The Hindu: One story, two sides
http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/one-story-two-sides/article5124147.ece
School textbooks in India and Pakistan present divergent views on
historical events. The History Project attempts a truce.
Here are two versions of the same sequence of events.
One: In 1947, when Hari Singh, the ruler of Kashmir, opted to stay
independent, Pakistani armed intruders from Pakistan attacked
Kashmir. Hari Singh then signed an agreement to join India, and
the Indian army was sent in to defend Kashmir.
Two: Hari Singh started a brutal campaign to drive out Muslims
from Kashmir. Over 200,000 people in the princely State, supported
by the tribesmen of the Northwest Frontier Province, were
successful in liberating a large area of Kashmir from the
Maharaja’s control. So Hari Singh was forced to turn to India for
help and in return acceded to India.
The first version is from a history textbook in India; the second
from a history textbook in Pakistan. As a result, two groups of
children are growing up with different ideas about a shared past.
In school, we learn that History isn’t like Maths. It isn’t a
‘scoring subject’. A two plus two will yield the same result all
over the world, but history is subjective. It’s written by people,
after all. People are subjective too; people find it difficult to
not pick sides, a fact borne out by those history textbooks of
India and Pakistan.
In a way, this conflict led to a book that illuminates the biases
and subjectivity inherent in history. The History Project —
launched on April 30 — was born at the Seeds of Peace, an annual
camp for teenagers from countries in conflict, held at Maine, in
the U.S. Feruzan Mehta, then director of Seeds of Peace-India,
came up with the idea in 2005. Six years later, The History
Project was founded by three young Pakistanis: Qasim Aslam, Ayyaz
Ahmad and Zoya Siddiqui. They brought together a team of editors
and volunteers from both countries to produce the Project’s first
history textbook.
The key to the project was the recurring arguments over history
during the camps. “A Pakistani kid and an Indian kid would argue
about the same event,” says Ahmad, “without realising that they
had been taught different versions. So, we decided to put both
sides together in one volume. The idea was dormant for a few
years, until we decided to take it up again in 2011.”
The target audience was 12-14 year olds and, to make it appealing
to them, Zoya Siddiqui was brought on board to add a bit of colour
to the text. Today, the final product takes the form of a book
that puts “these different (often opposite) historical narratives
side by side and augments them through illustrations (that have
their own concept narrative flowing through them).” For example,
the Indian and Pakistani textbooks are divided on the issue of
Bengal’s partition in 1905. While Indian textbooks claim that the
real reason for the division was to curb the rising tide of Indian
nationalism, their Pakistani counterparts accept the
administrative explanations cited by the British. Indian textbooks
go on to describe the anti-Partition movement as one in which both
Hindus and Muslims marched side by side, while Pakistani textbooks
say that only Hindus participated in the movement.
The History Project was compiled using nine Pakistani and three
Indian history textbooks that are part of the high school
curriculum in both countries. It encompasses 16 salient events
beginning with the1857 War (when the divide between Hindus and
Muslims first became prominent) and ending with the Partition in
1947. This is not a forced merging of texts; neither are the
narratives undermined in any way. What it does is simply to put
the accounts from Indian and Pakistani history books side by side,
and let the reader spot the difference. The very act of
juxtaposing divergent narratives of one event highlights the
disparities and immediately suggests that there might be an
alternative perspective. This opens up the possibility of dialogue
that can both question and critique the existing narrative, so far
regarded by both sides as the unquestionable and final truth.
The natural question on this side of the border is: Why only three
Indian textbooks? Doesn't that limit the perspective or narrow it
down? Noorzadeh Raza, one of the editors, says that while they
wanted to give both narratives equal importance, one of the major
challenges the team faced was the difficulty in accessing Indian
history textbooks. “Another was the fact that some events are
present in textbooks on one side of the border but have been
excluded in the other. The Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930,
for example, is not mentioned in most Pakistani textbooks.”
It’s been a while since the book’s launch in April. In the last
few months, the History Project has been presented to school
students and teachers on both sides of the border. While the
editorial team admits that it’s still hard to say how it’s doing
as a history book or a reference text, they feel that the response
in both countries has been phenomenal. “Only after people have
read the book and absorbed some of the ideas in it will we be able
to understand how it’s doing as a historical text,” says Ahmad.
“The fact something of this sort even happened was a big surprise
for most people. Certainly, the idea had been there for quite some
time and I believe that people realised that there were
discrepancies on both sides. Yet for someone to go ahead and
actually put the two side by side didn’t seem likely.”
In April, Ahmad, Aslam and Siddiqui officially launched the book
by presenting it at four schools in Mumbai. They worked with kids
from Std. VIII-X. Ahmad says that while some students had not
studied Indo-Pak history, they easily grasped the fundamental
concept of another side to the story. In the following month, the
book was introduced in schools in Lahore. “There, I believe we
were at a slight disadvantage, as our Indian peers were not with
us for the presentations due to visa issues. This, of course, took
some oomph out of the presentations but the kids we worked with
were extremely enthusiastic,” Ahmad continues. “The best thing
about working with kids on both sides was that, they weren’t
politically correct at all. So if they felt a certain way about an
issue, we got to hear that. For some people, this can be a bit
difficult to digest, but it’s important to realise that if
12-14-year-olds already have such strong feelings about historical
issues (often without having studied them at all), then there’s
something more fundamental at play here, which needs to be
highlighted.”
What Ahmad refers to here is how young students are easily
influenced and often adopt ideas and beliefs without questioning
them. This led the team to examine the way history and historical
accounts affect the shaping of an entire generation.
Zoya Siddiqui, the illustrator, says that the book, surprisingly,
hasn’t faced any resistance in either Indian or Pakistani schools.
“We’ve seen shock, surprise, curiosity and even amusement, but not
unwillingness to learn. In fact, it’s safe to say that we’ve
achieved our goal in initiating a dialogue. There haven’t been any
reactions. Rather, there have been ‘responses’, which is very
positive.” Siddiqui’s illustrations, characterised by the repeated
appearance of a faceless man, furthers the book’s message. “He is
a visual depiction of that blurry edge that we, the team, are
walking on. He is doing precisely what we are doing; adopting and
illustrating both stances of history without propagating any
answers. The ambiguity of the faceless man helps raise questions,
which is our purpose.”
If the book has triggered a response in children, it has incited
an even greater one in adults, both as appreciation and criticism.
“We were aware that this would happen, simply because the school
is one of the major agents of socialisation, where most ideas take
shape. These ideas are carried on as adults later,” says Siddiqui.
To the founders, helping children question and understand history
seemed like “the right and relevant starting point”. The project
is also being viewed as a step towards separating political and
personal agendas from historical narratives; an opportunity, still
in a nascent stage, to re-examine what we have always believed to
be true.
Already having tackled a mammoth project, the team is
contemplating and bouncing around a host of other ideas, ranging
from a look at famous pre-Partition personalities to a
post-Partition version of The History Project. As a first and
crucial step towards accepting and integrating historical
perspectives of two nations, The History Project has started
causing ripples of change that the founders hope will soon turn to
waves.
Qasim Aslam can be contacted at qasim@thehistory-project.org
swatid45@gmail.com
Keywords: India-Pakistan history textbooks, Kashmir ruler Hari
Singh, The History Project, Seeds of Peace, Seeds of Peace-India.
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