What’s Wrong With Our History Education?

Do you remember your history text books? I do. They were always boring, never providing any insight about the historical times and the cultures. This was more so evident when it came to Indian history. The sections about Egypt and Roman civilizations seemed at least palatable compared to those about Indian civilization. I often asked myself why our history textbooks couldn’t be at least a bit interesting and insightful, and make the students inquisitive about our past.

So recently when I heard the textbooks for Karnataka state board were updated and available on the Internet for anyone to read, I was curious to see how the history books of today are, and if there was any improvement from my schooling days. To my horror, I found the updated high school texts very shoddily produced, full of factual, grammatical and typographic errors. It’s immediately evident, even from a few examples. It suffices to state that if you open a random page, the probability of finding more than 3 errors (grammatical/ factual/ typographic) is high, and the probability of finding at least one error is very close to 100%.

I started reading the 9th grade history textbook. Just like you check one grain of rice to know if the entire pot is cooked or not, I will provide you with a sample ‘grain’ from this book. This short paragraph is about the new religious thinkers such as Mahavira and Gautama Buddha, their philosophical thoughts and the genesis of new cults/ religions (or whatever you want to call them).

According to this textbook, “new religions came in because there was a change in agriculture modes and what people ate. Buddhism and Jainism rose because eastern UP and Bihar came under new methods of agriculture not seen before, using iron ploughs. These ploughs needed oxen to pull them. There was a scarcity of oxen, because they were sacrificed in religious practices. Hence people were attracted to these new religions that opposed sacrifice of animals, and taught non-violence as a principle. This is why these religions became popular”.

I have read many a history book, but this was the first time I came across such an explanation. Of course, at this level textbooks are not expected to contain citations or source. However, the text here does not make any distinction among fact, hypothesis, theory and inference. Everything is written as though it is crystal clear. I wonder what impression the teachers and students studying these ill-written text books will be getting about history in general, and of Indian history in particular.

When I shared the above section from the Karnataka text book on social media, I got a pointer from someone as to the source of such content in proof of its ‘supposed authenticity’ — A page from a book of 11th grade CBSE book written by R. S. Sharma. He is often cited as a source of reputable history.

It can be readily inferred that the Kannada text book draws material from this text. R.S. Sharma also does not cite any sources for the conclusions, and his text also looks extremely similar to the ones I studied back when I was in high school. Nevertheless, I just thought of doing some additional fact checking, and took a random paragraph from the book — this one dealing with the coming of Aryans to India.

This short paragraph is verily overloaded with facts, semi-facts, pseudo-facts, and blatant lies as you will discover below:

• Aryans came to India in several waves (May be true, may be not, but the text does not give citations or tell how such inferences were made)
• Earliest wave was Rigvedic people who came to India around 1500 BC (No citations given)
• They came in contact with other tribes such as dasyus & dasas who were original inhabitants (Again, no citations given)
• They were a also a branch of ancient Iranians since their literature also mentions dAsa (This is the statement somewhat close to truth and supported by facts — that Rig Vedic people and ancient Iranians had something in common). But again if dasas were native Indians, did Iranians go from India (after Rig Vedic people came to India) ? The text remains mum about this.
• After stating “They (Rig Vedic Aryans) came into conflict with the indigenous inhabitants called the dasyus, dasas”, in the very next sentence, the author shifts to says dasas may be a branch of early Aryans. A very quick shift in the definition of the term, indeed.
• Next, the author states “Possibly the dasyus in the Rig Veda represent the original inhabitants of the country, and an Aryan chief who overpowered them was called Trasadasyu’ — So within three lines, the original inhabitants was reduced to include only dasyus.
• Next he says “The term dasyu-hatya, slaughter of the dasyus, is repeatedly mentioned in the Rig Veda

When I saw the last bullet, I saw a good opportunity to test the validity. All the previous bullets were inferences, opinions, and not immediately quantitatively measurable. But talking about “repeated mention of a word or a phrase in a text” is a *very* measurable quantity.

Back when I was in high school there was no Internet, or no access to a Rig Vedic scholar. Or even if I had, I do not know if he knew the entire 1028 suktas (i.e. 10600 verses, 21200 lines to be very accurate), or if he would answer my questions about the Veda. Thankfully, now there is Internet, and the whole searchable Rig Veda is available at:
http://www.meluhha.com/rv/

A search for the word ‘dasyu’ reveals that the word occurs exactly 51 times in all of the 21200 lines. Even assuming an average 5 words per line, this translates to 51 times in 106000 words. A whopping 480 parts per million! What an unbelievably high rate to be called a “repeated mention”!

Since Rig Veda has many hymns about Gods such as Indra and Agni, I made a search for these terms. The word Indra occurs over 1700 times, and Agni over 700 times. These, in my opinion, are examples of high frequency.

How many times the word ‘dasyu’ occurs in the Rig Veda ?

Oops. Sorry. Spoke too soon. What R. S. Sharma claims is that the phrase ‘dasyu-hatya’ is a frequent occurrence. Not the word dasyu. Let me look for it, for I want to stick with facts.

The term dasyu-hatya (or something related) occurs a total 7 times in the 21200 lines of Rig Veda. This translates to 66 parts per million, by no means a high frequency occurrence!

Moral of the story: Text book writers may be under a rock for decades. We need not be. Not in today’s information age. This research was to be done by the textbook writers. But surely they have not done it. If we care about the next generation of kids, I think we need to do our bit so that they don’t live under the rock forever.