Picture this: a professor invites a guest lecturer to her class to screen a documentary by a Jewish-Israeli filmmaker about a theatre for refugee children that his Jewish mother co-founded. But a group of students complain, saying that the film glorifies Hamas. Or imagine this scenario: a professor discusses the similarities and differences between Hindutva and Zionism. Again, there are complaints. This time it’s from the Israeli embassy.
Both episodes are familiar because they happen regularly in places like the United States. But each of the above-mentioned incidents happened in India – the first at IIT Bombay and the second at OP Jindal University.
In Karnataka, students and activists alike who are troubled by the genocide in Gaza have been arrested or prevented from holding even the mildest of demonstrations in Tumkur, Mangalore and Bengaluru. In Bangalore, 10 people were arrested for trying to hold a silent march for Palestine. Chief minister Siddaramaiah and the deputy commissioner of police have remained inured to Bengaluru for Justice & Peace’s open letters requesting the right to assemble in Freedom Park and to withdraw the FIRs, the victims of which seem to have been targeted because they were visibly Muslim. Instead, public gatherings related to Palestine have been shut down by the police, including gatherings in private spaces for talks or film screenings intended to educate people about Palestine. Just this week the police forced Ranga Shankara theatre to shut down its literary reading to honour the United Nations’ International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
Why is there a crack down on freedom of expression in India when it comes to Palestine?
It feels odd to me as an American Jew living in India, that a country with no history of antisemitism and with a history of anti-Zionism is preventing displays of solidarity with Palestinian people. There is, of course, a preoccupation with Islam, both a hatred of the religion and a fear of being outnumbered by those who practice it. Israel plays into this by labelling Hamas ‘terrorists’. For many that is why India’s unbridled support for Israel after October 7 is steadfast; it’s seen as Israel’s version of the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai.
But Hamas isn’t a terrorist organisation. It’s the ruling political party in Gaza as well as armed resistance to Israeli colonisation. It’s the lack of understanding the historical context over the last 75-plus years that perhaps lulls Indians into the rabbit hole of misinformation about Palestine and Israel.
Also read: Gaza Diaries: The Tragedy as Experienced By Mental Health Professionals
It’s an easy hole to fill considering that the approximately 20,000 schools using the CBSE and CICSE syllabi includes almost nothing about West Asia. Although CBSE teaches children about settler colonialism, it’s limited to North America and Australia. The 2,341 ISC schools frame its relevant unit as “The Middle East: Israeli-Palestine conflict (1916-1993).” The very language defining this section of the curriculum is framed as “Israeli” and “Palestine,” indicating it’s about a group of people who belong to that place and the place itself. Palestinian people aren’t even factors. Indeed, the word Palestinian never comes up – except within the acronym PLO. Instead, they use the word “Arab” to generalise about Palestinians and their neighbours – a textbook Zionist strategy to make it seem like expulsion isn’t really ethnic cleansing.
Certainly it matters who teaches a course and how they teach it, which yields varying outcomes of what students take away from class. So too does textbook selection. At Rishi Valley School, where I taught for a three and a half years, students were assigned a canonical textbook in India, Norman Lowe’s Modern World History, which is a good choice if a teacher wants to mislead their students. Consider just a few of Lowe’s key misrepresentations: Transjordan and Palestine were decolonised in 1946 and 1948 respectively; images of ordinary Palestinians and Jews appear as child soldiers and as victims of European antisemitism respectively; and Arabs are equated with Muslims. Lowe elides the diversity of the entire region, especially eclipsing the fact that historically most Arab nations included Christian, Jewish, and Druze populations.
While it may seem innocuous to identify all Arabs as Muslims, it feeds into the portrayal of the anti-colonial struggle in Palestine as one based on a religious war between Jews and Muslims. Because the history syllabus also includes lengthy sections about the Nazi Holocaust, this bolsters an emotional affinity for what Jewish people suffered at the hands of European Christians. But with tremendous gaps across time and place within the curriculum itself, and with deceptive and inaccurate information throughout the textbook, all of this collapses into a war between religions.
That framing of Palestine and Israel can readily bleed into Indian history classes that distort the relationship between Hindus and Muslims. Whether it’s the battle over the NCERT curriculum or the deletion of materials due to Covid-19, representations of Muslims in India as the perennial outsider have only increased over the past decade, a period in which Israel and India have solidified their diplomatic and military bonds over a shared discourse of demography and terrorism.
So is it miseducation that is fuelling the crackdown on pro-Palestinian solidarity?
It seems that the struggle between the state governments – whether led by Congress or BJP – and those who are genuinely feeling grief over what is happening in Gaza is split between those who identify with Israel fighting terrorism and those who know it’s an anti-colonial struggle.
These are some of the reasons why I find it important to educate young people about Palestine. It’s a way to balance out the historical and media narratives. Indeed, when I first began teaching at Rishi Valley, I discovered library shelves full of Leon Uris’ anti-Muslim and Zionist novels as well as numerous historical and literary books about the Nazi Holocaust. There wasn’t a single book about the Arab world, let alone any about Palestinians.
As an intervention, I introduced Palestine to my eleventh standard literature students, starting with Susan Abulhawa’s novel Mornings in Jenin. I supplemented this historical novel with a variety of films including Mai Masri’s Frontiers of Dreams and Fears and Juliano Mer Khamis’ Arna’s Children, the same film IIT Bombay students objected to. I also invited the Palestine Freedom Theatre from Jenin refugee camp, which Arna’s Children chronicles, and they spent a day with the senior students.
Also read: Why People Killed By Aerial Bombing Don’t Matter
Planting seeds by exposing children to accurate and meaningful texts can change how our society fabricates and exacerbates conflicts with Muslims at home and abroad. Educating ourselves in and out of the classroom can mitigate against stories a nation tells about wielding the weapon of “terrorism” to silence critics, shut down protests, and frighten the general population into submission. Long before India and Israel were even nation states, Zionism and Hindutva shared a vision of creating a land purified of its Others. And this thread ties these ideologies together in their vision for a ethno-nationalist states. It’s also what emboldens the Islamophobia.
One way to start is by honouring this 46th annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People by learning something new – read a book, watch a film. Do something to educate yourself and develop a deeper understanding beyond the propaganda.
Marcy Newman is author of The Politics of Teaching Palestine to Americans. She is a member of Jewish Voice for Peace and a founding member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
