IT is well recognized that the modern Indian education system is textbook centric. The daunting examinations, meant mainly for testing memory, confine their scope to prescribed textbooks. Textbooks are prescribed by the state and the information that is crammed in them is regarded as the only ‘valid’ knowledge imparted to students. The constitution and composition of textbooks are conscious decisions of small groups of people, usually consisting of representatives of state and the ‘state approved’ experts. Although textbooks are products of social compromises and negotiations, it is observed that dominant social classes use textbooks as a tool for protecting their interests and safeguarding their power.

To put it in Michael Apple’s words, ‘The curriculum is never simply a neutral assemblage of knowledge, somehow appearing in the texts and classrooms of a nation. It is always part of a selective tradition, someone’s selection, some group’s vision of legitimate knowledge… The decision to define some groups’ knowledge as the most legitimate, as official knowledge, while other groups’ knowledge hardly sees the light of day, says something extremely important about who has power in society.’¹

Our social transactions are no exception to such a political power-game played by dominant classes and castes which legitimizes their knowledge at the cost of knowledges constructed and inherited by the masses. It is observed that in post-independence India, indigenization of education has turned out to be brahmanization and sanskritization of education. ‘In India, curriculum and the content of education have been central to the processes of reproduction of caste, class, cultural and patriarchal domination-subordination. In post-independence educational policy, modification of content supposedly aimed at indigenization resulted in brahmanization as a key defining feature of the curriculum.’²

 

Textbooks not only validate certain knowledge, they also structure minds of the ‘schooled’ to the effect that their thinking is channelized in a manner as approved by the dominant classes. Textbook-centric examinations reinforce unidirectional and monolithic thinking, thereby training ‘schooled’ minds to accept given social ‘reality’ without questioning it. This process of unconditional acceptance of values of dominant classes as legitimate knowledge is disadvantageous to the traditionally marginalized or oppressed sections of society comprising of women, dalit-bahujans (SCs and OBCs), adivasis (STs), religious minorities, linguistic minorities, etc. Therefore, a close scrutiny of textbooks can unpack the existing patterns of social marginalization and may further suggest ways of making textbooks more inclusive.

 

In Maharashtra, the Maharashtra State Bureau of Textbook Production and Curriculum Research (MSBTPCR, popularly known and henceforth referred to as Balbharati) produces textbooks³ for the entire state based on the state approved syllabi. Balbharati textbooks are mandatory for all children attending schools affiliated to the Maharashtra State Board (SSC), the number of such schools exceeding 75000. It implies that textbooks of Balbharati influence thinking processes of more than 90% of school-goers and practically all children from the marginalized sections. Considering the huge span of influence in sheer numbers, it becomes crucial to critically examine Balbharati textbooks to scrutinize the knowledge validated therein. Since the textbook is a compulsory device of education for all schoolgoers, one important concern of such a study would be to find whose ‘cultural capital’ it represents. Though attempts at quality analysis of textbooks from other states are now available,⁴ similar analyses of textbooks from Maharashtra⁵ are rare to find.

In the following sections of this article, I propose to read some of the textbooks of Maharashtra state critically with focus on sites of marginalization therein. I will take up a few examples from contemporary textbooks of different subjects by Balbharati from classes one to eight and employ mainly gender and caste as categories for analysis to explore what role these textbooks play as far as marginalization under these categories is concerned.⁶

 

It could be due to consistent efforts and demands of feminist scholarship, awareness and activism in the context of Maharashtra that Balbharati textbooks are found to be good at visually representing girls and women. The number of pictures of girls and stories related to them has increased over the last couple of decades. Now women are situated in non-conventional professions like pilots, bus conductors, astronauts, among others. Recent textbooks of history have explicitly acknowledged the contribution of women in creating history. For example, the inner cover of the history textbook of class eight (2009), displays a photograph of Madame Bhikaji Cama hoisting the first Indian flag. But it should be noted that irrespective of the medium of instruction, dialogue with students made through the agency of visuals invariably underlines the culturally perceived role of women, as evident in responsibilities imposed on them towards children.

 

Most of the Balbharati textbooks portray women as carriers and reproducers of traditions, irrespective of the time period contextualized and discussed. Rearing children is an essential task of women in these traditions. Many of the textbooks equate woman to a mother. For instance, the textbook, Story of Man (title of the class three history textbook, 2009), narrating prehistorical period of the caveman, shows no woman without accompaniment of a child. In the English third language textbook of class one (2006), a picture meant for explaining the phrase ‘young woman’ shows a woman carrying a child in her lap. In brief, from stone-age to modern times women are never relived of their ‘essential’ social role as a mother. A story of a brave woman Hirkani, from Shivaji’s period, who climbed down a difficult tower of the Raigad fort in the dark of night for her baby, has recently reappeared in the Marathi first language textbook of class three (2010) after almost 25 years. The story implies that Hirkani’s bravery is an outcome of her motherly instincts. The strong bond between womanhood and motherhood in the textbooks creates a deliberate illusion which conveys the message that the task of rearing children is to be looked at as ‘natural’ to women as that of delivering them.

Visuals in the textbooks so frequently show women working in their kitchens that one doubts whether textbooks have made their ‘fate’ manifestly public. Even in an indirect way, chores in the kitchen are meant to be explicitly for women. For instance, the general science textbook of class six (2011) has a picture showing only hands kneading dough, but the illustrators of textbook have not forgotten to draw bangles around those wrists. Some of the recent textbooks do show a few boys working in the kitchen (an exception), but the textbooks are yet some distance from depicting ‘men’ on kitchen duty.

Just like social roles, human bodies depicted in textbooks also follow normative rules. Whenever general science textbooks (of any class) discuss internal organs, the accompanying pictures are those of bodies of boys and men. Whether the organs are internal or external, the body outlined in the depiction is always that of a male. In brief, the body of a man is normative and the body of a woman is an aberration. Education, particularly science education, is supposed to develop scientific temperament among learners. But challenging essentialization of gender roles and questioning perpetuation of gender biases does not seem to be a part of the broader aims of inculcating a scientific temper. It is clear that the ‘scientific’ awe about the female body has its origin in the patriarchal social system that acknowledges men’s control over the female body.

 

Another aspect of the patriarchal social system is visible in mathematics textbooks which neglect monetary features of lives of women or consider them to be of lesser importance. Word problems aiming at teaching mathematical processes of addition, subtraction, percentage, profit-loss, income tax, interest and so on from class one onwards, involve only men in all meaningful economic transactions, ranging from selling milk and vegetables to motorbikes and watches, from agriculture to industry. Women are rarely mentioned and they invariably appear at the receiving end of monetary transactions as customers who either buy sarees or bed sheets asking for some discounts and rebates. With the exception of the recent class eight textbook of mathematics (2009), women never engage in any meaningful economic activity.

 

In a state like Maharashtra characterized by rapidly increasing involvement of women in microcredit groups and allied professions, a state that saw one of the earliest generations of educated and economically active women, such invisiblization of women laced with a kind of mathematical ‘precision’ leaves a little to doubt and unpack. It is interesting to note that science textbooks confine women to the kitchen and mathematics textbooks do not let them do meaningful economic transactions. In short, women are confined to the domestic world and restricted from entering into the public world. In case of women, these textbooks seem to be strictly following the public-private dichotomy.

If we consider invisibility emerging from the secondary social status imposed upon women, then Balbharati textbooks are not only crowded with examples of direct subordination of women, but they also show interest in maintaining those subtle undercurrents of subordination. Sunita Williams, an American astronaut whose father was born in India, appears as an example in the Marathi first language textbook of class seven (2008). During the narration of her story, we are told that she is of Indian origin. The fact that her mother is of European origin and, therefore, Sunita should be treated as a person of mixed origin, is conveniently brushed under the carpet. Sunita Williams was celebrated by India, not for being an extraordinary woman but for her paternal genealogy. Thus a textbook supposedly aiming at gender equality easily slips into submission to the right-wing nationalist sentiment and allows categories of nationality and patriotism to mask gender. Subserving the doctrine of teaching compulsory national pride, it denies a woman her share in deciding her children’s ethnicity and nationality.

It is possible to cite many more examples. Subordination would be probably a single appropriate term to characterize representation of women in Balbharati textbooks. In an increasingly capitalist economy like India, ‘market’ forces always tend to subjugate woman’s identity and agency through engineered entertainment and advertisements. Balbharati textbooks, instead of countering these forces, tend to cement the socially prevailing biases regarding division of labour, socially polarized roles of men and women, and so on.

For girls socializing in a society based on a historical ideology of inequality, stereotypical representation of women in the world ‘outside’ the school gets reinforced with that ‘inside’ the school through the ‘valid’ means of textbooks. It makes them believe that they are destined to faithfully follow the culture that reproduces gender and other inequalities and in turn contributes towards its perpetuation. For the boys, textbooks of this type miss out on an opportunity of creating gender sensitivity in an otherwise hostile atmosphere. As boys grow up, textual knowledge provides them a valid and strong support to their socially inherited and internalized patriarchal behaviour.

 

A closer reading of Balbharati textbooks suggests that one of their defining features is a denial of the social attribute of plurality as existing social reality. The marginalized sections are denied their due in the first place at the level of inclusion in the textbooks. If at all they are included, the tendency is to misrepresent them. The following table shows percentage of representation ‘generously offered’ to different marginalized groups by the Marathi first language textbooks of various grades.

 

It is observed that language acts as the prime tool for marginalizing dalits, nomads, adivasis and other socially marginalized groups. The notions of ‘purity’ and ‘pollution’ of language have a direct role in validating the language of the upper caste and in denying any status to languages of the lower castes. An interesting example of this tendency is found in the Marathi first language textbook for class eight (2005).⁸ A story in it titled Kasarat by Darasaheb Morey, a dalit author, portrays hardship in lives of dombaris (a denotified nomadic tribe). An exercise given at the end of the lesson asks students to find words and sentences in the dialect (boli bhasha) used by the writer and rewrite them in standard Marathi (pramaan bhasha) language. Kasarat is followed by a couple of other stories written by Vidyadhar Gokhale and Godavari Parulekar, both upper caste writers.

These lessons are followed by an exercise asking students to appreciate the linguistic beauty of sentences selected from the lessons. Clearly it appears that for the textbook, the language of the brahmins implies a sort of aesthetic and linguistic pleasure, while the language of dalits, bereft as it is of any possibility of rendering any aesthetic pleasure, requires instead a sort of purification at the linguistic level. It is also interesting to note that for textbooks of Balbharati, using Sanskrit or sanskritized words ‘purifies’ Marathi language, while using words from languages of marginalized people ‘pollutes’ them. The ideology which considers Sanskrit as the ‘holy mother’ of all Indian languages while languages of the marginalized groups are held to be potentially polluting may lead to, what some linguists call, ‘linguistic genocide’⁹ in education.

 

Knowingly or unknowingly, Balbharati’s attempts of invisiblizing the dalits, adivasis and Muslims prove severely disadvantageous for them. Caste is an issue of total silence. A portrayal of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s life appears in a few textbooks meant for different grades, but none of the selected incidents talk about the caste discrimination he faced throughout his life. Even in case of dalit writers and dalit intellectuals included in Balbharati textbooks, there is a deliberate omission or alteration of the situations/ descriptions with explicit mention of their caste. For instance, class six Marathi first language textbook (2005) has a story from the autobiography of a noted dalit writer and thinker, Shankarrao Kharat. The story describes how an illiterate dalit (Kharat’s father) is exploited when he requests a brahmin teacher in the village to read a letter. The original story discusses the exploitative nature of the caste system. Balbharati’s ‘editorial skills’ bypass the fundamental issue of complexities of the caste system and instead focus on illiteracy as the main issue. The name of the story gets changed from the original Patra (Letter) to Adani (Illiterate) in the textbook. An exercise at the end of the chapter asks students to write an essay on the topic, ‘Illiteracy as a Social Blemish’. Thus illiteracy becomes a fault of the illiterate person and the grain of truth, namely the denial of education due to an exploitative caste system, is muted. As pointed out by Kancha Ilaiah, Indian academia has always turned a blind eye to the question of caste.¹⁰ Maintaining a thorough and convenient silence on caste, Balbharati textbooks seem to follow the same trend.

 

Textbooks of mathematics and science are no exception. They also show their caste biases in dealing with otherwise ‘neutral’, supposedly scientific, content. For instance, word problems in mathematics textbooks not only marginalize women, but in associating choice of professions with names (particularly surnames that indicate castes in many cases in Maharashtra) of people, especially in cases of possession of land and property, they tend to show a tendency of bias against the lower castes.

 

While discussing food, chapters like ‘Our Food’ in general science textbooks do mention meat, chicken, etc., in the text, but when it comes to representing food visually they show a picture of a vegetarian plate served with items in a manner that is normative of the western Maharashtrian urban Brahmin (popularly known as puneri) family (class three, 2008). The cultural practice of brahmins of serving certain type of vegetarian food in a certain way is made to appear as the ‘normal/normative’ practice. Considering the impact that visuals leave on young minds, it is clear that the textbooks are further marginalizing the marginalized sections by first narrowing and then confining the representation to upper castes. Science textbooks, in their visuals, tend to equate balanced diet to vegetarian food of urban upper castes denying cultural plurality of dietary practices in Maharashtra and indirectly stigmatizing non-vegetarian food associated with the lower castes and Muslims.

When it comes to pictures and images all textbooks show only fair or pink-skinned, healthy children. Their urbanity, upper middle class and upper caste status is evident through their appearance. Once fair skin becomes the marker of rich, smart, good natured and upper caste urbanity, the opposite colour – the black skin – embraces the rural, poor, labouring, unintelligent and lower caste. For instance, the general science textbook of class four (2011) uses black or darker skin colour to portray all the people who are rural, poor, ragpickers, labourers, etc. and to suggest untrustworthiness in some cases. In its choice of skin colour, this particular textbook shows a clear racial bias.

Like caste, religion is another platform for unbalanced representation. Muslims are barely represented in Balbharati textbooks. But for the festival of Ramzaan Id, textbooks might have completely done away with Muslims. We are assumed to believe that mere names like Salma, Saleem or John represent minority religions. On the other hand, textbooks are overwhelmingly filled with Hindu cultural practices and symbols. In fact, textbooks equate Hindu culture to upper caste patriarchal culture. Upper caste gods and goddesses appear with their larger than life images. Blatantly wrong statements about upper caste practices and gods make easy entries in teachers’ handbooks.¹¹

 

For instance statements like, ‘While planting trees, we should chant strotas (hymns or mantras codified mainly in Sanskrit) to entertain the plant’ or ‘tulsi (type of a plant worshipped mainly by upper caste women) releases oxygen for 24 hours and therefore Lord Krishna also likes it’, appear in the Handbook of Art Education, class three (2008). Providing a ‘scientific’ cause for Krishna’s love for the tulsi plant is a clear instance of mixing ideology with a supposed (incorrect) fact, thus making the upper caste god appear extremely intelligent, scientifically minded and pragmatic in approach.

In essence, Balbharati textbooks seem to be pushing the marginalized sections like dalits metaphorically to the outskirts. The history that had forced dalits literally to the outskirts of ‘civilized’ localities is repeated even after half a century of the formation of Maharashtra.

A critical reading of Balbharati textbooks through gender and caste lenses illustrates how and why textbooks are argued to be vehicles propagating the ideology of the dominant groups and ruling classes. A deeper exploration in these textbooks with these and other tools of analysis is required to understand more rooted and subtler processes of marginalization.

Textbooks form an inseparable part of school knowledge. Textbooks of the Balbharati type go against the notion of school knowledge that it is supposed to take learners on a journey of enquiry and quest for truth. As Avijit Pathak rightly suggests, the type of knowledge portrayed and perpetuated by such textbooks is ‘far from being a doctrine of eternal truth, a form of an ideological representation.’¹²

For most of the schoolgoers, textual knowledge becomes the only valid and valuable form of knowledge within the school milieu. With more than a century old tradition of prescribed textbooks in the education system, any experience or knowledge that is not included in textbooks stands disqualified as worthy knowledge. If textbooks do not represent the marginalized sections or represent them overtly and covertly in inappropriate and incorrect ways, they can act as a device of dominant classes for perpetuating their power. Such textbooks possess the ability of convincing the learner that patterns of exploitation and marginalization as seen in society are unalterable.

On the other hand, if textbooks openly acknowledge and critically discuss social marginalization of different types and abide by values enshrined in the Indian Constitution, namely plurality, social justice, equity, among others, they may work as tools of emancipation. We need to take a conscious decision and show strong political will to that effect. Otherwise, our textbooks will continue to act as the prescriptions for marginalization.

 

* I would like to thank Madhuri M. Dixit, Pemraj Sarda College, Ahmednagar for her help in articulating and structuring some of the arguments and Prakash Burte, Solapur for his comments on the final draft.

Footnotes:

1. Michael Apple, ‘The Politics of Official Knowledge: Does a National Curriculum Make Sense? Teachers College Record 95(2), 1993.

2. National Focus Group Position Paper on Problems of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Children. NCERT, New Delhi, 2005.

3. In many states across India, the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) develops both the curricula and textbooks based on them. Maharashtra follows a different practice. In Maharashtra, the SCERT designs curricula and syllabi for elementary grades (classes I to VIII) and gets it approved by the state government. Balbharati was established in 1967 as an autonomous body to produce textbooks (during the tenure of the then Education Minister Madhukarrao Chaudhari), implying that textbooks of Balbharati have been used by several generations of pupils from class I to VIII since the 1970s. Reviewing textbooks decennially (or sometimes earlier than that) has been a regular practice of Balbharati.

4. A recent publication doing the herculean task of reading textbooks through a feminist lens is Textbook Regimes. This project analyzes textbooks of NCERT, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Tamilnadu and West Bengal. For details, see Deepta Bhog, et al., Textbook Regimes – A Feminist Critique of Nation and Identity. Nirantar, New Delhi, 2009.

5. There is a severe dearth of analysis of Balbharati textbooks, particularly from the perspective of the marginalized. A recent and important analysis has been done by Prakash Burte, but such efforts are an exception. For details, see Prakash Burte, Maharashtratil Marathi Madhyamachi Shaleya Pathyapustake: Ek Mulyatmak Abhyas (Marathi). Eklavya, Bhopal, 2001.

6. It is not possible to analyze each example in detail due to want of space. I will, however, mention some examples of marginalization under categories like class and religious minority, in addition to others, but without going into details.

7. This table is derived from a study by Manjiri Nimbkar, Pragat Shikshan Sanstha, Phaltan, Maharashtra. The study was a part of her M.A. in Elementary Education at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, during 2006-2008.

8. This textbook was in use until 2008-09; it has been replaced only recently.

9. I have used the term ‘genocide’ as I do not want the death of the languages of the marginalized people to sound ‘natural’ as is usually assumed and to underline the role of social agencies responsible for their extinction. Secondly, textbooks written in almost all Indian languages and those of NCERT written in Hindi do not deviate much from the tendency of sanskritization of language.

10. For further discussion on how Indian academia has remained insulated from caste while discussing nationalism constructed during the colonial period and carried forward to independent India, see Kancha Ilaiah, The Weapon of the Other. Pearson Education, New Delhi, 2010.

11. Balbharati also produces and distributes teachers’ handbooks. These handbooks are more useful in teaching subjects like physical education, art and craft, etc. that do not have a textbook.

12. Avijit Pathak, Social Implications of Schooling: Knowledge, Pedagogy and Consciousness. Rainbow, New Delhi, 2001.