Panel 2: Prof Anil Sethi, Prof Afsan Chowdhury, Dr Shubra Chaterjee, Swaleha Alam Shehzada, moderated by Mrs Devi Kar

Discussions following the first panel spilled into the coffee break and the Harrington Arts Centre was abuzz with intense conversations. The second panel started at 11.30 a.m. with Mrs Devi Kar as the moderator. The panellists included Professor Anil Sethi, Professor Afsan Choudhury, Swaleha Alam Shazada and Dr Shubra Chatterji.

Professor Anil Sethi started the conversation with a look into the salient features of the NCERT history textbooks, comparing and contrasting the 1970’s generation of books with the 2005 generation, writing off 2002 generation as communal books written during the time of the BJP government. The new approach aimed at lessening the burden and allowing the child space to reconstruct history by introducing a constructionist pedagogy. The 2005 generation of the textbooks saw a great debate around the words employed and their location in the text which additionally offered deconstructed versions of history to the children in the form of visual material. This generation of textbooks saw an emphasis to share passages from the original sources, indicating that the textbook was not the final authority on the subject. Also incorporated in the syllabus was oral history and innovative ways of presentation such as the use of comic strips, thus refusing space for the usual memorizing and regurgitating routine associated with history. The NCERT history curriculum framework speaks not only of a past but multiple pasts, recognising that India as a nation state has been in ideation only since the 1870s and that prior to that time there was no history of unity. Moving away from Euro-centricism, world history in the curriculum incorporates the history of various countries, the prevalent heteroglossia in the text allowing even a Pakistani perspective of the 1947 partition. According to Professor Sethi the textbooks now seek to build civic nationalism in lieu of religious or ethnic nationalism.

Following Professor Sethi’s deconstruction of the available NCERT history textbook, Mrs Shubra Chatterji brought the non-formal sector of education into the conversation by presenting a project that Vikramshila, an education resource centre for the underprivileged, implemented. This project involved the madrasas of the state of West Bengal where there is an integration of Islamic studies with the current curriculum. As she explained in the discussion that followed, there are two types of madrasas, the recognised ones, of which there are 650 in the state and the 25000 Khariji madrasas. These madrasas work towards the development of an Islamic identity with the securalisation program being used by the students as a skill set and not a different perspective from which to use the self. .This project aimed to ensure that the children understand the social and cultural capital of their environment at a point of time when their own localities failed to incite any amount of interest in them. The targeted group of children, who resided around Metiabruz, a locality in Calcutta inhabited only by the muslim community, were taken to the Shahi Imambara, a monument which they had all seen but failed to ever visit. This visit incorporated evidence gathering, a task which involved talking to people, a lot of whom the children were already familiar with. But the conversations they had revolved around topics that had never been breached between the two parties and at the end of it all the children saw a number of people in a different light altogether. Take for example the local paan shop which the children discovered was hundreds of years old, going back to the time of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah. They also came to know that a local man they had known only as a seller of stockings was in fact a direct descendant of the Nawab. The project thus enabled the children to truly connect to their own history.

Professor Afsan Choudhury took the podium next to examine the components of an inclusive history approach vis-à-vis an exclusivist history. Working with methodology that veers away from the ideological, Professor Choudhury explained how an inclusivist approach requires the shift from traditional sources of history to oral traditions. Speaking about the environmental ecology of Bangladesh he pointed out how multicultural the country truly is, being a delta and having ample rice growing fields drew Austroloid, Mongoloid, Dravidians, Aryans, Turko-Afghans and the English. History which is usually a narrative of power and politics, never the story of the ordinary man, can also be traced in the development of language. People forget that the state is made up of both them and the government. Professor Choudhury is of the opinion that intermediaries functioning between the state and the government enable better functioning of the same. His periodization of history veers away from the traditional practices – he broadly divides time into that of the horticultural societies and agricultural societies. The inclusive history he explores includes environmental sociology, ethnic identity, livelihood identities, social and communal structures, politics and power relationships. He also pointed out how faith, one of the most important aspects of the lives of people, often get forgotten by history. He includes faith practices in his study of history. Faith practices are a very important indicator of societies located in any chronological or geographical space –-the first Bengali Muslims, for example, referred to their god not as Allah but as Nitanjan, a Bengali word which simply means creator. There are of course, contesting methodologies and sources but we need to remember to go beyond education which at the moment is either teaching one to manage their own livelihood, or someone elses.

Ms Shahzada then came forward to talk about the Citizen’s Archive of Pakistan, the only organisation in the country which collects oral histories concerning the Partition that do not find their way into the country’s textbooks. Their initial aim was to curate a living history museum with audio presentations where people could explore and listen to the stories of others. The Citizen’s Archive is now using the vast archive of oral narratives in enabling textbook reform in the country. Their intention is not to change the current textbooks, or the current curriculum, economised as both of them are, but to add to it, providing a rich supplementary curriculum for students to enable them to connect with their history in more than a few pages of text. There are five different boards of education in Pakistan, one for each province, each offering the student a different sentiment on matters concerning among other things, their country’s relationship with India. Not getting involved in controversies of changing curriculum allows a degree of access to schools which would otherwise not be possible. They offer the students stories of individuals who have no place in the textbooks – ordinary men and women who faced the partition and lived to tell the tale, people who had lost their whole families at that time who had memories of places which can never be revisited. They also tell the stories of transport that took men and women across the border, of people who had formed lasting bonds with strangers which went past their religious differences. One of their aspirations is inspiring critical thinking in the student and so when they were thrown out of a school because the students were asking too many awkward questions, they considered their job done.

Throwing open the discussion Mrs Kar asked if we can get away with manipulating history to which professor Sethi replied that history always carries perspective and it is only the obvious prejudices that can be removed. Professor Choudhury opined that even though there are various rivers of history, the peasant’s history cannot be manipulated – their years marked not by dates but by hunger and famine cannot be forgotten. Dr Jha retorted otherwise, that the histories of ordinary men and women can be manipulated. He spoke about how when he had gone to interview the women who had been at the forefront of the Dandi march, he was instead faced with their men who offered their versions of the story stifling the voices of the women. Thus strong individuals had been absorbed into the prevailing patriarchy, almost erasing the histories that they once made. Subaltern historians are a Marxist response to history, said Professor Choudhury, when asked about the same. He declared that he was for any methodology which brought the subaltern individual’s thoughts on history. At Dr Christophe’s enquiry Ms Shahzada explained that they very often come across strongly nationalist stories during their collection of oral narratives. However, the use of the words ‘them’, ‘us’ and ‘the other’ decrease as the story is re-narrativised by following generations while they are prominent in the narratives of the individuals who suffered the trauma. The economised history that is prevalent in Pakistan makes the student not more tolerant, but desensitised to the social trauma. Proceeding to answer an enquiry on whether the Citizen’s Archive of Pakistan had been able to influence the anti-India sentiment in the country, Ms Shahzada explained that the Archive offered an opportunity to know more about the other resulting in a decrease of the othering and making way for lasting friendships.

–Anushka Halder