The Construction of History and Nationalism in India: Textbooks, Controversies and Politics

ISBN-13: 9780415565066 / Angielski / Twarda / 2010 / 244 str.

Sylvie Guichard

Opis

In the study of nationalism, history plays a fundamental role in the construction of national identity. However, the existence of one or more concurrent narratives for the construction of this identity is often not accounted for, and there are cases where the ‘common past’ or a ‘collective memory’ is no longer shared.
This book centres on the construction, elaboration and negotiation of the narratives that have become official history in India. These narratives influence politics and the representation of the nation. Depending on the chosen definition of the nation, 150 million Muslim Indians are either included or excluded from the nation, and considered as ‘foreigners from inside’. Showing that beyond the antagonism of two representations of history, in fact two conceptions of the Indian nation – secular and Hindu nationalist – confronted each other during the history textbook controversy between 1998 and 2004. The author underlines the diverging elements of the two discourses, and points out their surprising similarities. Yet, in contemporary India this convergence remains overshadowed in political debates as the definition of the political has been shaped by the opposition between these two visions of the nation. This book demonstrates the conception of the school textbook as a site of national construction and more generally highlights the problematic link between historiography, nation-state and nation-building.

Recenzje

"In her concise, well-written and well-balanced book on the Indian textbook debates Guichard draws attention to aspects and dynamics beyond the simplifying dichotomy of Hindu nationalism and secularism, which have been widely neglected to date." - Tobias Delfs; Internationales Asienforum, 43 (2012).

Spis treści

Introduction 1. Nation, Religion and History 2. Textbooks, Teachers and Students 3. The Debate in Context 4. Enemies and Defenders 5. Perspectives and Silences 6. General. Conclusion

O autorze

Sylvie Guichard received her PhD from the University of Geneva and Science Po. Paris, France. She is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Legal History at the University of Geneva, Switzerland.