Click to play videoJaipur: Just three days after announcing its plans to rewrite the state's history, the Rajasthan government has launched its controversial 'rewriting history' project amidst protests by historians and the Opposition Congress.
The Congress has slammed the project as the government's attempt to take the RSS agenda forward. Now the government says it might as well teach the history it is compiling.
Rajasthan government on Thursday rolled out the ambitious project with the go ahead from former external affairs minister Jaswant Singh.
“This will in a way be an edition of social anthropology of all the villages,” said Jaswant Singh.
The Congress, supported by teachers associations, came out in protest against what it said was as an attempt to fan the RSS agenda and the government minced no words in its reply to the charges.
“Then they say we're taking forward the agenda of Hindutva. Why? Don't Hindus live in India? Do Hindus live out of India?” Rajasthan Education Minister Ghanshyam Tiwari said.
As part of the project, government school teachers will visit 41,000 villages of the state and compile history of each village.
This, the government says, will lead to a comprehensive and authentic documentation of the state's history, which has so far only been written by colonial officials.
But historians don't agree. “History created by unskilled persons, just a jumble, just a tourist guide,” said Historian R K Pant
What has further deepened the controversy over the project is that the government now says it might introduce it as part of the school curriculum.
“It will be utilised on a grand scale – whether it is syllabus books or history of the society or even for the use of historians,” said Minister of State for Education of Rajasthan Vasudev Devnani.
Now, academicians and historians are worried that 'half baked historical facts' compiled by untrained staff might make it to the textbooks.
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