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Indian Express
20-07-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
From the Opinions Editor: NCERT textbook revisions — a point-to-point counter isn't enough
Dear Readers, Revision of social science textbooks, especially history readers, has become par for the course. Most times, this exercise is not guided by the scholarly imperative to mirror developments in knowledge. Instead, it seems to bear the ideological hallmarks of those in power. Textbooks have borne this burden for long. However, there's still a difference in today's restructuring of reading material compared to schoolbook rewriting exercises of the past. In the last five years, parts of history textbooks have been either excised or modified and the changes have been ascribed to a variety of factors – from rationalising content to reducing the burden on students. These exercises claim to be motivated by a desire to ensure student 'well-being', but carry imprints of the ruling regime's anxiety to flatten social complexities. Introduced last week, the latest changes, dotted with references to the 'brutality' of medieval Muslim kings, carry a disclaimer, 'Notes on Some Darker Periods of History' : 'No one no one should be held responsible today for events of the past. The emphasis is on an honest approach to history with a view to drawing important lessons for a better future.' Historians have rightly underlined that the account is not as 'honest' as it claims to be. The selective references to destruction of places of worship by Muslim kings has not gone unnoticed. Scholars have rightly pointed out that such violence was not uncommon across a variety of ruling dispensations in ancient and medieval times. These are significant interventions. Yet, there is a broader challenge for historians: To underline the fundamental differences between the social and moral universe of pre-modern times with today's norms. Kings and sultans were not accountable for their actions, statecraft had very different objectives and wars were often critical to empire-building. All this is historical common sense. However, it's yet to become a general common sense. Narratives of the pre-modern era continue to be framed around heroes and villains. The search for a protonationalist in Ashoka, Akbar or Shivaji – depending on ideological inclination –and describing a Mahmud of Ghazni or Allaudin Khalji or Aurangzeb as evil might seem somewhat different endeavours. But both approaches obscure an understanding of epochs, much removed in time – Mahmud of Ghazini lived in the 10th-11th centuries, the Khaljis in the 13th and 14th century and the last great Mughal ruled from 1658-1707. That the latest revisions in textbooks bracket a more than 500-year period under the shibboleth of 'Dark Age' shows that even a section of historians – affiliated to the ruling regime – carry such blinkers. The challenge, in large measure, has to do with a historiographical deficit, plugging which remains a work in progress. Indian historians have produced groundbreaking studies on the extractive nature of medieval kingdoms, the ebbs and flows of commerce, the caste system and rise of kingdoms far away from sultanates in Delhi. Yet, an understanding of violence in pre-modern times is a relatively recent historiographical pursuit. Charges of destruction of places of worship continue to be countered by narratives which stress the political impulses behind such violence – as opposed to religious motives. The standard response also is that instances of destruction of places of worship by sultans and badshahs were far fewer, compared to the grants they gave to temples and monasteries. A historian should, of course, be judged by her fealty to facts. Viewed from that perspective, there is nothing wrong in how most professional historians have responded to allegations of 'brutality' levied on Islamic kings. However, today the challenge in classrooms – and beyond – is not just to provide a point-to-point counter. The internet, political propaganda, social media, films and TV make lives information heavy. Whatsapp chats have precipitated the collapse of some of the traditional filters on information. How can narratives that place violence in medieval times in their historical context help? Why do people need to understand the complexities of times when rulers could destroy some temples and give grants to many others? What purpose would it serve to depict Mughal, and several other, rulers as complex personalities who had the blood of their kin on their hand and yet presided over great cultural refinement? Why tell the stories of Shivaji's successors who struck terror in people in Bengal? Studies placing personalities in their times are, of course, needed for purely epistemological purposes. History is at its most vigorous, when it not only celebrates the resilience of societies but also tries to understand fault lines. The search for syncretism in medieval times was driven by a young nation's desire to place a salve on the wounds of Partition as well as the imperative to counter the colonial historian's charge that Indian history, before the arrival of Britishers, was nothing but an account of communal feuding. Histories of pre-modern violence, not prejudiced by colonial blinkers and innocent of sectarian agendas, have been few and they have not gone beyond academia. But why disturb the student's 'well-being' by introducing such complexities in textbooks? The latest changes have been introduced in Class VIII textbooks – a time when youngsters step into their teens. They are introduced to complicated concepts in mathematics and science – cell division, for instance. Why not in the social sciences? A textbook is perhaps the only text of history that a large majority of people, who do not engage with the discipline for professional purposes, will encounter in their lives – while they would be inundated with myriad accounts of the past. Critics of the revisions are, therefore, right in underlining the importance of rigour in reading materials. The task also is to find ways to communicate the complexity that informs their scholarship outside select circles – a difficult yet necessary imperative for the historian, inside and outside academia. Till next time, Kaushik
Yahoo
17-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Dark Age detoxes sometimes resembled TikTok health trends
There are countless so-called wellness tips permeating platforms like TikTok on any given day. And while many are little better than pseudoscience, some treatments like acupuncture are based on legitimate medicinal practices dating back millennia. This mix of both good and bad health remedies is nothing new, but according to researchers compiling a growing database of centuries' old medical manuscripts, some of today's social media suggestions aren't that far off from prescriptions documented in the Dark Ages. But whether that's a positive or a negative sort of depends on how you view things. 'People were engaging with medicine on a much broader scale than had previously been thought,' Meg Leja, a Binghamton University medieval historian, said in a recent profile. 'They were concerned about cures, they wanted to observe the natural world and jot down bits of information wherever they could in this period known as the 'Dark Ages.'' Leja is also a contributor to the Corpus of Early Medieval Latin Medicine (CEMLM), an international collaboration between universities to expand the known catalog of pre-11th century Latin medical manuscripts. Many of these old texts haven't been included in other digital collections. So far, their work has almost doubled the number of known Dark Age medical manuscripts. After reviewing the still-expanding library, researchers now believe that the era's remedies weren't always quite as dubious as you might think. Many books recommend topical ointments and detox cleanses made from ingredients like dried herbs and distilled alcohols. One book's headache cure, for example, suggests mixing crushed peach pit with rose oil before rubbing it onto your forehead. As strange as it sounds, one study from 2017 indicates rose oil may help with migraine pains. As expected, others don't hold up to present-day scrutiny. Contrary to one famous 9th century CE codex, vulture eyes wrapped in a fox pelt will not reduce your own eye pains. Neither will a pregnant woman's labor progress more quickly if you tie the bird's feathers to her left leg. Meanwhile, other treatments seem to straddle the line between valid and absurd. Another 9th century manuscript's suggestion for improving hair health starts sensibly enough— covering the head with herbal-infused salt and vinegar will help to disinfect the scalp of parasites. But to really make those locks extra luscious, it then recommends applying a salve of oils with the 'ashes of a burnt green lizard.' The main takeaway Leja's team stresses is that while the Dark Ages were 'dark' in the sense that a large number of sources have not survived the centuries, many of the era's experts were truly interested in researching real medical treatments. Leja even goes so far as to push back on the notion that people then were 'anti-science.' 'People in the early Middle Ages were quite into science, into observation, into figuring out the utility of different natural substances, and trying to identify patterns and make predictions,' she explained. Of course, rigorous research standards must be maintained to ensure ingredients like 'lizard ash' stay out of today's prescription shampoos. Meanwhile, a medieval doctor would be forgiven for thinking social media's ability to amplify bad science amounts to demonology. In any case, hearsay, like in the Dark Ages, shouldn't be taken at its word—be it in an ancient codex, or the latest hashtag.
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Chris Hayes: Trump's attacks on Harvard are part of the administration's wider war on knowledge
This is an adapted excerpt from the May 27 episode of 'All In with Chris Hayes.' The Trump administration is trying to put Harvard University, the nation's oldest college, out of business. On Tuesday, NBC News reported that the White House intends to order all government agencies to cut ties with the school, canceling federal contracts totaling an estimated $100 million. That is in addition to the billions of dollars in research funding that the administration has already frozen at the university. Last week, the White House also halted Harvard's ability to enroll international students, which The New York Times reports could affect more than a quarter of the student body. (A federal judge has since temporarily paused Trump's order.) People desperately want to come to the U.S. to study because we offer the gold standard in terms of higher education. It's one area of genuine American exceptionalism. International students are a huge boon to American universities. According to NAFSA: Association of International Educators, during the 2023–2024 academic year, 1.1 million international students at American colleges and universities contributed more than $43 billion to the U.S. economy. For all the complaints about our trade deficit with other countries, one place where we have an enormous trade surplus with the rest of the world is in higher education. But no one in this administration actually cares about that. This is all just punishment for Harvard after it rejected the White House's demands, including an order to install a third party to audit 'programs and departments that most fuel antisemitic harassment or reflect ideological capture.' To be clear, antisemitism is a real and pernicious problem in America, but by now, it is painfully obvious that it is just a convenient rhetorical weapon for Donald Trump and his allies to use to gain full control of universities. They want to rewrite the school's curriculum in a way that is favorable and deferential to Trump and his worldview, and the president wants the most powerful and legendary institution in higher education to bend the knee to his whims. It can be difficult to root for an elite institution like Harvard with a $53 billion endowment, but this attack on the university isn't happening in a vacuum. It is the latest escalation in the administration's battle to destroy all independent sources of knowledge and fact-finding in our free and open society. As the writer Adam Serwer put it in his latest piece for The Atlantic, 'By destroying knowledge, Trumpists seek to make the country more amenable to their political domination, and to prevent meaningful democratic checks on their behavior. Their victory, though, would do much more than that.' 'It would annihilate some of the most effective systems for aggregating, accumulating, and applying human knowledge that have ever existed,' Serwer wrote. 'Without those systems, America could find itself plunged into a new Dark Age.' To that end, we are seeing the administration run this playbook toward any independent source of authority. For example, the White House threatened to pull $400 million in federal grants for Columbia University. The university caved to the pressure, but last week the administration announced new trumped-up charges of civil rights violations against the school stemming from campus protests against Israel's war in Gaza. In a new piece for the New Yorker, Jelani Cobb, the dean of the Columbia Journalism School, quotes one expert who taught at both Columbia and Harvard as saying, 'I've studied McCarthyism's impact on higher education for fifty years … What's happening now is worse.' Cobb adds, 'The biggest mistake that some universities have made in responding to the White House has been to presume that it is operating in good faith. It is not.' But it is not just attacks on higher education. Everywhere you look, this administration is targeting independent sources of authority that could challenge Trump. In addition to eviscerating the U.S.' best-in-the-world biomedical research, the administration is also undermining existing knowledge about public health. On Tuesday, without citing any new evidence or studies, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. overrode typical procedure and announced that the government would no longer recommend annual Covid boosters for pregnant women and healthy children. In a podcast released on Tuesday, Kennedy also threatened to block government scientists from publishing their research in top medical journals, such as The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine. In addition to the moves against public health and schools, we are also seeing an escalation of Trump's attacks on news media, probably best exemplified by the president's $20 billion lawsuit against CBS News over an interview '60 Minutes' held with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris. First Amendment experts have called the lawsuit meritless, but Paramount, which owns CBS, is already appearing to prepare to settle. Earlier this month, the president and CEO of CBS News, Wendy McMahon, resigned, telling staff in a memo that 'it's become clear the company and I do not agree on the path forward.' The executive producer of '60 Minutes,' Bill Owens, also resigned, citing a loss of independence at the network. During a recent commencement address at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, journalist Scott Pelley, who has been at '60 Minutes' for more than two decades, delivered a warning to graduating students: Why attack universities? Why attack journalism? Because ignorance works for power. First, make the truth-seekers live in fear. Sue the journalists and their companies for nothing. Then send masked agents to abduct a college student who wrote an editorial in her college paper defending Palestinian rights, and send her to a prison in Louisiana, charged with nothing. Then, move to destroy law firms that stand up for the rights of others. With that done, power can rewrite history. Not every outlet is capitulating to Trump. On Tuesday, National Public Radio announced it is suing Trump over his attempts to gut funding for the independent outlet through an executive order. We are seeing this type of resistance everywhere. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who was initially elevated to that job by Trump, is fighting the president's pressure campaign to remove him from his position. In a commencement speech at Princeton University on Sunday, Powell called on the next generation to preserve our democratic institutions. The most important thing for everyone to understand about the ongoing existential battle to preserve our American birthright of a free and open society is that all these institutions — and the vast sources of independent knowledge contained within them — are more powerful than one petty, addled man. That's the real silver lining here: Trump's attacks are so reckless and transparent that they've left our independent institutions with no choice but to fight back. This article was originally published on
