be inflicted on the history syllabus for schools, colleges and universities?
That the concept of Akhand Bharat is already being taught in the RSS-run schools is hardly a secret. It is also pretty well known that this concept offers nothing but a distorted history of South Asia’s ancient geopolitics, which had been enumerated by the RSS’s chief architect and ideologue, MS Golwalkar, in his book , “Bunch of Thoughts”.
The concept of Akhand Bharat, which has an implicit argument in favour of the hidden nature of Hindutva’s imperialist motives, is not only being taught in RSS-run schools but also applauded in public by RSS journals, “Organiser” and “Panchjanya”, as well as by the leaders of the Sangh Parivar.
So flawed is this concept that a mural in the new Parliament building depicting the map of so-called Akhand Bharat became a big embarrassment for India last year when our neighbours, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh, sought an explanation from New Delhi. As the Akhand Bharat map in the new Parliament building threatened to snowball into a major diplomatic crisis, the Ministry of External Affairs had to issue a clarification. It practically separated itself from any concept of Akhand Bharat.
While the JNU is made to teach the concept of Akhand Bharat, the University of Delhi is forced to teach another set of myth making to the students of history. Early this month, in the syllabus of history in Delhi University, a topic called “Delhi Through the Ages: The Making of its Early Modern History” was sought to be changed and made to include some unhistorical ideas and exclude an important article by renowned historian Professor Irfan Habib.
Many teachers of the Delhi University are up in arms against these changes which have become a regular feature in recent years.
Last year, Delhi University had dropped the term “Brahmanisation” from the history curriculum and withdrew a paper addressing inequality. These impositions have deeply hurt the teaching community. The academics and intellectuals came out heavily against the arguments put forth by pro-RSS teachers supporting potential erasure of historical contexts. For them, the changes would help promote an inclusive and balanced historical perspective.
It was also in 2023 that the NCERT decided to delete some of the portions related to Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination from its political science textbook of class twelve. These portions were the same that the RSS was quite uncomfortable with. From the identity of the assassin, Nathuram Vinayak Godse, to his motivations to kill Mahatma Gandhi to general response to the ghastly act – all these were sought to be replaced in the NCERT textbooks by a series of lies which had been constructed quietly by pro-RSS writers over decades.
One particular portion deleted in the NCERT text book related to Godse’s identity as a “Brahmin”. Taken in context, this word does provide a peephole into the caste milieu in which the Hindutva politics, including the RSS, had arisen and evolved. Godse’s own desire to represent the forces he belonged to would not become clear if his Brahmin identity is removed from the text book.
Another portion deleted from the text book related to the explanation of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. The deleted portion read: “He (Gandhi) was particularly disliked by those who wanted Hindus to take revenge or who wanted India to become a country for the Hindus, just as Pakistan was for Muslims. They accused Gandhiji of acting in the interests of the Muslims and Pakistan. Gandhiji thought that these people were misguided. He was convinced that any attempt to make India into a country only for the Hindus would destroy India. His steadfast pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity provoked Hindu extremists so much that they made several attempts to assassinate Gandhiji.”
Anyone with the knowledge of modern Indian history knows that the RSS at the time of Independence wanted to establish a Hindu supremacist nation or Hindu Rashtra, while Mahatma Gandhi was trying to steer India towards a secular democracy. The blueprint for the Hindu Rashtra project of the RSS had been laid down by none other than the then sarsanghchalak, MS Golwalkar, in his book, “We or Our Nationhood Defined”.
Having declared non-Hindus as foreign races, he wrote: “From this standpoint, sanctioned by the experience of shrewd old nations, the foreign races in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, that is, of the Hindu nation and must lose their existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privilege, far less any preferential treatment – not even citizen’s rights.”
Gandhi and other nationalists were convinced that any attempt to make the country a Hindu Rashtra would destroy the idea of India. As the leader of the freedom movement and the supreme moral authority in the country, he comprehensively countered the forces of Hindutva and marginalised their idea of Hindu Rashtra. Gandhi’s position and his active campaign against forces of Hindutva eventually made him the biggest obstacle for the RSS’s project of Hindu Rashtra. It was because of this that Nathuram Godse, a hardcore RSS man and a Hindu Rashtra fanatic, assassinated Mahatma Gandhi. But the RSS sympathizers would always try to conceal this significant aspect of history and locate the assassination in circumstances of Partition and depict the assassin as a lone wolf who had nothing to do with the RSS.
Such trivialization of historical facts – whether in the history syllabus of NCERT, DU or JNU – would present a great obstacle for the students for any honest understanding of our past. (IPA Service)