Indeed, the business of textbook production is far from being an innocent one, not only in Bangladesh but in other countries, as it is deemed a potent means for disseminating and propagating the thoughts, ideas and dogmas of the group in control of the levers of power. The 'politicization' of textbooks in Texas, USA, could be a case in point. In a response to an editorial piece entitled 'Textbook Politics: Liberals are shocked that some education critics have an agenda' (28 March 2002), the Wall Street Journal said:

'The federal government has grabbed authority over local schools and parents in brazen violation if the US constitution (Amendment 10 of the Bill of Rights). They have done this in the name of "improving" education. The constitution was established to protect citizens from the overarching power of centralized and consolidated federal powers. We have ignored those constitutional protective mandates at our peril.'

As the French Marxist thinker Louis Althusser (1918--1990) observed, there are the 'societal mechanisms for creating pliant, obedient citizens who practice dominant values, "ideological state apparatuses" (ISAs)', and he traces 'the rising influence of schools as the dominant ISA in modern society.' Schools instill in students 'the habits that will make them productive workers in modern capitalist societies so that they… [assent] without question'. The role of textbooks is, therefore, of vital importance to the policymakers, manifesting the will and desire of the government so as to affect the growth of the learners of those materials. As will be seen in the comparative analysis of different discourses (of the apparently identical book published under different regimes), the common tendency of the policymakers in Bangladesh is to, by means of subtle amendments in chapters, have these read, believed and justified without letting the readers have much of an option. The whole stance is so crudely juxtaposed that facts for this year are reversed/altered the next year. And the poor NCTB Chairman -- the seeming man-in-the-circle --condemned to blow the government's trumpet in succeeding Prefaces claiming that the latest version was made following 'proper scrutiny' and 'correction'!

To take up Chapter 10 of 'Introduction to Environment -- Society'. The 2002 version entitled 'Heroes of Bangladesh Liberation' contains brief life-sketches of great national leaders like Sher-e-Bangla A. K. Fazlul Huq, Husain Shaheed Surawardy, Maulana Bhasani, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Ziaur Rahman. Yet, one who has perused this version as well as that of 1996 (Chapter 10 of this edition was titled 'Two Great Bengalis') will be drowned in a sea of confusion not only because of the '96 version's omission of sketches of some of the prominent figures but also because of the descriptions of Sheikh Mujib and Zia that stand in sharp contrast to the 2002 version. For instance, the 1996 publication has more than three pages to discuss the life and contribution of Mujib. Significantly, it is provided that before his arrest on March 25 night, Mujib declared the Independence of Bangladesh and with the victory on December 16, 1971, the dream of 'the Bengalis' was realized under his leadership. The closing paragraph of the chapter records the killing of Sheikh Mujib along with most of his family members on August 15, 1975, by 'some power hungry conspirators'. The paragraph, therefore, logically deduces August 15 as 'National Mourning Day' when people pay 'homage' to his 'accomplishments' (1996: 94).

The 2002 version has a little over one-page description on Mujib's life. Crucially, it entirely omits Mujib's declaration of Independence episode. On the contrary, it provides the information that as an administrator, Mujib was a failure and the condition of the country turned 'suffocating', and 'as a result of which' there occurred an 'uprising' that saw the assassination of all of Mujib's family members excluding his two daughters -- Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana (2002: 94).

The three-page entry on Shaheed Ziaur Rahman has it that taking a historical decision Zia, on 26th March, declared the Independence of Bangladesh from the temporary radio-station at Kalurghat, Chittagong. Now, there is no mention of Zia's declaration of Independence in the 1996 version of the book while in 2002 issue, there is no reference to Mujib's declaration of Independence before his arrest on the fateful night of March 25. Now, Banglapedia--the national Encyclopedia of Bangladesh--does not contain any reference to Mujib's declaration of Independence before his arrest by the Pakistani military though it mentions that Zia, on radio, announced Bangladesh's Independence on behalf of Sheikh Mujib (Vol. X, 348). In both cases, history has been made a scapegoat. Yet, the young learners of Bangladesh, and no doubt their parents, are under the impression that the textbooks, being unaffected by party concerns, speak the truth.

Amar Boi ('My Book')--Bangla course-book for Class Three--originally published in 1993, was revised and amended in February 2001. However, in December of the same year a reprint of the original followed because the party under whose regime the February version appeared was no more there at the helm of power and within a couple of months of getting back to power the ruling party felt it necessary to re-introduce the original version published during their previous tenure. A look into the contents of both books will reveal that there are twenty-six items with their titles remaining similar. Why then was the December 2001 version produced?

Item 21 of the February version -- 'Birsrestha Mohiuddin Jahangir' ('Hero of Excellence: Mohiuddin Jahangir') -- begins with a reference to 'Bangabandhu' (Sheikh Mujib)'s historical March 7 speech generating the idea that the people of Bangladesh 'fought the liberation war in compliance with Mujib's clarion call'. The December 2001 version of the item is entitled 'Birsrestha Jahangir' (this is the only change one encounters in the content lists of the books), which replaces the entire reference to Mujib's speech with a two-paragraph description on the hero's picturesque village and his childhood dream of becoming a soldier. Besides, the February version of the piece, might appear to one, rather an 'unguarded' denouncement of the then Pakistani rulers busy looting the wealth of Bangladesh. In contrast, the equivalent piece of the December issue, one might read, is 'guarded' in its equivocation of the oppression of the Pakistani rulers. The slight yet curious alteration in the anecdote could be seen as yet another indication of how an event of history is vulnerable to partisan concerns. It is just likely that an elder brother has read the February version whereas the younger one would be reading the December version of the apparently same piece. A problem is bound to occur: who is learning the truth, the elder or the younger? And what is worse, the learner who might have read a version of history in one of his previous classes is, with the passage of time, likely to come across an altered version of the same episode in another class of study, thereby shifting the inter-person conflict to intra-person chaos. This may have, at least, a two-fold significance. First, the learner might go through stages of uprooting in that he does not have a solid history to rely on, that either he is an outsider to his soil or a stranger to himself. Secondly, it could be that the frequent changes and alterations in history serve only the ends of the state organ. Exposed to different orientations of history the nation is stuck in perpetual limbo that keeps her ideologically divided forever. The hangover of divide and rule from the colonial period is perhaps here at work that makes administration 'rather easy' for the party in power.

Here it is important to stress that there has hardly been any debate over the issue between the opposed political quarters. This is probably because they both deem it will serve their own purpose of maintaining status quo when they form the government in their turn. In this, both the parties are similar in objectives and modus operandi.

Thus one can see that the production of children textbook in Bangladesh is anything but an innocent activity. Being controlled, regulated and monitored by government agencies, the textbook affair closely follows a 'design' that, unfortunately, remains largely undetected and unaddressed.

Ahmed Ahsanuzzaman teaches English at Khulna University.