Singh Sabha Mum­bai gen­eral sec­re­tary Man­mo­han Singh writes a de­tailed mis­sive to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter of In­dian state of Ma­ha­rash­tra protest­ing the dis­tor­tion of his­tor­i­cal facts of June 1984 cul­mi­nat­ing in the at­tack on Dar­bar Sahib, pop­u­larly known as Op­er­a­tion Blues­tar in the Stan­dard IX His­tory text­book. Giv­ing de­tailed rea­sons -so­cial, his­tor­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal, Singh Sabha seeks with­drawal of the text­books al­ready in cir­cu­la­tion and re­place­ment with new ones.

Shri Vinod Tawde Ji,
Hon’ble Min­is­ter of School Ed­u­ca­tion & Sports (Cab­i­net),
Govt. of Ma­ha­rash­tra Mantralaya,
Ma­ha­rash­tra, Mum­bai-400 03

Dear Sir

We write to you to bring to your at­ten­tion mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of facts and events of con­tem­po­rary his­tory in the IX stan­dard text­book pub­lished by the Ma­ha­rash­tra State Bu­reau of Text­book Pro­duc­tion and Cur­ricu­lum Re­search, Pune.

Clearly, the var­i­ous com­mit­tees set up by the Ma­ha­rash­tra State Bu­reau of Text­book Pro­duc­tion and Cur­ricu­lum Re­search have ob­vi­ously not done their home­work and re­search well.  The whole ap­proach is in sub­stan­tial and ill-con­ceived.

The stan­dard IX text­book for His­tory and Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence is full of inani­ties and rushed con­clu­sions with­out due con­sid­er­a­tion of facts and the cir­cum­stances of con­tem­po­rary his­tory.

“The var­i­ous com­mit­tees set up by the Ma­ha­rash­tra State Bu­reau of Text­book Pro­duc­tion and Cur­ricu­lum Re­search have ob­vi­ously not done their home­work and re­search well.  The whole ap­proach is in sub­stan­tial and ill-con­ceived. The stan­dard IX text­book for His­tory and Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence is full of inani­ties and rushed con­clu­sions with­out due con­sid­er­a­tion of facts and the cir­cum­stances of con­tem­po­rary his­tory.”

Sri Guru Singh Sabha( Regd.)  Mum­bai, the apex body of the Sikhs is deeply con­cerned about the con­tents re­lat­ing to Pun­jab in Chap­ter no. 3 ti­tled “In­di­a’s In­ter­nal Chal­lenges”. In this chap­ter, the con­tents of the sub-chap­ter “The Un­rest in Pun­jab” straight­away jumps to the Anand­pur Sahib Res­o­lu­tion of 1973 and lists the var­i­ous gen­uine de­mands which the party made at that point of time. There is noth­ing legally wrong with the de­mands and nei­ther does the text say that. How­ever, it sud­denly jumps to 1980 and talks about Sant Harc­hand Singh Lon­gowal (mis­spelt as Sant Har­cha­ran Singh Lon­gowal), Sant Jar­nail Singh Bhin­dran­wale and oth­ers  then lead­ing  to a two-line jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of the storm­ing of Dar­bar Sahib, aka The Golden Tem­ple and the killing of in­sur­gents and in­no­cent  devo­tees therein. It gives them a blan­ket la­bel of “ter­ror­ists”. Then it calls the Op­er­a­tion Blues­tar a “mil­i­tary ex­pe­di­tion”. Then an­other leap to 1986 to an­other mil­i­tary as­sault called the Op­er­a­tion Black Thun­der. And then the con­clu­sion that all this led to peace in Pun­jab and the chap­ter on Pun­jab con­cludes fol­lowed by the sub-chap­ter on the North-East.

Pun­jab suf­fered for two decades deaths and de­struc­tion -hun­dreds upon thou­sands of tor­tures, in­vol­un­tary dis­ap­pear­ances, doc­u­mented killing of “un­known peo­ple” by the po­lice, para-mil­i­tary and mil­i­tary forces, or­di­nary pil­grims killed by the In­dian army in the precincts of the Golden Tem­ple, the arts and arte­facts of the Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary looted by the army af­ter killing the in­sur­gents and in­no­cent  devo­tees in Dar­bar Sahib, com­mis­sion af­ter com­mis­sion blam­ing the gov­ern­ment for their po­lit­i­cal and mil­i­tary role, the geno­ci­dal at­tacks on Sikhs dur­ing 1-4 No­vem­ber 1984 all across 250 towns of In­dia. There is no men­tion of any of this. There is no men­tion that the very de­mands men­tioned in the first para­graph re­lat­ing to the con­tents of the Anand­pur Sahib res­o­lu­tion have not yet been met. The au­thors have cho­sen to ig­nore that var­i­ous other states have sought sim­i­lar de­mands since the Anand­pur Sahib res­o­lu­tion.

  

 “Dis­tor­tion is one crime but to ob­fus­cate facts, to write only one side and to com­press a decade-long strug­gle by the peo­ple of Pun­jab into half a page is a hor­ren­dous at­tempt to teach stu­dents a con­vo­luted ver­sion of con­tem­po­rary his­tory.”

They have failed to even say that while the whole coun­try had ac­cepted the emer­gency of the then Prime Min­is­ter Mrs. In­dira Gandhi – it was the thou­sands of vol­un­teers of the Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal who of­fered peace­ful re­sis­tance and vol­un­tary ar­rest as a mark of protest.The learned au­thors do not ask the ques­tion, “Why is Chandi­garh still the only city in the coun­try which is the cap­i­tal of two states?

The role of Pun­jab as the grain bas­ket of the coun­try, the pi­o­neer in Green rev­o­lu­tion and its role in the na­tional game of hockey should have found men­tion in the his­tory book. The au­thors should have writ­ten how de­spite ground­wa­ter de­ple­tion, short­age of wa­ter, Power head­works in Hi­machal Pradesh, Pun­jab still con­tin­ues to share wa­ter with Haryana, Ra­jasthan and Delhi.

Writ­ing con­tem­po­rary his­tory is al­ways fraught with prob­lems as the char­ac­ters of his­tory are still fresh in the minds of the peo­ple and each one has a dif­fer­ent per­cep­tion of them. Crit­i­cal analy­sis of any char­ac­ter is bound to cre­ate di­vi­sions in so­ci­ety -not only amongst the in­tel­lec­tu­als and the his­to­ri­ans but also amongst the com­mon man.

 “The role of Pun­jab as the grain bas­ket of the coun­try, the pi­o­neer in Green rev­o­lu­tion and its role in the na­tional game of hockey should have found men­tion in the his­tory book. The au­thors should have writ­ten how de­spite ground­wa­ter de­ple­tion, short­age of wa­ter, Power head­works in Hi­machal Pradesh, Pun­jab still con­tin­ues to share wa­ter with Haryana, Ra­jasthan and Delhi.”

Since the last four decades, the state of Pun­jab and the ma­jor­ity pop­u­la­tion of that state -Sikhs have been pur­su­ing many re­li­gious, so­cial and po­lit­i­cal de­mands. One such de­mand which was the fore­run­ner of many states seek­ing a true fed­eral work­ing of the coun­try was the Anand­pur Res­o­lu­tion of 1973 which sought a to­tal re­vamp­ing of the Cen­tre-State re­la­tions with com­pre­hen­sive pow­ers to the States. Though this res­o­lu­tion was later adopted by var­i­ous states in one form or the other, there was a mas­sive elec­toral out­cry against this his­toric doc­u­ment which ac­tu­ally cul­mi­nated into an anti-Sikh cam­paign across the coun­try.

Dis­tor­tion is one crime but to ob­fus­cate facts, to write only one side and to com­press a decade-long strug­gle by the peo­ple of Pun­jab into half a page is a hor­ren­dous at­tempt to teach stu­dents a con­vo­luted ver­sion of con­tem­po­rary his­tory.

We re­alise that to en­cap­su­late a 40-year pe­riod into a text book and that too the con­tem­po­rary pe­riod of 1961 to 2000 is not easy. In fact, we be­lieve that this is a dan­ger­ous ven­ture of the Ma­ha­rash­tra Text­book board. Why do it? We are pretty cer­tain that just as in the chap­ter on Pun­jab, there are gross er­rors, mis­takes, lapses and sweep­ing con­clu­sions re­gard­ing other ar­eas and as­pects too.

The Pref­ace by the Di­rec­tor of the Ma­ha­rash­tra State Text­book Board -Dr. Sunil Magor spells out the rather ca­sual ap­proach taken to write a his­tory book for young im­pres­sion­able stu­dents of Class IX. The first para of the pref­ace says that “This book is a part of the ef­forts be­ing made to mod­ernise the his­tory cur­ricu­lum.” The sec­ond para says that “In fact, com­pelled by the limit of the num­ber of pages in this text­book, it is a rather cur­sory overview of ap­prox­i­mately forty years.”

The di­rec­tor ad­mits that it is “a rather cur­sory overview”. Are we to teach mat­ter col­lected and writ­ten in a cur­sory man­ner or in a con­sid­ered man­ner? Teach­ers of the book have been told in the note to teach­ers that “you will re­live those times” as these events hap­pened in their life­time, which means that they would fur­ther add their own view­points to the al­ready sul­lied ma­te­r­ial pro­vided in the text book. Why should we teach the whole pe­riod of 40 years if we can­not put to­gether a con­sid­ered well-thought of ver­sion?

Did any­one eval­u­ate from the child psy­chol­ogy point of view the im­pact on chil­dren when mem­bers of a com­mu­nity are la­belled ter­ror­ists? Did the writ­ers think about the im­pact of the ar­ti­cle on a Sikh child in a class full of a ma­jor­ity of oth­ers? How many jour­nal­ists, in­tel­lec­tu­als, writ­ers and his­to­ri­ans un­der­stand the true course of events of 1984? How will a stu­dent study­ing in IX stan­dard un­der­stand?

The im­pugned paras of this text book have the po­ten­tial of cre­at­ing an­i­mos­ity and ha­tred against the Sikhs who are peace­fully set­tled in Ma­ha­rash­tra for long and are con­tribut­ing to the State in all walks of life.

Singh Sabha seeks the rewrit­ing of the chap­ter on Pun­jab, in par­tic­u­lar in­clud­ing all the de­fam­ing ref­er­ences in the paras on Op­er­a­tion Blues­tar. The Sikhs of Mum­bai and var­i­ous parts of Ma­ha­rash­tra are up­set over the con­tents of the book and we re­quest you to im­me­di­ately with­draw the al­ready cir­cu­lated text­books and re­place them with new ones.

Yours sin­cerely,

For Sri Guru Singh Sabha (Regd.), Mum­bai
Sd. Man­mo­han Singh
Gen­eral Sec­re­tary,
Sri Guru Singh Sabha (Regd.), Mum­bai

CC to:

1. Ma­ha­rash­tra State Mi­nor­ity Com­mis­sion
2. Na­tional Com­mis­sion for Mi­nori­ties
3. S. G. P. C., Am­rit­sar
4. D. S. G. M. C., New Delhi
5. Chair­man, Board, Takhat Sachk­hand, Sri Ha­zoor Sahib-Nanded, Ma­ha­rash­tra.