Teaching divided histories

How can students learn to hold different perspectives without holding prejudices?

Can we have common history textbooks for school children in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan? If the very idea shocks you, consider this: there are common history textbooks available for children in Israel and Palestine; Germany and France; and Germany and Poland — areas that have seen conflicts as intense as ours in South Asia.

So what will it take to produce common history textbooks for India and Pakistan? Historians and experts from Europe, Canada, Germany, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, besides history teachers from schools across India, gathered to explore issues like this at the ‘Teach History’ conference held in Kolkata from July 30 to August 1 organised by Peace Works. It is an initiative of the Seagull Foundation for the Arts.

School children in conflict regions typically learn one side of the story — their own — which is, of course, considered to be the ‘right’ one.

Teaching is often doctrinaire, aimed at presenting and justifying a negative portrait of the ‘other’. How can we get over this polarity? Historians agree that the process has to begin with an understanding of the current status of history textbooks in both countries and how we arrived there.

Consider the case of Pakistan. According to Pakistani historian Mubarak Ali, when Pakistan was born in 1947, there was little ‘anti-India’ tone in the history textbooks. Post-1965 war, the anti-India stance became pronounced and glorification of war heroes began.

The marked pro-army tilt in textbooks after the 1971 war, over time, combined with a pro-Islamic hue in textbooks to such an extent that there are tables dividing even plants and animals into Hindu and Muslim domains — date palm is considered a ‘Muslim’ tree while peepul is a Hindu one; camel is a ‘Muslim’ animal while cow belongs to Hindus!

There is language bias too. Words describing tumultuous events in the recent past have come to have enormous significance. The creation of Bangladesh, for instance, is not titled as the more neutral ‘Birth of Bangladesh’ but, rather, as the emotionally rousing ‘Fall of East Pakistan’.

Dual narrative approach

Dr. Barbara Christophe of the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research suggests the ‘Dual Narrative’ approach to address the need for having a textbook that would overcome divergent narratives of history. Dual Narrative describes a story in two different perspectives and was used to develop Franco-German, German-Polish and Israel-Palestine common history textbooks.

In this approach, select conflicting narratives of the two sides are presented and children are allowed to question what they learn from both narratives.

It promotes critical self-reflection among students who may become aware of a different kind of historical truth existing alongside their own.

‘The History Project’ in Pakistan, founded by Qasim Aslam, has been comparing accounts of historical events in both India and Pakistan, presenting the children of both countries an opportunity to debate on the two narratives.

Another direction to consider would be an ‘inclusive’ approach, as Dr. Anil Sethi of Azim Premji University points out. For instance, the NCERT textbook he authored has a lesson on the 1947 Partition, which begins with a narrative of a Pakistani’s suffering. For him, if the identity of the author cannot be guessed from the narrative, the book is likely to be balanced regarding the conflicting narratives. Compiling and comparing oral history accounts across borders, as done by the Citizens’ Archive of Pakistan (CAP), points to a direction for history teaching through projects.

Of course, it may not be realistic to attempt a single, joint narrative for the history textbooks in the subcontinent right away. That could be our eventual goal. We can begin with awareness and acceptance of multiple narratives instead of throwing our narratives at each other.

If we learn to use the textbook as an effective tool, someday, our children may learn that they could hold different perspectives on historical events without holding different prejudices.

Source | The Hindu | 18 August 2015