Pseudo-Secularism in Education

Prasad S Joshi

The nation, community or even a person, who forgets its history, can neither get success nor can live with self-respect. To achieve the goals in life everyone must remember their history. Importance of history in education is highly significant. Education system is the backbone of the process of nation building. Unfortunately, in our country, some pseudo-secular thinkers continuously try to apply their agenda in the education system. Now they are influencing the NCERT syllabus also.

NCERT compiles the history syllabus from 6th to 12th standard, which spreads in almost 2,100 pages. In these pages the history from 17th to 18th century has been covered. Particularly, the historical events of the last 200 year have been compiled. But it does not have even a single line to describe the history of great Rajput warrior Maharana Pratap. The great Maratha warrior Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and all Maratha history have been concluded only in just two pages. Whereas hundreds of pages have been given to Delhi Sultans and Mughals.

Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj has a glorious history of struggling against Mughal and Adilshah empires. He established an independent Maratha (Hindavi) empire. His skills and techniques of war are still regarded as significant guidelines for a warrior. He fought against enemies with little resources and achieved great success. His history motivates every citizen of the country. Shahjiraje, Sambhajiraje and Mata Jijau and Maharani Tarabai have also been skipped in the syllabus. Other Maratha warriors like Bajirao Peshave, Nanasaheb Peshave, Ahilyabai Holkar, Dattaji Shinde, Raghoji Bhosale, Senapati Khanderao Dabhade, Damaji Gayakwad have not even been mentioned in the whole syllabus.

The history of Panipat War, which was led by Peshave has also not been included in the syllabus. Not only the warriors, but the great saints of Maharashtra have been skipped. Great saint Namdev, whose literature is part of Shri Guru Granth Sahib finds not a single line.

The same approach continues in social field. Many social thinkers who made great efforts for social change including Dhondo Keshav Karve, Karmaveer Bhaurao Patil, Savitribai Phule, Justice Ranade Namdar Gokhale do not find any mention.

It is a shame for the nation that those who sacrificed their life for Independence of the nation have not been included in the syllabus. They include Vasudev Balwant Phadake, Chafekar, Umaji Naik. All of these dedicated their life for the nation and to fight against the British. It is really injustice to them. Chandrasekhar Azad, Khudiram Bose, Udham Singh and many other freedom fighters have simply been avoided from the syllabus. 

To register their protest against this effort, some historians of Maharashtra gathered in Pune recently to discuss how to overcome this problem. Speaking to Organiser Shri Pandurang Balkavade, renowned history researcher, pointed out that in the 27 member syllabus committee not even a single member was taken from Maharashtra. Does Maharashtra have no historian?  All the members of the committee are well qualified and they know the history well. So, it is not a mistake, rather a planned conspiracy, possibly sponsored by the Central Government. Our students need to learn glorious history, which makes them patriot. If we want to make the students ideal and mature citizens, it is necessary to teach them patriotic and humanity lessons from the history. But such history has not been included in the current syllabus. So it puts question mark over the objective of the policymakers.