Politics

Who owns the past? The political colours on textbooks of India

New Education Policy, Youth Politics:The politics of textbooks is rarely just about education. Textbooks in India have changed with governments often enough to suggest a familiar political ritual. From NCERT textbook revisions to the New Education Policy and renewed UGC guideline, education has become a site of ideological contestation. West Bengal is no exception and the shift from Surhrawardy Avenue to Gopal Mukherjee road is a subtle specimen. The dig however is deeper.

Utsa Pal
12 min read
Who owns the past? The political colours on textbooks of India

Long before they enter Parliament, ideological battles are often fought inside classrooms. Every deleted paragraph, every newly inserted chapter and every rewritten historical figure reflects a larger contest over memory and power. New regimes arrive promising to correct old distortions, only to be accused of manufacturing new ones. The names may change, the heroes may vanish and chapters may disappear, but the contest remains remarkably constant: who has the POWER to define the nation's past? T...

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Written by
Utsa Pal
Utsa Pal
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