The Communal Concern in Social Science Education

Abstract

  In Indian political and intellectual discourse the terms 'communalism' and 'communal' appeared in the early 1970s. It was initiated by a group of left-wing academics, mainly historians, through their writings. Soon it captured the lion's share both in academic and political interactions. Formal education was the central arena from which it spread with time in other important spheres in the country. This article traces its basic assumptions in some details. As the objective of this project was political, the article argues that it did big harm to social science and humanities education in the country. The contents of history, political science, language & literature, and sociology became politicised with distortions, half-truths and plain fabrications on a number of vital socio political issues, past and present. Since it was useful for a range of political parties and forces in the country, the distorted formulations were helped to propagate in educational and media institutions. The article examines those formulations to underline the damage done to the education of young generations. The propositions besmirched as 'communal' and those propagated as 'secular-scientific' are explained in the article for consideration. Since the issues involved are very much alive today, and the propositions as 'communal' and 'secular' are bandied regularly, the article is an attempt to put the issues on a bipartisan plane to help assess it.