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New Indian Express
a day ago
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
Veteran actor Achyut Potdar passes away at 90
MUMBAI: Actor Achyut Potdar, best known for his roles in TV shows and films like Bharat Ek Khoj, Pradhan Mantri, and 3 Idiots, has died in a hospital here due to heart-related issues. He was 90. Potdar was admitted to Jupiter Hospital around 4 pm on Monday and was declared dead at 10.30 pm. "He was admitted to the hospital in a critical state with breathing and heart issues on Monday, around 4 pm. He was kept in the ICU. He passed away at 10.30 pm due to heart related issues as he had high BP and weak cardiovascular health," Dr Ravindra Ghawat, Director, Criminal Care Department, Jupiter Hospital, told PTI. Potdar played supporting roles in many films and TV shows such as Tezaab, Parineeta, Aandolan, Wagle Ki Duniya, Dabangg 2, and Ferrari Ki Sawaari. His brief appearance as a professor in Rajkumar Hirani's 3 Idiots (2019), and his dialogue "Kehna Kya Chahte Ho" became one of the fan favourite moments from the Aamir Khan-starrer movie and has been recreated in pop culture, time and again through memes.
The Print
2 days ago
- General
- The Print
History teaching requires revision more than textbooks
After all, how often do Indian households encourage history as a job? A base-level problem here is: how do you support the study of history when it isn't even clear what a historian does? Yet, despite this range of work, one question almost always follows when we explain what we do: 'Okay, but what is your real job?' The question says as much about our profession as it does about how history itself is perceived in India. What does it mean to be a historian in India? Both of us have formally studied the subject. In the years we've spent working as public historians, we've told myriad stories of India's chequered pasts through heritage walks, museum trails, cultural events, podcasts, an annual journal, book reviews, articles, and social media posts. We've pored over archives and conducted on-ground research. We've also translated scholarship into language and experiences that anyone, from an academic to a casual listener, can connect with. In childhood, history may occasionally bask in the dreamy, cinematic glow of Indiana Jones and Night at the Museum. Or Bharat Ek Khoj, Akbar-Birbal adaptations, the delightfully gory Horrible Histories, and Amar Chitra Katha. In adulthood, though, it either fades into collective amnesia, gets wrapped in nostalgia, or turns into a battlefield of contested claims. Where is the middle ground where we carry forward that childlike curiosity, tempered with adult discernment, to engage with the past with the depth and nuance it deserves? A polarising debate has recently been sparked after yet another round of revisions in NCERT history textbooks. But more than textbooks, history teaching requires revision. Also Read: Indus Valley to Mughal Empire—How illustrated history books guide us in polarising times Updating isn't the problem What do you remember from your history classes? For most, the answers fall into familiar buckets: rote learning of names, dates, dynasties, and wars. There was little room to explore the texture of lived experience, or to ask: how can this subject help me become a better thinker, a more reflective human? The discipline was frozen in time, and with it, many of us felt we too were trapped — learning about the past in a way that felt wholly disconnected from the present, let alone the future. This is part of the reason historical studies aren't seen as foundations for sustainable careers. But paradoxically, history seems to dominate our headlines. It's everywhere: in TV debates, political speeches, social media threads. Everyone, it seems, has something to say about the past. That's why the current debate on revisions matters. The problem isn't with 'updating' history. Our understanding of the past evolves as our present changes. Every historian is shaped by their time, drawing not only on the materials and theoretical bases available, but also on their own perspectives and questions. So revisions themselves aren't the issue. The real concern is how history textbooks are revised. If these changes were aimed at helping students approach the past critically, and provided them with the historian's toolkit — by introducing them to a range of sources, perspectives, and debates — then they would be fruitful. More revisions, less reasoning Our NCERT textbooks have been subject to regular revisions, with new theories and ideas inserted alongside scholars' evolving approaches to history. This exercise is necessary, so long as the emphasis remains on updations that accurately convey the latest reflections on continuities and changes over time. Increasingly, however, sporadic revisions have become the norm. Since 2018, textbooks have been altered to remove sections on communalism in the 1940s, Mughal manuscripts, caste struggles, and popular movements. When textbooks were revised during the Covid-19 pandemic, deletions were made on grounds of 'rationalisation'. It is perplexing that post-pandemic, too, the NCERT has failed to offer academic explanations for revising humanities textbooks. 'Rationalised' textbooks remain prescribed, with intermittent 'revisions' still trickling in. In its latest revision of history textbooks for eighth grade students, the NCERT introduces Mughal emperors as 'brutal' and 'ruthless', Delhi Sultans' policies as 'public humiliation' for non-Muslims, and Maratha leadership as 'visionary'. Earlier textbooks covered the most notable features of each of these polities, minus the adjectives. A reading of Our Pasts – II, the medieval history text prescribed to seventh grade students from 2007 to 2021, allows useful comparison. The text discussed administrative successes and failures, economic policy, and societal changes, and tested students' critical thinking skills based on their understanding of objective details. The most telling aspect of the history textbook revision is the NCERT's inclusion of a 'Note on Some Darker Periods in History'. Here, a disclaimer reads that 'no one should be held responsible today for events of the past', which appears to be an admission of the provocative nature of the updated content. Students as young as the eighth grade — studying history as part of a wide curriculum spanning science, mathematics, and languages — ought to be introduced to history in a manner that shapes them into informed citizens, and perhaps, optimistically, stimulates deeper engagement with the discipline later in their lives. The goal should be to teach students that history, and the humanities more broadly, are about thinking more, asking better questions, and becoming sharper citizens. What students need is not less complexity, but more clarity on how complexity functions. But the kinds of revisions we're seeing strip that away. They remove the very skills that make historical thinking meaningful, and the result is a citizen who either dismisses history entirely or defends it without support, often overwhelmed by louder, ahistorical voices that dominate discourse. Also Read: India's new search for Hindu warrior kings to celebrate. Vikramaditya, Suheldev to Agrasen Teaching history for the future Perhaps the most important revision we need is in how we frame history — it should be less a closed book of facts and more a lens to view the world. In 2025, it's worth asking, how can we teach history as a subject that helps carve a path forward? How do we make sure students don't feel like history is either just for nostalgic glorification or adversarial defence? How do we make its dissemination promising enough for students to be able to say they wish to become academics, curators, conservators, archaeologists, museologists, or historians? Through our public history platform Itihāsology, we repeatedly highlight the foremost issue with history as a school subject — that it is 'boring', unappealing to young learners. A lack of interest in history during the formative years of schooling manifests in detachment from scholarly debates, and an unfortunate turn toward distorted, coloured versions of the past in adult life. This becomes relevant because history frequently comes up in popular discourse and debates, with socially and politically active adults justifying current stances by drawing on the past. Since the problem of subscribing to ahistorical renderings of the past is rooted in studenthood, the solution lies in devising more effective ways to communicate history to young learners so they grow up knowing there is indeed a future with a past — one that they need to protect from falling into the pit of homogeneity. Eric Chopra and Kudrat B. Singh run Itihāsology, an educational platform dedicated to making Indian history and art inclusive and accessible. Views are personal. (Edited by Asavari Singh)
The Hindu
29-06-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
Political Line Newsletter Bharat Mata and her quarrelsome children
(This is the latest edition of the Political Line newsletter curated by Varghese K. George. The Political Line newsletter is India's political landscape explained every week. You can subscribe here to get the newsletter in your inbox every Friday.) Kerala Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar insists on the display of a representation of a woman, Bharat Mata, holding the saffron flag at official functions. This has turned into a political controversy, with people and the Kerala government protesting on paper and on the streets. The idea of anthropomorphising the country, particularly as mother, has a long and contested history in India. Indian nationalism has drawn heavily from Hindu symbolism and iconography, and the concept of Bharat Mata and its representation was instructive. It had unifying power, but simultaneously triggered discord, as it excluded religious minorities. Muslims, particularly, developed a deep scepticism towards the idea of Bharat Mata, and the worship of the nation as mother. India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, sought to give the imagery of Bharat Mata a secular character in his book The Discovery of India. But he too is discovering India as a civilizational eternity. Marking the birth centenary of Nehru (in 1989), a 53-episode docudrama on the state-controlled network Doordarshan televised the book. Shyam Benegal directed Bharat Ek Khoj, with the first episode being 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'. Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister, and Benegal was by no means sectarian. The episode begins with Hindu chants in Sanskrit, before it goes on to Nehru's secular conception of Bharat Mata. The point was that it would be difficult to articulate the historicity of Indian identity without relying on Hinduism. But Nehru and his compatriots were sensitive about the potential of the slogan creating a communal rift. You could find more about that in this review of historian Sugata Bose's book The Nation as Mother and Other Visions of Nationhood. The former general secretary of the Lok Sabha P.D.T. Achary traces the history of Bharat as mother and notes that there is no constitutionally recognised depiction of the concept. The Hindu's own editorial considers the Governor's enthusiasm for the public veneration of the image a partisan move. 'Who is Bharat Mata': On History, Culture and the Idea of India, Writings by and on Jawaharlal Nehru, edited by Purushottam Agrawal could also be of interest. You could find a review of the book here. If you have stayed with me this far on this topic, I would also recommend The Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother India by Sumathi Ramaswamy. The book brings us dozens of depictions of India as mother and goddess from the 19th century to the present. Federalism Tract Regional sentiments In Tamil Nadu, BJP ally AIADMK is on the back foot following the screening of video clips that showed leaders of Dravidian politics as critics of the Hindu religion at an event where their leaders were present. In Maharashtra, the BJP is trying to assuage regional sentiments after the government led by it privileged Hindi over other Indian languages in its three-language policy. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis announced that a final decision on implementing the three-language formula in schools in the State will be taken only after discussions with writers, language experts, political leaders, and all other stakeholders. In West Bengal, the Mamata Banerjee government built a Jagannath temple in Digha, which custodians of the Puri Jagannath Temple in Odisha consider a violation of its singular primacy. Ms. Banerjee inaugurated the first 'Rath Yatra' from the ₹250-crore temple in the coastal town. Puri Shankaracharya Nischalananda Saraswati said the Jagannath temple constructed at Digha, lacked religious sanctity and was driven more by commercial interests than spiritual devotion.
