Schoolchildren confused over two versions of war’s history

The students of primary schools across the country are studying two versions of history of the War of Independence as more than half of them were supplied with textbooks bearing the old version of history while new books with certain corrections have been made available to others.
The teachers said that such a situation has been created as about only half of the schoolchildren have been supplied with the newly printed textbooks while the other half are using the old ones of previous years to save money.
Page number 128 of a new copy of the Paribesh Parichiti Samaj for Class V says: ‘…Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman proclaimed the War of Independence in the early hours of the 26th of March in 1971 before he was arrested from his Dhanmondi residence.’
In contrast, an old copy [printed in 2006 or 2007] of the same book says on the same page: ‘Following the arrest of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, a leadership vacuum was created…In the early hours [2.15am] of the 26th of March, the then East Bengal Regiment’s Second-in-Command, Major Ziaur Rahman, declared revolution and also proclaimed the War of Independence.’
The new copy of the same book says on page 134: ‘As per the direct instruction of the Pakistani rulers, the Rajakars, Al-Badr, Al-Shams and a section of local collaborators carried out the massacre.’
But the same page of the old book makes no mention of ‘Rajakar, Al-Badr, Al-Shams’. Instead, the same page of the old book says: ‘As per the directive of Pakistani rulers a section of dalals [collaborators] carried out the massacre.’
At present, almost the same problems beset the new copies and old copies of the same books for Class III and IV. Besides, there are two types of information in the new and old Bangla Books for Class I, III and V.
‘As per the decision of the Fakhruddin Ahmed-led interim government, the history of the war was changed in the civics books for Class III, IV and V from academic year 2008. But as more than half of the students have been supplied with used textbooks, the government has decided to supply some pages with the corrected history and such pages were supposed to be sewn or pasted to the used textbooks,’ said a teacher of a government primary school in the capital.
‘We received the corrected pages in late March 2008 when most of the used textbooks had already been distributed to the students. So they were handed over the corrected pages with the instructions to paste them to the books,’ he said.
‘We carried out the government’s instruction to paste the correction pages to the books at our own initiative. But when the students returned the books last December, we saw that corrected pages were missing,’ said another teacher of a government primary school in Narayanganj.
‘In the first-term exam of Class V and IV held in April this year, we refrained from asking any question on the liberation war’s history. In the forthcoming second-term exams we will do the same,’ he said. ‘And thus we will avoid chaos.’
Education minister Nurul Islam Nahid told New Age that all the primary students would be provided with new textbooks, with the necessary corrections of the War of Independence’s history, from the next academic year.
There are more than 1.62 crore students in 80,401 schools offering education from Class I to V, according to the government’s statistics.
The High Court on Sunday ruled that not Ziaur Rahman but Bangladesh’s founding president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was the proclaimer of the country’s independence.
The court ordered a ban on the sales, marketing, stocking and printing of the book titled ‘Documents of the War of Independence’, reprinted by the BNP-Jamaat government in 2004, portraying the BNP’s founder chairman, Ziaur Rahman, as the proclaimer of independence.

Courtesy of NewAgebd