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HomeIndiaGovernanceAmarinder faces his first big test by fire over 'erasing' Punjab history...

Amarinder faces his first big test by fire over ‘erasing’ Punjab history from textbooks

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Opposition parties say the Congress govt has erased the state’s history from school education, threaten to launch state-wide protests; govt says Akalis doing cheap politics.

Chandigarh: Barely a year after it won power, Punjab’s Congress government of Capt. Amarinder Singh is faced with one of its biggest tests yet – the controversy over its alleged tampering of history textbooks.

The Punjab School Education Board (PSEB), which is publishing the first set of textbooks for classes 11 and 12, has done away with the specialised syllabus on ‘History of Punjab’ being taught in class 12. It has subsumed the contents in abridged form into two new history books: one containing history of the world to be taught in class 11 and another on the history of India for class 12.

Alleging that the Congress government had “erased” Punjab’s history from school education, former deputy chief minister and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal has threatened to take the battle to the “streets” of Punjab.

“Congress wants to undermine our pride in our past but we will not stop or rest until the government reverts to the old syllabus,” he said addressing a press conference Thursday.

Party leaders met Punjab governor V.P. Singh Badnore over the issue Friday.

The new textbooks have been introduced for the 2018-19 session. While the class 12 book has been made available to students, the one for class 11 is still being printed. The move affects lakhs of students in the state. Apart from private schools, all government schools in the state are affiliated to the Punjab board.

A political tug of war

Giving an ultimatum to the CM, Sukhbir Badal said the government should stop forthwith the publication of the new history textbooks, failing which his party will be forced to launch a state-wide protest.

The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), the apex body of the gurdwaras, has also expressed its displeasure over the issue. It has constituted a sub-committee to deliberate on the contents of the new books and submit a report. The sub-committee held its first meeting on 2 May and pointed out “glaring” mistakes in the new class 12 book.

The SGPC has called a meeting of all its members to discuss the issue at its office in Amritsar’s Golden Temple on 7 May.

Although the government seems to be on the back foot now, it has ruled out any review of the new syllabus. In a joint press conference addressed by education minister O.P. Soni, finance minister Manpreet Badal and cooperation minister Sukhjinder Randhawa Thursday, the government apologised for the glaring errors that had crept in the class 12 book, but made clear that the decision to publish the books, according to the new syllabus, will not be reviewed.

The ministers alleged that the Akalis were playing politics over an emotive issue and were hand in glove with publishers of reference books, who stood to lose millions in case the board printed its own textbooks.

They added that the Akalis should wait until the contents of the class 11 book were made public in 10 days from now. “The matter will die down immediately as all the objections being raised about the contents of the books will be sorted out,” said Soni.

Old syllabus

Until the last academic session, students who took history as a subject after class 10 studied the ‘History of India’ in class 11 and when they moved to class 12, they studied the ‘History of Punjab’. The syllabus for these was prescribed by the Punjab board. Based on the board’s syllabus, private publishers printed ‘reference books’ for the students to use. The history subject reference books ranged from 350 to 550 pages depending on the publisher and cost between Rs 300 and Rs 450.

The book cover of Punjab’s Class 11 old history book
The book cover of Punjab’s Class 12 old history book

Some years ago, the board started publishing its own ‘textbooks’ on various subjects to provide standardised study material at nominal cost. Accordingly, a decision was taken to publish history textbooks for classes 11 and 12 as well.

The board then decided to revise its old syllabus and “align” it with the NCERT one before bringing out its history textbooks. An expert committee of historians was set up for the revision of the syllabus.

Who did it?

After the controversy broke out last week, the government alleged that the decision to align Punjab board’s old syllabus with the NCERT syllabus was taken during the Akali regime of 2012-2017.

“On 9 January 2014, an expert committee was proposed to be set up to discuss the issue of realignment and to finalise the history syllabus from Class 9 to 12,” said the CM, adding that the final syllabus was uploaded on the board’s website in March 2014.

The Akalis rebutted the charge saying they had taken the decision only for physics, chemistry and mathematics, not history.

“Since no consensus emerged regarding history syllabus of class 11, a decision on it and class 12 was kept in abeyance. For the three sessions after 2014, (2016, 2017 and 2018), the old syllabus was followed,” said former education minister Daljit Singh Cheema.

“The syllabus was finally revised only last year after the Congress government came to power,” he claimed.

The revised syllabus incorporating contents from the board’s own published textbooks from this session has led to a furore.

From being called ‘history of India’ (old class 11) and ‘history of Punjab’ (old class 12), the revised syllabus for both books were titled ‘history’. While the old class 11 syllabus had 22 units dealing with India’s history, the new one has 11 units — 6 dealing with the history of Punjab and another five with world history.

While the old class 12 syllabus had 22 units dealing with Punjab’s history, the new one has 11 units — 6 dealing with pre-modern India, three with modern India and two with modern Punjab.

The syllabus of the old Class 12 history reference book.
The new history syllabus of the class 11 textbook has 6 topics on Punjab including the life and teachings of the 10 Sikh gurus. The rest is world history.
The new history syllabus of the class 12 textbook has two topics on Punjab including the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and Punjab’s contribution to India’s freedom struggle. The rest is history of India.

The class 12 book (which has been printed) is of 182 pages and costs Rs 90. A rough draft of the class 11 book (accessed by ThePrint last week) has 184 pages and will cost almost the same.

The cover of the new class 12 history textbook of PSEB.

When all hell broke loose

On 28 April, Cheema wrote to the CM pointing out that the 22 units of ‘history of Punjab’ had been deleted and nowhere to be found in the new class 12 book. The CM responded to the charge claiming that “not a single chapter, nor a word, had been deleted by the Board”. He said the chapters had been spread across classes 11 and 12.

The next day, the Akalis said the Amarinder Singh was peddling falsehoods as only “compressed and incomplete Punjab history had been packed into 8 units spread across the two new books, clubbed with 8 units of world and Indian history”.

On 1 May, the CM issued another press statement, saying that the entire Punjab history syllabus had been covered in classes 9, 10, 11and 12. The CMO also issued a chapter-wise chart explaining where the 22 units had been shifted.

Changes made in the history syllabus of Class XII by the present Congress government.

In their press conference Thursday, the Akalis dug holes in the chapter chart issued by the government alleging that the CMO has been “lying” from day one to roughshod over the objections being raised.

The old class XII syllabus and the new class XI syllabus
Objections raised by SAD to the changes made in the class 12 syllabus.
Objections raised by SAD to the changes made in the class 12 syllabus.

A contentious issue

Even as the controversy over the change in syllabus raged, the content of the class 12 new book raised heckles. The following errors were pointed out by Cheema during Thursday’s press conference:

· Page 86: The book categorises life and teachings of Guru Nanak as part of “Ram Bhakti movement” while they are part of the Bhakti movement.

· Page 90: The Punjabi edition of the book refers to the taking over of the second Sikh Guru as ‘niyukti’ (appointment) of Guru Angad Dev Ji. In the English edition it is referred to as the “annotation of Guru Angad Dev Ji”.

The 89th page of the class 12 new history textbook has referred to the taking over of Guru Angad Devji as “annotation”.
According to the Punjabi edition of the class 12 new history textbook, page 90 “Dooje sikh guru Shri guru Angad Devji (1539) di niyukti nal gurgaddi di parampara shuru ho gayi. (With the appointment of second Sikh guru Shri Angad Devji (1539), the tradition of Gurgaddi began)”.

· Page 94: The book refers to Shaheed Udham Singh taking oath on Waaris Shah’s Hir after avenging the massacre of Jallianwala Bagh. This fact is under contention.

· Page 143: The book says Banda Singh Bahadur took with him three war veterans as advisers. The number was actually five.

The error on the 143rd page of the class XII new history textbook mentions three war veterans instead of five.

· Page 174: The Komagata Maru incident of 1914 has factual errors in dates in the Punjabi edition of the book. Also instead of saying that Baba Gurdit Singh “courted arrest”, the book says he “surrendered” to the police.

Page 174 of the textbook refers to the Komagata Maru incident. The text mentions that the ship left Hong Kong in 1924 and reached Kolkata in 1914.

When some of these errors were brought to the notice of cabinet minister Sukhjinder Randhawa, he said the government “apologised” for them and will get them corrected at the earliest.

Akalis’ objections:

1. Removal of an exclusive and comprehensive book of Punjab history: SAD alleges there is a conspiracy to undermine Punjab and its glorious past.

2. The study of history of Sikh Gurus shrunk to half: The history of the 10 Gurus of the Sikhs is vital to any work on Punjab, a Sikh majority state. SAD alleges that from 7 units in the old class 12 syllabus, history of Sikh Gurus has been compressed into 4 units in the new class 11 syllabus merging the matter on individual Gurus.

3. Shifting of history of Sikh Gurus from an academically more significant Class 12 to a relatively less significant Class 11.

4. The study of the period from Banda Singh Bahadur, who played a crucial role in Sikh history following the death of Guru Gobind Singh in 1708, until the emergence of the first Sikh empire under Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1780 has been compressed into 7 pages in the new class 12 book.

5. The study of the period of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the first emperor of a Sikh kingdom who ruled Punjab for almost 60 years, has been reduced from 7 units in the old class 12 syllabus to 8 pages in the new class 12 book.

Government’s explanation:

1. No exclusive textbook on Punjab history ever existed. Those available in the market were reference books based on the board’s old ‘Punjab history’ syllabus.

2. Education minister assured Thursday that no details about the life and teaching of any Sikh Guru would be left out in the new class 9 book which was still work in progress.

3. India’s history had been shifted from Class 11 to Class 12 to ensure that students are prepared for national level competitions after class 12.

4 & 5: These two periods have already been studied by students in detail in Class 10.

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