5 ms·

This is a clickbait article. The current government, under the façade of "Hindu Nationalism" is doing zilch (at least until now, nothing noticeable) to fix the

This is a clickbait article. The current government, under the façade of "Hindu Nationalism" is doing zilch (at least until now, nothing noticeable) to fix the education system that has been messed by the previous administration. No matter how much you tweak with history, its not going to be effective if education system is left in shambles.Adding to that is the ministry of education, that knows how to troll bait international and Indian media, which tends to follow a certain ideology (thats not 'Hindu Nationalist'). With that said, having read more and more content from independent authors (not funded by an institution, publicly) I believe Indian history needs a thorough redo. Problem is not with misinformation, but with lack of adequate information. The 1% of history gets 99% focus, whereas an equally amazing 99% is not mentioned, either due to laziness or due to scheming history writers, wanting to support a particular ideology. Whats worse, is an Indian kid learns more about 200 to 400 yr old architecture around the world, but zilch about a 1000yr old fort or a temple in his/her own state. Whatever the effort of rewriting history, as claimed in this article is, it is not going to have any serious effect, other than a few progressive-liberal news outlets hyperventilating on a non-issue that will be forgotten when Trump/Putin/KimJongUn et al throw a new troll-bait.

tom_hack 9y ago
>> to fix the education system that has been messed by the previous administration. To be sure, 'administrations' would be better word, given what the current ruling party did to school text-books, in its earlier regime during 1998-2004. See this snippet from 'Argumentative Indian' by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen: https://books.google.co.in/books?id=gcGiwyBS3YwC&lpg=PT29&vq=madagascar&pg=PT29#v=snippet&q=madagascar&f=false https://books.google.co.in/books?id=gcGiwyBS3YwC&lpg=PT29&vq...
krtkush 9y ago
> having read more and more content from independent authors (not funded by an institution, publicly) Could you please list these books, papers etc? I too am in hunt of more neutral, unbiased work.
- newyankee 9y ago
  there is no such thing as unbiased in the case of India. The history is rife with many different issues. The current history of India was rewritten by leftist who control Indian universities like JNU. You will never find anything truly objective till you visit the country and explore its complex interwoven history by yourself and listen to many different perspectives. Even after that nothing can be compressed into a simple narrative. The only difference is India is still a democracy unlike China so you routinely get exaggerated articles like these popping up.
- msravi 9y ago
  I really suggest that you dig into original references. 1. Read translations of original Buddhist/Jain literature and the Puranas to get an idea of the founding of the Nandas, Pataliputra, Chanakya, Chandragupta Maurya, and Ashoka. 2. Read translations of Megasthenes, Hiuen Tsang, and Fa-hein. 3. Read translations of Harshacharita by Banabhatta to get a feel of Harshavardhana's empire. Read how Banabhatta tears into the practice of Sati - in 600AD. No modern history book will tell you about this. 4. Read "History of India by it's Own Historians" - Elliot to get an idea of the Muslim invasions and the Mughals. These are translations of biographies and works of Muslim historians spanning Ghazni to the Mughals.
  - vixen99 9y ago
    It's probably "History of India by its Own Historians".
    - cholantesh 9y ago
      And it's worth noting that it was written specifically to advance the view that British colonialism was okay because, apparently, the Mughals and the Central Asian Sultans were worse.
      - msravi 9y ago
        It's a translation of various Muslim historians. So you can go read the original text. You can completely ignore the "British commentary" if you so wish.
kamaal 9y ago
>>fix the education system that has been messed by the previous administration. There is an assumption that the education system currently is in 'mess'. That is not true. >>The 1% of history gets 99% focus That is how school level education works. Do you think they teach 99% of physics or math in school? Or 99% of entire literature of whichever language you study? You can always opt for Masters or Doctorate in history, instead of other engineering or medicine courses. >>whereas an equally amazing 99% is not mentioned Feel free take up History as your specialization after 10th standard. You can go up to Doctorate and beyond. >>either due to laziness or due to scheming history writers, wanting to support a particular ideology. History is already well written and you can read if you wan to. And even study it full time. You just have to pick the right course. Don't expect to opt for Engineering and Medicine and then study history there. >>Whats worse, is an Indian kid learns more about 200 to 400 yr old architecture around the world, but zilch about a 1000yr old fort or a temple in his/her own state. As an Indian kid in the past, now adult. Who used to spend a lot of time in libraries, you can walk into any government library and pick up any book on any era and specialize on. There is mountains of work written. People just don't read it because the economic value of such knowledge is 0.
- newyankee 9y ago
  While i agree Indian history cannot be taught properly in a history text book i think each state introduces its own biases and the CBSE textbooks do a big disservice to Indian icons like Shivaji and their contribution to the country especially at the expense of Muslim rulers. The well documented atrocities of a despot like Aurangzeb are whitewashed
  - kamaal 9y ago
    Sure, if we are talking about this sort of stuff, let's do away with Hindi language being mandatory. We already have English as a common language. And you guys are suggesting local culture and its history comes first. So local state language and english should be enough. One less subject means we could add a 'History' elective to high school syllabus. Those who are interested can opt for it. Others can opt for whatever they want(Math, Economics, etc etc).
newyankee 9y ago
Calvinbhai , in the meantime it is the task of informed people like yourself to call out these things in the nick of time to take it to a more meaningful debate instead of the routine: ' India is a street shitting, rapist, poor , illiterate and nothing better can be expected'. I think it is impossible for any westerner to understand the history of India looking at it from their distance lens and trying to classify politics as left v right or rich v poor. It is very interesting to note that with this kind of assertion the impact of the previous Govt's ecosystem can be seen. You are on the back foot defending your stance all the time instead of calling out problems right away.
- calvinbhai 9y ago
  Agree. HackerNews seems to quite resilient to such clickbaity condescending articles, but this one still made through. I think there are many outside India who want to understand it genuinely, but are deluged with agenda based news with no other source of information they can rely on.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
sevensor 9y ago
And yet we seem to have fairly reasonable discussions about other contentious issues like vaccination, race, and sex. But somehow discussions of Indian politics turn into flamewars and get flagged off the front page within minutes. As an outsider, I don't get to hear the parties in these debates have the kind of civil discussion this site is generally known for, and I'm left in the dark as to what's even at issue, let alone what the truth might be. This is disappointing, because India is a large, populous, and influential country, and it behooves all of us to understand what's happening there.
- calvinbhai 9y ago
  Country with ~1.3 billion people which is crazy diverse (in terms of number of languages, number of scripts, history, culture, cuisine, arts, religion and geography), is guaranteed to have groups of people with many different views. With such variety, in addition to the great percentage of users on HN being from India (this is just a guess), it's a difficult task to have a good debate without getting the conversation/topic/comment flagged. While much of the popular international media (CNN, NYT, WSJ, WaPo, BBC, Reuters etc) sitcks to a certain ideology, it is near impossible to expect a fair debate based on the India specific content published in these sources of news, which often tend to view everything from Right/Left or Liberal/Progressive/Conservative POV. Currently, the issue is that the history of India is written from the British POV, which has been tweaked later by Russian and American POVs. None of them really glorifying anything that is native to India. In fact a movie glorifying Winston Churchill just won 2 oscars in 2018, while people across the world, including many Indians are not aware of the artificial Bengal Famine orchestrated by Churchill, that lead to the death of 3 million Bengalis. Try inserting this in school texts, and similar uproar will occur. Similarly, contribution of ancient India to the field of science, maths, astronomy and astrophysics is almost non-exsitent. Even now, none of the school texts in India do any justice to this, nor do modern (past 19th century) literature outside India. Example: Many basic mathematical concepts like pythagorean theorem, the current numerical system etc are considered innovations/inventions from Europe and Arabian peninsula (respectively). In India, there's been enough proof available (as cited by those who believe these are Indian inventions) for many to think these are innovations from India and if not the world, at least kids in India should learn that these are Indian innovations and that Indians need to be proud of it. Now based on which side of the debate you are, you'd either dismiss this thought, or hold on to it very dearly, or take a step back and say there needs to be more research on this, and in either case, present both the cases to students who are studying in schools. Many thousand years of scientific understanding remain hidden in plain sight, because of such meddling with history, that draws many many students away from even exploring the real Indian history, from the lens of an Indian, and that is why this is a highly contentious issue. With a Left/Left-liberal/Socialistic/Marxist type of a government India had for ten years (until 2014), enough meddling with history was done at school level, and now the Right of Center / kind of Capitalist govt wants to undo that, and make up for the tweaked history in India over the last few centuries. The moment any such move is made in this direction, we have the world media of certain ideology hyperventilating on such issues and publishing clickbait articles.

tom_hack 9y ago

>> to fix the education system that has been messed by the previous administration. To be sure, 'administrations' would be better word, given what the current ruling party did to school text-books, in its earlier regime during 1998-2004. See this snippet from 'Argumentative Indian' by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen: https://books.google.co.in/books?id=gcGiwyBS3YwC&lpg=PT29&vq=madagascar&pg=PT29#v=snippet&q=madagascar&f=false https://books.google.co.in/books?id=gcGiwyBS3YwC&lpg=PT29&vq...

krtkush 9y ago

> having read more and more content from independent authors (not funded by an institution, publicly) Could you please list these books, papers etc? I too am in hunt of more neutral, unbiased work.

newyankee 9y ago
there is no such thing as unbiased in the case of India. The history is rife with many different issues. The current history of India was rewritten by leftist who control Indian universities like JNU. You will never find anything truly objective till you visit the country and explore its complex interwoven history by yourself and listen to many different perspectives. Even after that nothing can be compressed into a simple narrative. The only difference is India is still a democracy unlike China so you routinely get exaggerated articles like these popping up.
msravi 9y ago
I really suggest that you dig into original references. 1. Read translations of original Buddhist/Jain literature and the Puranas to get an idea of the founding of the Nandas, Pataliputra, Chanakya, Chandragupta Maurya, and Ashoka. 2. Read translations of Megasthenes, Hiuen Tsang, and Fa-hein. 3. Read translations of Harshacharita by Banabhatta to get a feel of Harshavardhana's empire. Read how Banabhatta tears into the practice of Sati - in 600AD. No modern history book will tell you about this. 4. Read "History of India by it's Own Historians" - Elliot to get an idea of the Muslim invasions and the Mughals. These are translations of biographies and works of Muslim historians spanning Ghazni to the Mughals.
- vixen99 9y ago
  It's probably "History of India by its Own Historians".
  - cholantesh 9y ago
    And it's worth noting that it was written specifically to advance the view that British colonialism was okay because, apparently, the Mughals and the Central Asian Sultans were worse.
    - msravi 9y ago
      It's a translation of various Muslim historians. So you can go read the original text. You can completely ignore the "British commentary" if you so wish.

kamaal 9y ago

>>fix the education system that has been messed by the previous administration. There is an assumption that the education system currently is in 'mess'. That is not true. >>The 1% of history gets 99% focus That is how school level education works. Do you think they teach 99% of physics or math in school? Or 99% of entire literature of whichever language you study? You can always opt for Masters or Doctorate in history, instead of other engineering or medicine courses. >>whereas an equally amazing 99% is not mentioned Feel free take up History as your specialization after 10th standard. You can go up to Doctorate and beyond. >>either due to laziness or due to scheming history writers, wanting to support a particular ideology. History is already well written and you can read if you wan to. And even study it full time. You just have to pick the right course. Don't expect to opt for Engineering and Medicine and then study history there. >>Whats worse, is an Indian kid learns more about 200 to 400 yr old architecture around the world, but zilch about a 1000yr old fort or a temple in his/her own state. As an Indian kid in the past, now adult. Who used to spend a lot of time in libraries, you can walk into any government library and pick up any book on any era and specialize on. There is mountains of work written. People just don't read it because the economic value of such knowledge is 0.

newyankee 9y ago
While i agree Indian history cannot be taught properly in a history text book i think each state introduces its own biases and the CBSE textbooks do a big disservice to Indian icons like Shivaji and their contribution to the country especially at the expense of Muslim rulers. The well documented atrocities of a despot like Aurangzeb are whitewashed
- kamaal 9y ago
  Sure, if we are talking about this sort of stuff, let's do away with Hindi language being mandatory. We already have English as a common language. And you guys are suggesting local culture and its history comes first. So local state language and english should be enough. One less subject means we could add a 'History' elective to high school syllabus. Those who are interested can opt for it. Others can opt for whatever they want(Math, Economics, etc etc).

newyankee 9y ago

Calvinbhai , in the meantime it is the task of informed people like yourself to call out these things in the nick of time to take it to a more meaningful debate instead of the routine: ' India is a street shitting, rapist, poor , illiterate and nothing better can be expected'. I think it is impossible for any westerner to understand the history of India looking at it from their distance lens and trying to classify politics as left v right or rich v poor. It is very interesting to note that with this kind of assertion the impact of the previous Govt's ecosystem can be seen. You are on the back foot defending your stance all the time instead of calling out problems right away.

calvinbhai 9y ago
Agree. HackerNews seems to quite resilient to such clickbaity condescending articles, but this one still made through. I think there are many outside India who want to understand it genuinely, but are deluged with agenda based news with no other source of information they can rely on.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

sevensor 9y ago

And yet we seem to have fairly reasonable discussions about other contentious issues like vaccination, race, and sex. But somehow discussions of Indian politics turn into flamewars and get flagged off the front page within minutes. As an outsider, I don't get to hear the parties in these debates have the kind of civil discussion this site is generally known for, and I'm left in the dark as to what's even at issue, let alone what the truth might be. This is disappointing, because India is a large, populous, and influential country, and it behooves all of us to understand what's happening there.

calvinbhai 9y ago
Country with ~1.3 billion people which is crazy diverse (in terms of number of languages, number of scripts, history, culture, cuisine, arts, religion and geography), is guaranteed to have groups of people with many different views. With such variety, in addition to the great percentage of users on HN being from India (this is just a guess), it's a difficult task to have a good debate without getting the conversation/topic/comment flagged. While much of the popular international media (CNN, NYT, WSJ, WaPo, BBC, Reuters etc) sitcks to a certain ideology, it is near impossible to expect a fair debate based on the India specific content published in these sources of news, which often tend to view everything from Right/Left or Liberal/Progressive/Conservative POV. Currently, the issue is that the history of India is written from the British POV, which has been tweaked later by Russian and American POVs. None of them really glorifying anything that is native to India. In fact a movie glorifying Winston Churchill just won 2 oscars in 2018, while people across the world, including many Indians are not aware of the artificial Bengal Famine orchestrated by Churchill, that lead to the death of 3 million Bengalis. Try inserting this in school texts, and similar uproar will occur. Similarly, contribution of ancient India to the field of science, maths, astronomy and astrophysics is almost non-exsitent. Even now, none of the school texts in India do any justice to this, nor do modern (past 19th century) literature outside India. Example: Many basic mathematical concepts like pythagorean theorem, the current numerical system etc are considered innovations/inventions from Europe and Arabian peninsula (respectively). In India, there's been enough proof available (as cited by those who believe these are Indian inventions) for many to think these are innovations from India and if not the world, at least kids in India should learn that these are Indian innovations and that Indians need to be proud of it. Now based on which side of the debate you are, you'd either dismiss this thought, or hold on to it very dearly, or take a step back and say there needs to be more research on this, and in either case, present both the cases to students who are studying in schools. Many thousand years of scientific understanding remain hidden in plain sight, because of such meddling with history, that draws many many students away from even exploring the real Indian history, from the lens of an Indian, and that is why this is a highly contentious issue. With a Left/Left-liberal/Socialistic/Marxist type of a government India had for ten years (until 2014), enough meddling with history was done at school level, and now the Right of Center / kind of Capitalist govt wants to undo that, and make up for the tweaked history in India over the last few centuries. The moment any such move is made in this direction, we have the world media of certain ideology hyperventilating on such issues and publishing clickbait articles.