11-26-2005, 02:29 AM
There was a previous part of the above article which I am posting here:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Jholawallah obscurantism replaces Marxist poppycock
Udayan Namboodiri/ New Delhi
What is so earthshaking about the "nationalist movement in Indo-China" that it should be represented with greater emphasis before India's 14-year-olds than their own freedom struggle? And, that too in a textbook titled India and the Contemporary World?       Â
Ho Chi Minh: Indian Idol?
Now, who on earth was Nguyen Ai Quoc? More on this shadowy character later, but, why, pray, is it necessary for India's school-goers to know more about the "ideas" of Guiseppe Mazzinni, Phan Dinh Phung and Phan Boi Chau than Mahatma Gandhi and Subhas Chandra Bose?
The Social Science textbook for Class X students that NCERT's "detoxification" specialists are seeking to introduce from the next academic year based on a syllabus released recently, seems to be based on the premise that India's new generation would be better off with an understanding of "Nationalism in Europe" (mostly Italy) and knowledge of "Indo-China" than their own.
In fact, this seems to be the rule of thumb for the writers of the upcoming set of books that would be on the market to replace the present lot authored by Marxist historians who were guilty of even worse falsification. But while the Marxists pursued an agenda of distortion without withholding primary information from the public domain, the new lot have another scheme in mind - black out Indian history from Indians. This is seen in the syllabi for all classes. In The third -and last-"unit" on history in the Class X Social Sciences syllabus, "Nationalism in India: Civil Disobedience Movement" is number three on the list after Europe and "Indo-China". In it, India has four sub-themes compared to five for "Indo-China". While all those foreigners are specially named, our own Mahatma and Netaji do not even merit mention in the syllabus document.
Ninety per cent of those who finish Class X will never pick up a book on History again. They will pursue the sciences or commerce in pursuit of more lucrative careers. Of the remaining 10 per cent, less than half would take up History in the Plus-Two stage. Even fewer will take up History at the University level. So, instead of using the school years for spreading maximum awareness of India's 9,000-year-old past, NCERT has effectively decided to deny Gen-Next their own history.
The obsession with "Indo-China" and "Nguyen Ai Quoc" (misspelt Nguyen Ac Quoc in the document) is Minister Arjun Singh's thank-you gift to the Communist bloc which propped him up as HRD Minister. Firstly, "Indo-China" is a term that has long vanished from public usage. Westerners used it to describe the region now comprising three separate nations -Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
At any rate, the NCERT syllabus has focussed only on Vietnam. The exclusive emphasis on the "second Indo-China war" (an euphemism for the Vietnam war of 1954-75) is nothing but an excuse for a lot of America bashing. The silence on Cambodia, where Communists under Pol Pot killed three million innocent people, screams.
Finally, "Nguyen Ai Quoc". This is only one of the ten aliases used by a man who is generally believed to have been born as Nguyen Tat Thanh. The most famous one was Ho Chi Minh, a great favourite of India's Communists. But the life and "ideas" of this leader of the Vietcong in its war (called "glorious" by Indian Reds) against America are under scrutiny today in his own country. Whatever little is known about him has come from Communist hacks.
According to an authoritative book in Vietnamese, "Unmasking Ho Chi Minh" by Huy Phong and Yen Anh (US edition, 1989), this man, apart from being a successful general, was an infamous mass murderer, barely literate, and, in true Communist style, betrayed Phan Boi Chau (the other hero recommended by NCERT) to the French police for $ 10,000.
Virtually all the basic data for the hagiographic books, which India's Red-Jholawalla brigade venerate, can be traced directly or indirectly to a book entitled Stories of President Ho's Active Life by Tran Dan Tien, first published in 1948 by Van Hoc Publishing. It was apparently intended as a biography but was presented in the form of an interview with Ho Chi Minh. Later, it turned out that the "interviewer", Tran Dan Tien, was "Nguyen Ai Quoc" or Ho himself. Only one other leader in world history has "created" his own biography - Joseph Stalin.
Asked what the children of India did to deserve this, sources in the NCERT's Social Science department deny any role. It turns out that Director Kumar had "outsourced" the entire exercise, from syllabus development through textbook writing, to a group of jholawallah scholars who Arjun Singh, like Nurul Hasan before him, had selected to commit larceny with the truth.
These include Hari Vasudevan of Kolkata University, Niladri Bhattacharya of JNU, Narayani Gupta of Jamia Millia Islamia and Chitra Srinivasan, a teacher of Sardar Patel School. In fact, the "committee" had started its work even before the Central Advisory Board on Education had approved NCERT's new Curriculum Framework.
(To be concluded)<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Jholawallah obscurantism replaces Marxist poppycock
Udayan Namboodiri/ New Delhi
What is so earthshaking about the "nationalist movement in Indo-China" that it should be represented with greater emphasis before India's 14-year-olds than their own freedom struggle? And, that too in a textbook titled India and the Contemporary World?       Â
Ho Chi Minh: Indian Idol?
Now, who on earth was Nguyen Ai Quoc? More on this shadowy character later, but, why, pray, is it necessary for India's school-goers to know more about the "ideas" of Guiseppe Mazzinni, Phan Dinh Phung and Phan Boi Chau than Mahatma Gandhi and Subhas Chandra Bose?
The Social Science textbook for Class X students that NCERT's "detoxification" specialists are seeking to introduce from the next academic year based on a syllabus released recently, seems to be based on the premise that India's new generation would be better off with an understanding of "Nationalism in Europe" (mostly Italy) and knowledge of "Indo-China" than their own.
In fact, this seems to be the rule of thumb for the writers of the upcoming set of books that would be on the market to replace the present lot authored by Marxist historians who were guilty of even worse falsification. But while the Marxists pursued an agenda of distortion without withholding primary information from the public domain, the new lot have another scheme in mind - black out Indian history from Indians. This is seen in the syllabi for all classes. In The third -and last-"unit" on history in the Class X Social Sciences syllabus, "Nationalism in India: Civil Disobedience Movement" is number three on the list after Europe and "Indo-China". In it, India has four sub-themes compared to five for "Indo-China". While all those foreigners are specially named, our own Mahatma and Netaji do not even merit mention in the syllabus document.
Ninety per cent of those who finish Class X will never pick up a book on History again. They will pursue the sciences or commerce in pursuit of more lucrative careers. Of the remaining 10 per cent, less than half would take up History in the Plus-Two stage. Even fewer will take up History at the University level. So, instead of using the school years for spreading maximum awareness of India's 9,000-year-old past, NCERT has effectively decided to deny Gen-Next their own history.
The obsession with "Indo-China" and "Nguyen Ai Quoc" (misspelt Nguyen Ac Quoc in the document) is Minister Arjun Singh's thank-you gift to the Communist bloc which propped him up as HRD Minister. Firstly, "Indo-China" is a term that has long vanished from public usage. Westerners used it to describe the region now comprising three separate nations -Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
At any rate, the NCERT syllabus has focussed only on Vietnam. The exclusive emphasis on the "second Indo-China war" (an euphemism for the Vietnam war of 1954-75) is nothing but an excuse for a lot of America bashing. The silence on Cambodia, where Communists under Pol Pot killed three million innocent people, screams.
Finally, "Nguyen Ai Quoc". This is only one of the ten aliases used by a man who is generally believed to have been born as Nguyen Tat Thanh. The most famous one was Ho Chi Minh, a great favourite of India's Communists. But the life and "ideas" of this leader of the Vietcong in its war (called "glorious" by Indian Reds) against America are under scrutiny today in his own country. Whatever little is known about him has come from Communist hacks.
According to an authoritative book in Vietnamese, "Unmasking Ho Chi Minh" by Huy Phong and Yen Anh (US edition, 1989), this man, apart from being a successful general, was an infamous mass murderer, barely literate, and, in true Communist style, betrayed Phan Boi Chau (the other hero recommended by NCERT) to the French police for $ 10,000.
Virtually all the basic data for the hagiographic books, which India's Red-Jholawalla brigade venerate, can be traced directly or indirectly to a book entitled Stories of President Ho's Active Life by Tran Dan Tien, first published in 1948 by Van Hoc Publishing. It was apparently intended as a biography but was presented in the form of an interview with Ho Chi Minh. Later, it turned out that the "interviewer", Tran Dan Tien, was "Nguyen Ai Quoc" or Ho himself. Only one other leader in world history has "created" his own biography - Joseph Stalin.
Asked what the children of India did to deserve this, sources in the NCERT's Social Science department deny any role. It turns out that Director Kumar had "outsourced" the entire exercise, from syllabus development through textbook writing, to a group of jholawallah scholars who Arjun Singh, like Nurul Hasan before him, had selected to commit larceny with the truth.
These include Hari Vasudevan of Kolkata University, Niladri Bhattacharya of JNU, Narayani Gupta of Jamia Millia Islamia and Chitra Srinivasan, a teacher of Sardar Patel School. In fact, the "committee" had started its work even before the Central Advisory Board on Education had approved NCERT's new Curriculum Framework.
(To be concluded)<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->