WE readily blame our rampaging social prejudices on bad school textbooks. This is to pick on the boots for the faults of the feet. Textbooks play a small role in shaping our mindsets, but there are more powerful factors that we should also look at. Take Partition.
It was a classic consequence of communal polarisation. Should we hold school textbooks responsible for the mass frenzy that erupted in which rape and killings went on for days with no one held accountable? Or did spurious school books waylay Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Jawaharlal Nehru and other leaders of the subcontinent towards a denouement which many of their ilk lived to regret?
The fact that we discuss Jinnah, Gandhi or Nehru differently on the two sides of the border conveys blinkered ideas about these leaders to the target audience. But there are more urgent issues that are not discussed on either side in higher academia, not to mention the textbooks. This widespread inability to discuss in a forthright way matters that should be taken by the scruff of the neck underscores our insecurity with aspects of our historical and social reality.
The other day in Karachi, at a conference on the relevance of 1857 to our struggle for freedoms, including press freedom, a scholarly Muslim intellectual was evidently so miffed by my argument that he refused to read his paper.
I had merely posited as a participant that the revolt against colonialism may have failed in 1857 because the lower caste Indians such as the Dalits felt abused by those that led the war against British rule. Mahatma Gandhi on the other hand evidently grasped this lacuna in the anti-colonial struggle and corrected it with a mass appeal to the Dalits and other marginalised Indians to make them feel like stakeholders in the freedom bonanza. That, in my view, is at least partly the reason why 1947 succeeded where 1857 had failed.
It is nice to talk about 1857 as a reflection of Hindu-Muslim unity as so many of the speakers at the conference did. But barring one or two participants few were aware of the approach the Indian rulers took towards the lower order of their countrymen. Crucial source material is now available to show that in many cases, quite possibly in most instances, the Dalit castes were so fed up with their Indian rulers that they were relieved when the British emerged as the victors from the bloodbath.
Without meaning to diminish the heroic role Begum Hazrat Mahal of Oudh played in the battle against British rule, let us also look at the content of a proclamation by her son, Birjis Qadr. It carried the full authority of the Begum. There is an intense bias against the lower class of Indians, even as she appeals to Hindu-Muslim amity as her main asset.
The Indian Council of Historical Research has come out with a collection of proclamations issued by the rebel leaders. Documented by Dr Iqbal Hussain of Aligarh Muslim University, it is a must read for students of social history on both sides of the border. Birjis Qadr (Wali of Oudh) urges his subjects in the proclamation dated June 25, 1858 that his government respected the right of religion, honour, life and property, in that order, something the British ostensibly didn’t. Then he explains his claim.
‘‘Everyone follows his own religion (in my domain). And enjoys respect according to their worth and status. Men of high extraction, be they Syed, Sheikh, Mughal or Pathan, among the Mohammedans, or Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaish or Kayasth, among the Hindoos, all these retain the respectability according to their respective ranks. And all persons of a lower order such as a Sweeper, Chamar, Dhanook, or Pasi cannot claim equality with them.”
Prince Birjis Qadr twists the knife further in his lament: “The honour and respectability of every person of high extraction are considered by (the British) equal to the honour and respectability of the lower orders. Nay, compared with the latter, they treat the former with contempt and disrespect. Wherever they go they hang the respectable persons to death, and at the instance of the chamar, force the attendance of a nawab or a rajah, and subject him to indignity.” This is the reality the Partition discourse tends to overlook in our textbooks as well as in higher academia.
This is not to say that Dalits stayed out of the 1857 confrontation with the British. Rather it raises the point about our prejudiced mindsets that existed before 1857 and still exist on both sides of the border. How much was the support of the Ajlaaf Muslims and the Ashraaf Muslims — the lower and upper crusts — to the Muslim League and the Congress respectively? In any case the fact that our language and idioms contain our biases is not sought to be corrected in our schools or in our textbooks. These things persist outside the structured discourse.
It is like a habit to refer to a delinquent boy as having the attributes of the lower castes. “Stop behaving like a chamar,” our elders would scold us. Kanjadpana, Jahil Jat, Aghoripana. These phrases are still prevalent in our everyday language. That the Dalit castes included Muslims, Christian, Sikhs and Buddhists as well as people of inferior castes seemed to be useless information to the ruling elite.
They all effectively behaved like Manu, the mythical Indian king who prescribed caste-based privileges and punishment. A little bit of our inhibition seems to be lifting in discussing the social marginalisation of our own people. New textbooks prepared by India’s state-run National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) appear to have broken some of the taboos in critiquing the extant prejudices.
A new social science textbook prepared for the 8th class is titled Social and Political Life III. In one chapter it takes up the issue of Adivasis, literally the old or original inhabitants of India, in a completely bold new way.
For example, it says: “In India, we usually ‘showcase’ Adivasi communities in particular ways. Thus during school functions, or other official events or in books and movies, Adivasis are invariably portrayed in very stereotypical ways — in colourful costumes, headgear and through their dancing. Besides this, we seem to know very little about the realities of their lives. This often wrongly leads to people believing that they are exotic, primitive and backward. Often Adivasis are blamed for their lack of advancement as they are believed to be resistant to change or new ideas.”
The textbook then tackles an even bolder theme of how the Adivasis were being deprived of their natural resources and habitat by predatory ‘modernisation’. It discusses problems of Indian Muslims and Dalits just as candidly. How, despite the bold efforts of the NCERT it may not be quite enough to disabuse Indians of their blinkered view of the marginalised communities. We still have to look beyond the textbooks, and into the mind of the religious scholar who refused to read his paper at the conference in Karachi.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com