Indian History Congress condemns NCERT for 'distorting Partition history', charges it with communal bias

The Indian History Congress (IHC) has vocally condemned NCERT's new Partition Horrors Remembrance Day modules, charging that they disseminate "falsehoods, with clear communal intent" by projecting the Congress as involved in Partition while exonerating the British. In a resolution passed on Monday, the IHC alerted that "tender minds" were being fed "distorted, polarising history.

Most of the historians who are part of the IHC are identified to be left-leaning in their ideology, and post-Independence Indian historiography has predominantly been the domain of Left academics, a situation that routinely becomes controversial whenever NCERT modules or textbooks are being re-written.

The NCERT modules — drafted independently for Classes VI–VIII and IX–XII — characterize the "culprits of Partition" as Jinnah, who asked for it; the Congress, who accepted it; and Mountbatten, who formalized and executed it. They further say that the British "tried their best to keep India united till the very end."

The IHC took umbrage with this narrative, contending that this was distorting history. "Upside down, as it were, and turning the history completely upside down, the modules not only blame the Muslim League but also the Indian National Congress for the Partition of the nation. Fully in line with the loyalist position of the communal forces in the freedom struggle, the British colonial masters have been given a clean chit in these modules," the resolution stated.

Historians also claimed that the modules tend to leave out important facts selectively. "What is left unsaid is the two nation theory advanced by the 'Hindutva' icon V. D. Savarkar three years before, in 1937, in his presidential address to the Hindu Mahasabha: 'India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and homogenous nation, but on the contrary there are two nations in the main, Hindus and Muslims, in India.'"

The decision, made by the executive committee on Monday, also asserted that the framing of nationalist leaders as "culprits" was inaccurate: "It is indeed ironical that Hindu communalists are never included in the list of those responsible for Partition.". But among the main 'culprits' are purported to be nationalist leaders when the whole range of the national movement, Moderates, Extremists, Gandhians, Congress Socialists, Communists, Revolutionaries etc., all thought that India has a long civilisational history of being capable of living together with difference… The Indian National Congress, which since its founding in 1885 fought relentlessly against religious communal divide, its greatest leader Mahatma Gandhi sacrificing his life for it, is held out as one of the prime 'culprits' of partition!

Earlier, Congress had repeated the line of attack, with spokesman Pawan Khera proclaiming: "Burn this paper because it doesn't speak the truth. Partition occurred as a result of the combine of Hindu Mahasabha and Muslim League."Though the NCERT book connects Partition to later conflicts like Kashmir and terrorism, historians contend it fosters "a hateful polarized future" rather than an even-handed reckoning with the tragedy.