'Dead Certainties' and the Politics of Textbook Writing

The different state school systems have formed a crucial site where the capture and revision of school history textbooks has been carried out. Between 2002 and 2004, Karnataka has seen the rewriting, withdrawal and a second rewriting of textbooks for students in the middle school levels. While a comparison between the two textbooks shows some changes, much else remains the same - such as the treatment of gender, the inability to highlight nuances in the past and in the continued stress the syllabus places on learning by rote. The comparative analysis attempted in this article also warns that the politics of retaliation that drives textbook writing today may finally have regressive consequences on the historian's profession.