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NEW DELHI, INDIA, Dec 23, 2001: Recent changes to Indian history textbooks have provoked an outcry that Hindu rightwingers are trying to “saffronise” the past. Critics see the move as an attempt to whitewash India’s past or, as some would rather say, paint it saffron, the color most associated with Hinduism. The controversy over changes to the education curriculum has been seething for months, but the grumbling of the liberal intelligentsia erupted into rage when the government’s National Council for Educational Research and Training (Ncert) decided to announce the changes to history books some weeks back. The outrage is by no means universal though. Indeed, those in favor of the changes say it is confined to the intellectual classes, who are assumed to range from mildly to ferociously Marxist. The ideologues of the Hindu right who are behind the changes argue that a nation should not be embarrassed or apologetic about its history. But there is a difference, their critics say, between that and the need to be true to facts, however embarrassing or inconvenient they may be. The right wing sees history as an essential ingredient in the process of nation building and the development of national self-esteem. Underpinning the controversy is a power struggle between two elites, the Hindu elite which believes in unapologetic, resurgent Hinduism, and the leftist elite whom rightwingers say have dominated the country’s media and intellectual life for too long. The right wing also sees the Congress party, which has run India for most of the time since 1947 and under whom Marxist intellectuals flourished, as “pseudo-secular” liberals prone to policies of appeasement. The battle for moral high ground is nothing new; ruling regimes have given their own spin to history in other parts of the world: China, the erstwhile Soviet Union, apartheid South Africa, to name just a few. India is at a cusp, and the consequences of changes in the way the country sees itself will have far-reaching effects on the next generation and many after that.

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