October 30, 1999	atimes.com

India/Pakistan COMMENT: Rewriting history with a Hindu message By Praful Bidwai NEW DELHI - Barely two weeks after being sworn in as part of India's new coalition government, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has begun to unfold its Hindu sectarian agenda. Changes are being made in education and pressure is increasing upon other religious groups. Education Minister Murli Manohar Joshi, a Hindu hardliner, is restructuring educational institutions, rewriting curricula and making major personnel changes. His latest target is Marxism in political science courses in schools. The education board has dropped Marxism from the curriculum without explanation, leaving only Fascism, Liberalism, Gandhism and Socialism. Many in the BJP are admirers of Fascism and doctrines of ''racial purity''. The change appears to dismiss a major influence on Indian independence movements and the formation of a national intelligentsia. The BJP is also committed - and Minister Joshi has reiterated this - to rewriting school textbooks so that they reflect the ''glory and greatness'' of ancient Hindu civilization and present Hindus as victims of repeated invasion by outsiders. The BJP and other Hindu fundamentalist organizations like Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have made unsupported claims about Indian achievements - from calculus to nuclear physics and from advanced chemistry to aeronautics. Says distinguished historian Sumit Sarkar: ''The basic thrust of the BJP is to construct an enemy. Rhetorically, they might have succeeded in achieving this, but it also needs to be concretized. For this, rewriting history, especially school textbooks, becomes very important. The BJP's main fight is more with history than with political parties.'' To accomplish this mission, which has been called the BJP's ''Long March Through the Institutions'', Joshi has filled educational institutions with BJP or RSS sympathizers and activists. These include the University Grants Commission, the secondary school board, the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, and the councils of social sciences and historical research, which run virtually all of India's specialized social science research institutes outside the university system. Although the BJP might wish to appear to be a relatively ''moderate'' party, its agenda is complex, as reflected in the vitriolic campaign launched by the BJP's affiliates against Pope John Paul II who is due to visit India early next month. The VHP and RSS are demanding an apology from the Catholic Church for having ''forcibly converted'' a large number of Hindus to Christianity during the colonial period despite little historical evidence of such an event. Many Indian Christians, especially in the south, willingly converted to escape the humiliation of the Hindu caste hierarchy. Other, non-Catholic, Christians trace their churches back to the first century, before Europe was Christian. Although the VHP and RSS have attacked church properties and personnel and maligned other faiths, Prime Minister Vajpayee has not uttered a word against the anti-Christian campaign. Nor has the government once invoked the principle of secularism, which is part of the unalterable structure of India's Constitution. (Inter Press Service)

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