In Bengal, three women history teachers join hands to check distortion of past

Three women History teachers have come together in West Bengal to author a series of pictorial books for children that, according to them, gives the “factually informed” version of history and not what is being propagated these days by non-historians.

Three women history teachers have come together in West Bengal to author a series of pictorial books for children that, according to them, gives the “factually informed” version of history and not what is being propagated these days by non-historians.

The books, three so far, have been produced under the project ‘Revisiting the Craft of History Writing for Children’ initiated in 2022 by the Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata (ISDK). The series is titled Itihase Hatekhari — literally hatekhari means chalk in hand, signifying a child’s initiation to learning — or the first lessons in history.

The books are titled Deshbhag or Partition of the Country (by Anwesha Sengupta); Desher Bhasha or The Languages of Our Country (by Debarati Bagchi); and Desher Manush or The People of Our Country (by Tista Das). The illustrations have been done by Ranjit Chitrakar and Siraj Chitrakar, two community artists from rural Bengal, in collaboration with Wasim Helal, the art director.

“We were greatly disturbed by the two tendencies we are witnessing at the time — the appropriation of history by the right wing, and the writing of history by those who have no education in history. There are writers who have no degree in history but they are telling majoritarian stories that are being published by big publishers and becoming bestsellers,” said Dr. Sengupta, who teaches history at ISDK and who conceived the idea along with Dr. Bagchi, a senior research associate and deputy head of the Max Weber Stiftung, India office.

“We, who are qualified historians, write mainly for academic journals and in editorial pages of newspapers, neither of which are read by the common man. So we thought of reaching out to the people, particularly middle school children, parents and teachers,” Dr. Sengupta said.

While print copies — English translations by Arunava Sinha — were circulated free of cost among various schools, teachers, libraries, NGOs, press and policy-makers, PDF versions were made freely available on several websites and circulated through emails and social media.

“The general tendency is to either blame or glorify someone for Partition. I have pointed out how various historians highlight various reasons. One assumption is that Partition is about Hindu-Muslim conflict. It is not. Caste and gender identities shaped one’s experience of Partition to a large extent. I also wanted to challenge the general assumption that only Hindus came from East Pakistan and Muslims did not leave West Bengal or Assam,” the historian said, when asked how exactly their books were different from popular narratives.