Fears grow in India over education

Top historian criticized for his claims about ancient Hindu technology

Indians were flying airplanes, carrying out stem cell research and may even have been using cosmic weapons 5,000 years ago, according to the chairman of India's leading historical organization.

Professor Y. Sudershan Rao, the head of the Indian Council of Historical Research, has been criticized by fellow historians for comments that Hindu epics are adequate to understand the ancient world, rather than relying on empirical evidence.

The Hindu nationalist government appointed Rao to the prestigious academic post soon after winning the biggest landslide in three decades, fueling concerns of a push to teach the superiority of Hindu values and mythology at the cost of academic rigor, and cutting against the grain of secularism that runs through multi-faith modern India.

"We have so many proofs that these events happened," Rao, 69, said in an interview, describing events in the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, the ancient Hindu epics about love and war, truth and deceit, that feature characters using inextinguishable fire and weapons with the destructive power of a nuclear arsenal.

Similar views have won support from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and in part reflect a belief that India's history books are beholden to colonial powers and foreign invaders.

Controversial move

While there is debate over the exact age of the Hindu epics, historians say they were probably written at least two millennia ago. Rao says this in itself is proof the texts are factual because the art of writing fiction was developed only a few centuries back.

Many academics are horrified by such views, and describe his appointment as a blow for the history organization set up four decades ago to guide research and hand out grants. They point to signs of a broader plan to bring more Hinduism to the classroom through changes to the curriculum.

Two Indian states run by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have recruited controversial Hindu nationalist Dinanath Batra to advise on writing textbooks.

In June, thousands of schools in Gujarat were given textbooks by Batra that claimed cars were invented in ancient India and told children to draw an enlarged nation to include Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

Teachers at Batra's organization say they want the books to be in every school.

"The lessons from today's history books are that Indians are nothing and good for nothing," said Atul Kothari, secretary of Batra's Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, or Save the Education Movement. "The truth is that historically we have been a far superior race."

Modi remarks

Education Minister Smriti Irani, a former soap actress, declined to comment on what revisions will be included in a review of the curriculum planned next year.

The last time the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party was in power a decade ago it began to rewrite school books in line with Hindu nationalist orthodoxy.

When the rival Congress party came back to power it rewrote the books again. Academics say the loser in all this are confused, and sometimes ill-informed, schoolchildren.

Modi is the first prime minister to publicly back the view that holy texts show many discoveries of modern science were made first by ancient Indians. He told an audience of doctors last month that the Hindu god Ganesh's head was evidence of ancient plastic surgery.

A warrior the Mahabharata describes as born outside his mother's womb was a test-tube baby, Modi said.

(China Daily 11/22/2014 page10)