Whole swaths of the Muslim heritage erased, fundamental scientific concepts forgotten, the embarrassing past of Hindu nationalists watered down… planes operated in secondary school textbooks.
Officially, this is to lighten the programs to facilitate the return to class of students after the Covid-19 pandemic. But the themes chosen leave little doubt as to the real intentions of the government. History or science books have indeed been purged of elements that have long annoyed the Hindu nationalists of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Indian People’s Party (BJP).
Charles Darwin is one of the main victims to have been identified. The British naturalist’s theory of evolution has been dropped from the new edition of the second class textbooks altogether. Since the teaching of biology is optional in first and last year, a large proportion of high school students therefore risk never knowing its contributions to universal scope. The subject had been in the crosshairs for several years: as early as 2018, the Minister of Higher Education at the time had deemed the Darwinian thesis “scientifically erroneous”, calling for a change in school and university programs. “No one has ever seen a monkey turn into a man,” he said to justify his position.
An ideological project dictated by the hindutva
The purge does not stop at Darwin. The periodic table of elements, drawn up by the Russian Dimitri Mendeleïev, which makes it possible to organize and understand the chemical universe, has also disappeared from second-grade textbooks. As well as certain chapters or passages dealing with pollution, climate change, sustainable management of natural resources or Michael Faraday’s contributions to the understanding of electricity and magnetism.
“The ideological project of this government is dictated by the hindutva [qui défend l’idée d’une suprématie et d’une nation hindoues]the theory of evolution and the periodic table go against the Hindu conception of the cosmos according to which the universe was created from five elements [la Terre, l’eau, le feu, l’air et le ciel]“, regrets Gauhar Raza, former chief scientist of the Indian Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, the equivalent of the CNRS.
More than 4,500 people (scientists, teachers and even citizens) were outraged by these omissions in an open letter dating from the end of April, where they demanded the reintroduction of Darwin’s work on the origin of species and natural selection. in the course. “The fact that the biological world is constantly changing, that evolution is a law-governed process that does not require divine intervention, and that humans evolved from certain species of apes were cornerstones of thought rational,” they write.
Particularly worrying, the revision of textbooks is part of a broader context that promotes obscurantism. BJP officials keep hammering out all sorts of smoky theories. Starting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who, shortly after coming to power in 2014, set the tone. At a gathering of health experts in Bombay, he claimed that ancient India had already mastered the techniques of cosmetic surgery. Otherwise how to explain that the god Ganesh found himself with an elephant’s head screwed on a man’s body?
Ideology also interferes in history lessons
The message was clear, according to researcher Gauhar Raza: “Hindu religion would now be intertwined with scientific facts” and “the lines would blur between science on the one hand, myths and superstitious beliefs on the other”. A real step backwards in a country endowed with a great scientific tradition and whose Constitution calls on each citizen to “spread the scientific spirit, humanism and the spirit of criticism and reform”. “The theory of evolution allows us to understand the diversity of nature without having to resort to theology and the Hindu nationalist government does not appreciate this, nor the subjects which raise debates”, underlines Anindita Bhadra, an Indian biologist.
Ideology has also interfered in history textbooks for several years, objects of numerous rewritings. The latest revision goes one step further. Fundamental passages on the assassination of Gandhi in 1948 have been largely watered down, such as the fact that the murderer of the father of the nation, Nathuram Godse, a fundamentalist, had belonged to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, an organization with paramilitary methods affiliated with the BJP. Social science textbooks will also no longer mention the anti-Muslim pogroms, in which an estimated 2,000 people perished in 2002 in Gujarat, then ruled by Narendra Modi.
An entire chapter on the Mughal dynasty that ruled much of India between the 16th and 19th centuries has also been removed from senior year books. These Muslim emperors are hated by ruling nationalists, who accuse historians of glorifying them at the expense of Hindu rulers. “The chapters erased from the history books are precisely those which do not correspond to the pseudo-historical vision of the current government”, denounced more than 200 “worried” historians in a forum. It remains to be seen whether Narendra Modi will want to share an original point of view on the French Revolution with Emmanuel Macron, as guest of honor at the July 14 parade in Paris…