NCERT Modules on Partition: Distortions Galore

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), which prepares the school texts for the CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education), is on a speedy journey to change the school texts and supplementary reading materials. Mostly it is modifying and changing the contents to suit the agenda of the ruling party.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is pursuing the agenda of Hindu nationalism. It is constructing the past through these books to ensure that the new generation thinks in a way to support BJP-RSS’s (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s) political programme. They have already deleted Mughals from the text books; they have also presented ancient history to glorify Aryans as first-comers’ on this land to strengthen their case of Hindutva nationalism, as the Aryan race is one of the pillars of Hindu Nationalism.

The latest in the series is the misrepresentation of India’s Partition. They have issued two modules on ‘Partition Horrors Day and Partition. These modules are meant to be supplementary reading for making projects, debates etc.

Commenting on the Partition, the module says, “Ultimately, on August 15, 1947, India was divided. But this was not the doing of any one person. There were three elements responsible for the Partition of India: Jinnah, who demanded it; second, the Congress, which accepted it; and third, Mountbatten, who implemented it.”

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The module quotes Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel as saying that the situation in India had become explosive. “India had become a battlefield, and it was better to partition the country than to have a civil war.” While Jawaharlal Nehru described it as “bad” but “unavoidable”. It quotes Mahatma Gandhi saying that he could not be “a party to the Partition, but he would not stop Congress from accepting it with violence.”

The module traces Partition to Muslim leaders’ belief in a separate identity rooted in “political Islam,” which, it claims, “rejects any permanent equality with non-Muslims.” It states that this ideology drove the Pakistan movement, with Jinnah… as its “able lawyer”

In a way, the module totally whitewashes the role of British policy of ‘divide and rule’ and the parallel and opposite roles of Hindu communalism, singling out only Muslim communalism, calling it “political Islam”.

Incidentally, the “political Islam” phrase was not coined or used at that time, it was called Muslim communalism. It erases the role of the social bases of Hindu communalism and Muslim communalism. As social changes were taking place after the coming of the British, the new rising classes of industrialists, businessmen, workers and modern educated classes came up. Their associations were formed, which culminated in the formation of the Indian National Congress.

The workers movements, as begun by Narayan Meghaji Lokhande and Comrade Singarvelu formed associations and for worker’s rights. Bhagat Singh and his comrades were the most powerful expression against the atrocities of colonial rule and longing for equality and oppression.

Jyotirao Phule, Savitribai Phule, Bhimrao Ambedkar and Periyar Ramasamy Naicker stood for social equality, which was to run parallel with the national movement and found a place in our Constitution.

The old, declining classes, the landlords, kings (of both religions) were disturbed by the rise of these changes and formed organisations, such as Muslim League and Hindu Mahasabha. Muslim League stood for a Muslim Nation and Hindu Mahasabha asserted that we are a Hindu Nation.

For the goal of Hindu Nation, the RSS came up in 1925. These communal organisations opposed Indian nationalism and its values of ‘Liberty, Equality, fraternity, and Social Justice’. The British introduced communal historiography, which was picked up by them as per their convenience and this sowed the seed of communal hate leading to violence. It was this violence due to which Gandhi and Maulana Azad of Congress had to quietly accept the tragedy of Partition.

To say that none of the British Viceroys wanted Partition, is a very superficial statement. The role of Lord Wavell and the British colonisers becomes clear in columnist Rajinder Puri’s article, “Sir Martin Gilbert, the British biographer of Winston Churchill revealed that Churchill had asked Jinnah to dispatch secret letters to him by addressing them to a lady Elizabeth Giliat, who had been Churchill’s secretary. This secret interaction continued for years. Jinnah’s key decisions between 1940 and 1946, including the demand for Pakistan in 1940, were taken after getting the nod from Churchill or Lord Linlithgow and Wavell.”

It was primarily the British who wanted Partition. They were keeping their future goals in mind. As the world at that time was having two superpowers, the US and USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), the fear among the British was that India, if it remained united, may tilt toward the USSR, as major leaders of India’s freedom struggle were having Left leanings. The British feared India may ally with the USSR. So, they wanted to divide the country to reduce its impact.

Lord Mountbatten did come with the mandate to divide the country in which he succeeded. Congress, with Nehru and Patel in the Interim Government, realised that it is very difficult to remain united. Jinnah’s call for ‘Direct Action’ led to the sparking series of violence, which was a major factor due to which Congress leadership had to concede the demand from Muslim League, which was well backed by the British.

Read Also: How the RSS’, Golwalkar, HMS’ Savarkar glorified caste: Devanur Mahadevan

As far as the concept of nationalism is concerned, Hindu Mahasabha (and RSS) and Muslim League were on the same page. V D Savarkar had, in his book, Hindutva or Who is a Hindu, did state that there are two nations in the country, the Hindu Nation and the Muslim Nation. 

Let’s note “In fact, Dr B.R. Ambedkar concluded that both Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and Muhammad Ali Jinnah were in complete agreement about two separate nations in India—one the Muslim nation and the other the Hindu nation.”

Savarkar in the 1938 Mahasabha convention declared that Hindus and Muslims could not coexist. Jinnah’s 1940 Lahore Resolution was on similar lines. Their similarity was reflected in their ideology, and the formation of Hindu Mahasabha–Muslim League coalition governments in Bengal, Sindh and North West Frontier Province (NWFP) after 1942.

By clever distortion now, the Hindu Nationalist ideologues are putting the blame of Partition on Muslim League and Congress, but the truth is so different. These modules let the British go away lightly, whose clever manipulation encouraged the Muslims League and Hindu Nationalists in their social actions that led to the ghastly tragedy of Partition. And Partition horrors were due to this competitive communalism and the hurry in which the British divided the country without adequate preventive measures.

The deeper cause surely was the communalism in which Savarkar was the first one to give it an ideological cover, while both communalisms ran parallel and opposite to create an atmosphere of hate, leading to hardships and mass migrations and accompanying sufferings of both Hindus and Muslims.

The writer is a human rights defender and a former professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. The views are personal.