Teaching politics in a liberal society

Much anxiety has been expressed over the inclusion of contemporary history in the political science syllabus of class XII. Judgement of how these themes are handled should await the completion of the textbook. But the syllabus itself is revolutionary. For the first time there will be room for events that are an embarrassment to the ruling party of the day, not just the opposition. It includes events like the anti-Sikh riots (1984), Gujarat mayhem (2002), the Emergency (1975) etc. The syllabus fills a yawning gap that results from history stopping at 1947. Anyone who has cared to look at the new political science and history textbooks for classes IX and XI, will find complaints against the new curriculum and textbooks baseless. We should hope that the final version of the class X and XII textbooks will measure up to this promise. There will be areas of disagreement. But the new textbooks are among the most exciting things that have happened in a long time. Scholars central to stewarding the process of curriculum or textbook writing like Ram Guha, Yogendra Yadav, Suhas Palshikar or Neeladari Bhattacharya (hardly a rabid partisan list) among others, have done a magnificent job of infusing new vitality into textbooks. What makes the new history texts a departure is best expressed in George Eliot’s words: “The highest aim in education is to obtain not results but powers, not particular solutions, but the means by which endless solutions may be wrought. He is the most effective educator who aims less at perfecting specific acquirements than at producing the mental condition which makes acquirements easy.” The issue is not what particular politics or history you teach, the issue is whether students can learn to think. What kinds of questions can we ask about our politics? The ambition is not to preach dull dogma, but cultivate thought itself. The new texts do this wonderfully, and exercises are framed so that the student’s critical acumen can even turn upon the book itself. One of the conditions of cultivating thinking is that books speak to students. They must provoke discussion, incite new questions and point to ways of finding answers. The old textbooks, with some exceptions, failed on all counts. They were products of pedagogy that had dogmatic faith in its own authority, which believed in purveying truths rather than making students partners in the voyage of discovery. The authoritative voice in those textbooks, generated a counter and corrosive scepticism, and since those textbooks did not trust the intelligence of students, they came not to trust themselves. The inclusion of contemporary history must be seen in this context. My first political memory is of the horrors of the Emergency and the air of expectation that surrounded the Janata Party coming to power. I was in high school when the anti-Sikh carnage took place in Delhi. Simultaneously the Shah Bano case was threatening to erupt, and even a quick glance at a newspaper would raise all kinds of troubling questions. But the textbooks we…