Historian Priya Atwal explores the global pitfalls in telling textbook national history. India began its new independent life with its history textbooks still coloured by a colonial telling of the past. A new generation of historians like Romila Thapar brought both academic rigour and historical enquiry to the creation of new texts for the classroom, but increasingly the 'saffronisation" of history - Hindu nationalist narratives - have begun to impact on both the facts of history and the struggle for the story of India.

Producer: Mark Burman Show less