‘Truthiness’ takes hold of South Asian history

In the latest attempt by the Hindu right to rewrite history, the BJP-run government of Rajasthan has deleted crucial references to Jawaharlal Nehru — who led India to independence from Britain and became the first prime minister — from several school textbooks. Nehru, after all, had the temerity to lead the Congress party at the time when a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, spiritual parent of the BJP, was assassinating Mahatma Gandhi.

There is even a bizarre Hindu nationalist campaign on Twitter to erase 300 years of history by abolishing the Mughals (they gave India the Taj Mahal, the capital Delhi and much else, but the thing is they were Muslim), under the hashtag #RemoveMughalsFromBooks.

Over the border in Bangladesh — a democracy now in name only — the authorities are tampering with a different period of history and have drafted a bill with the Orwellian title of Bangladesh liberation war (denial, distortion, opposition) crime law.

The aim of the law, which bans the criticism of official histories and “denying events”, is to ensure that only the Sheikh Hasina government’s version of what happened survives. It would outlaw debate about the country’s violent separation from Pakistan in 1971, including the vexed issue of the death toll: hundreds of thousands died, but the government insists the correct figure is 3m and woe betide anyone who disagrees.