Ramarajya: Envisioning the Future and Entrenching the Past 79The book claimed, "Indian culture is among the best in the world The
Vedas, which epitomise the height of Indian culture, were written at a time
when western countries were not even civilised."^12 The book was often
critical of Mahatma Gandhi and described the communists who refused
to participate in the Quit India movement as "traitors."
This kind of interpretation and teaching of history has played a major
role in the spread of communalism in India. Lajpat Rai, a popular national
leader, wrote in his autobiography, "At that time [when he was young] a
book on Indian history called Waqiat-i-Hind used to be taught at Govern-
ment schools. That book created in me the feeling that Mussalmans had
subjected the Hindus to great tyranny. Gradually the respect for Islam that
I had acquired from early training began to change into hatred because
of study of V^aqiat-i-Hind."^12 Like Rai, the educated classes derive their
concept of history and identity from such communal interpretations of
national history. As they are the dominant mode of Indian society, and exert
considerable influence on the popular consciousness, their education/
socialization contributes substantially to shape the political culture of
India. Perhaps with this in mind, Mahatma Gandhi wrote, "Communal
harmony could not be permanently established in our country so long as
highly distorted versions of history were being taught in her schools and
colleges, through the history textbooks."^14
Understanding this ambivalent enterprise of teaching history requires
systematic and detailed studies of educational texts that are contextual-
ized in the sociology of knowledge, and earnest ethnographies that enable
our appreciation of the social context in which the texts are interpreted and
transmitted.^15 This closer scrutiny of the larger society with its multifari-
ous socialization agents and processes for history constructions and iden-
tity formations has to be focused on "social education." Such an approach
becomes even more crucial when the role of a formal school system in
influencing people's concept of history and identity is quite limited, and
the majority of the people do not undergo the schooling process.
There have been only a few research attempts along these lines, and
even the ones that have been carried out have had different emphasis.
Joseph Elder's brief but effective study on the development of national
loyalty in India, for instance, studies the influence of parents on the forma-
tion of their sons' attitudes in a variety of fields, and changes in these atti-
tudes over three generations.^16 Frederick Frey's research on socialization
to national identity among the Turkish peasants concerns itself with attitu-
dinal and behavioral changes that attend national identification.^17 Despite
the fact that there is a serious lack of verified knowledge and empirical
theories in this area, one can safely conclude that "history preaching"
plays as important a role as "history teaching" in political socialization.
The Indian masses get socialized through various agents such as tradi-
tional storytellers, reciters of epics, and other such storytelling perfor-
mances. In discussing the appeal of the epic of the Ramayana among the