Violating the spirit of the Indian Constitution & Indian civilisation
RadG April 9, 2023, 2:59pm #1
GN Devy spells out the “larger plan” being attempted & underway in writing history texts. Texts that propose a “kind of truth which will be far from the truth of history”. This "needs to be challenged, checked, and questioned. But only challenging or questioning might become quite rhetorical. Therefore, rather than getting into a dispute or a controversy, the best way is to produce a set of texts, which describe the past of the 12,000 years, based on the science of history, on logic and sound scholarship. "
History texts are rewritten all the time to reflect prevailing ideologies, “—all written history is a product of its time. Yes, it is getting rewritten but there are various ways of rewriting history. One way is to deepen and broaden understanding by bringing out the nuances of the past. The other way is to reformulate the accounts of the past to hypnotise people in the present and make them incapable of asking questions. Normally, academic historians have extended understanding and expanded the horizons of historical visions but in times of totalitarian regimes, the understanding of history gets blocked, compressed and directed towards obedience to the regime, generating loyalty, excessive nationalism and so on.”
Bringing out the dangers of this kind of re-writing in shaping future generations Devy warns "One cannot wishfully rewrite history. When an ideology tries to promote an extreme nationalism, it wants to paint only a glorious past without looking at the gaps in that glorious tradition or at the failures of our ancestors. But every generation needs to learn from the past—what our ancestors achieved and where they failed. If such spurious claims are forced down the throats of students, the entire young generation will get a false picture, will grow up not being able to look at history critically. And a civilisation or nation that does not know how to look at itself critically, will fail in developing. People will simply gloat over imagined glories and have a false sense of self satisfaction, causing inertia. "
The plan is to depict a heroic regime: GN Devy on attempts to rewrite history
Devy says that there is no such thing as Hindu history, but the RSS has a view of Indian history in which only Vedic and Sanatan philosophies are everything.
The question for us is how do we counter this through scientific, rational, reasoned education?
emkaygee April 10, 2023, 5:03am #2
Perhaps the forces which are busy re-writing history and changing textbook content, are immune to logic and rationality. They are motivated by negative thoughts and feelings, driven by leaders who have “control OCD”.
Some years ago, Yudowsky proposed a modification of Moore’s Law: “Every 18-months, the minimum IQ necessary to destroy the world drops by one point” .